Will Robb Photography

The first time I took a photo was in the Grand Palace in Bangkok. It was 12 years ago, I was 20 years old and it was my first time to leave Europe.

I had arrived about 6am and the first thing that hit me was the heat. As soon as I stepped off the plane the humidity almost choked me. As I passed through customs and entered the arrivals area I was met with chaos. People were grabbing me, trying to get me to take their taxi instead of their competitors, all trying to offer better and better deals. I had a friend in the UK who used to run a bar in Bangkok and he had taught me what scams to look out for, so I took a taxi from the metered rank, persuaded the driver to actually use the meter and got him to take me to a hotel recommended by my friend (who was a bit of a joker) and I got off at a hotel straight across from the Nana Plaza red light zone which turned out to be a brothel and hotel all in one. I was exhausted and couldn’t wait to get some sleep, but every 5 minutes there was a knock at the door or the someone calling me offering me “massagey” so I decided to go for a walk and get away from the chaos.

As I walked the streets, people whose limbs and faces were half eaten by leprosy begged for money, taxi’s stopped constantly, each showing me the same glossy laminated “menu” of girls who they would deliver me to, hawkers shouted out to me to look at their stalls, people tried to get me into their stores to buy suits, prostitutes, both female and male approached me in the street, the noise of the traffic deafened me, construction on the Sky train that now runs through the heart of Bangkok was beginning and tuk-tuks flashed by at break neck speeds.

I’d never experienced anything like it before. Other than a few trips to nearby European countries on school trips my experiences of life was limited to what I had experienced in Scotland and London and that didn’t add up to much. Until I went to Thailand, the hottest temperature I had experienced was about 24 degrees and that was in London. I remember thinking “how can people live in this heat” but there I was in Bangkok in July, 38 degrees at 10 in the morning and more humid than a sauna.

I walked about for a while through the madness of the streets and found a park. it was quiet and it gave me some time to think. I sat on a bench and took out my Lonely Planet guide, found where I was and looked at the maps section to see what was nearby and started to make some plans. I remember looking at photos of the Grand Palace and thinking that’s where I want to go. Guidebook in hand I left the park, hailed a tuk-tuk (back then they were the cheapest choice), pointed to the photos and asked the guy to take me there. The driver kept stopping and asking me to go into diamond stores or suit shops so he could get gasoline credits which was one of the scams I had heard of. If anyone bought anything from these dodgey stores, the driver got 25% of the takings. I stuck to my guns and didn’t go in, the driver got more and more pissed off with me and he hammered his tuk-tuk through the streets cursing me and everyone else. We eventually got to the Grand Palace, grabbed the note I had in my hand to pay him and sped off without giving me any change.

I entered the palace grounds and was just blown away. I’d never seen anything like it my life. Spectacular green and orange tiles decorating all the buildings, gold plating shining in the sun, ornate statues scattered throughout the grounds and people placing offerings at their feet. I saw the images in front of my eyes that I’d been looking at in my guidebook, I brought out my camera, a 35mm point-and-shoot Olympus, framed the shots in viewfinder as near as I could to replicate the shots in the book and took a few snaps.

I repeated this process all over Thailand, from Chiang Mai in the north to Koh Samui in the south. I traveled round Thailand for a month, just me, my guidebook, my camera and a few rolls of film. Until then, it had easily been the best time of my life, it felt like a real adventure, I didn’t have much money so I would stay in the cheapest cockroach infested hovels, sometimes share a room with fellow travelers, end up having beers with people I just met, sometimes spending an hour with them, sometimes a few days before parting ways.

Thailand was a life changing experience that made me decide two things about my life. I knew then I couldn’t go back and settle down to a normal life in the UK and I knew I wanted to travel more and keep taking photos, just like I saw in my Lonely Planet guidebooks. Over the next 12 years I traveled to more than 20 countries in total, always with a camera in my hand and a Lonely planet guidebook in my backpack. Over time my photos got quite good, I started picking up photography work here and there and things got better and better every year. This year, I got signed up to Lonely Planet images and I signed a contract with them to supply them with my travel related photos. They have recently put some of my photos on their site In many ways, it’s a photographic dream come true for me. I remember 12 years ago on my first trip gazing in awe at the photos and thinking how amazing it must be to work for Lonely Planet as a photographer. It’s been a long time and hard work getting there, but it’s damn nice to get there in the end. At the moment I could only supply them with some images from Japan, Korea and Paris due to the file format I had saved some of my images in, but from here on I will be providing them with a lot of travel shots from around the world. One day I’d love to get back to Thailand and retrace some of my first travel and photography steps.