Phuket and the Andaman Sea — Fine Art Photography from Southeast Asia

Why I Keep Coming Back to the Andaman Coast

I lived in Phuket for the better part of two years. Most photographers shoot it as a beach destination — turquoise water, longtail boats, cocktail at sunset. That photography exists in millions of versions on stock sites. It isn't what I make.

What kept me going back was a different Phuket — slower, more domestic, more layered. The fishermen on Rawai beach sorting nets at 5am. The market women carrying baskets of fruit on the back of a moped. The pastel pink houses of Phuket Town that look more like Penang than Thailand.

This article is about the part of the Andaman coast that doesn't make it onto travel posters. The part I came back to photograph for vingtdeuxbis.

Rawai vs Phuket Town vs Krabi — Three Different Visual Languages

People who've never been there assume Phuket is one place. It isn't. Three areas, three completely different aesthetics.

Rawai in the south is the closest thing to a fishing village still on the island. The light at dawn is what brings me back — diffuse, pink-grey, almost European in tone. The boats on the beach are wooden, long, and the paint is cracked in ways that make every frame look like it was shot in 1985.

Phuket Town is colonial. Sino-Portuguese shophouses painted in mustard yellow, faded teal, dusty pink. The architecture has more in common with Lisbon than Bangkok. If you shoot Phuket Town in late afternoon, the buildings glow like there's a light source inside them.

Krabi is the geological coast — limestone cliffs, mangroves, beach caves. It's the most "tropical" of the three but also the hardest to photograph well.

The Pastel Hours

In tropical photography, the standard advice is to shoot at golden hour for the warm orange light. That's not what I do in Phuket. What I shoot for instead is what I call the pastel hours: 5am just before sunrise and 6:30pm just after sunset. The light at those times is soft, diffuse, slightly cool, almost European. It strips the saturation out of the scene.

Rawai Pastel was shot at 5:14am, on a Tuesday in February, when the temperature was 24 degrees and there was just enough cloud cover to diffuse the sun before it came up. Twelve minutes of light. Forty frames. One print.

The Story Behind Rawai Pastel and Sunset River

Rawai Pastel is the print that opened up the Phuket series for me. I'd been in Phuket two months before I got it. The frame that became Rawai Pastel happened almost accidentally — I'd turned my back to the sea to walk back to the road and the light hit a row of beached longtail boats with their nets drying on bamboo poles.

Sunset River is a different kind of frame. Shot near Phang Nga, on a tidal river inland from the coast. The light is warmer, more golden, but the print works because the river is empty — no boats, no people, just water and a cloud-wrapped horizon.

Muay Thai Photography — Why Black and White

The other thread of the Phuket work is the Muay Thai series. I started shooting fights in a small camp in Rawai, late nights, sweat and chalk and floodlights. Colour didn't work for these photographs. The fight venues are lit with mixed-temperature flickering fluorescents, and the colours come out muddy. Black and white strips that out.

Muay Thai Fighter and Ricky are the two prints from this series currently in the catalogue. They hang well in interiors that have at least one masculine element — leather, dark wood, exposed concrete.

Phuket Beyond the Postcard

If you're a collector who already owns travel photography, Phuket prints are worth considering as a counterweight. They're softer, more humid, more European-feeling than Tokyo or Hong Kong photography. They work in interiors that already have a strong urban print and need something quieter to balance it.

The full Andaman series currently includes Rawai Pastel, Sunset River, Muay Thai Fighter, and Ricky. More prints from this region are planned for late 2026.

Each print is a limited edition of 30, hand-signed and numbered, with certificate of authenticity. Printed on Hahnemühle Pearl 310gsm archival paper. Available in A4, A3, A2, A1. Free worldwide shipping.