Wayne Thomas | Myanmar (on Storehouse)

Photo © Wayne Thomas-All Rights Reserved

I'm a great fan of Storehouse, a visual storytelling application for the iPad, which is an easy way to create, share, and discover beautiful stories by combining photographs, videos clips, and text. In fact, I've produced two stories on Storehouse so far, and the number of views on one of them just blew my mind...over 5500 views in a matter of a few weeks.

And I'm glad to see that other photographers have preceded me, and have followed suit. One of these photographers is Wayne Thomas, whose Myanmar, A Nation in Transition has just been published a few days ago. I hope this post will propel his multimedia essay's readership/viewership even further.

It's a great combination of still photographs, short video clips (about 5 of them that loop continuously) and a couple of panoramic photographs of Yangon's Shwedagon Pagoda and of the Kyaiktiyo Pagoda's Golden Rock.

The most arresting photograph in the essay is Wayne's photograph of a woman whose face is completely covered in thick thanakha paste, and some sort of brown-black "third eye" in the center of her forehead. I've never seen anyone with that much thanakha paste before.

Wayne Thomas describes himself as a traveler, storyteller and a grower of facial hair. He traveled to Myanmar and writes that it's a developing country sought after by opportunity seeking corporations and travelers hoping to step back in time.

He's right.