In the old town of Georgetown, Penang--a UNESCO World Heritage Site--is a road called the "Street of Harmony".  There's an old colonial Anglical church at one end, an old Achenese built Mosque at the other, & houses of worship from other major religions in between.  In the middle is a traditional Chinese temple, presumably the first in Penang, known as the Goddess of Mercy (Thni Kong Tnua) Temple, or by some as the lucky temple--because of the strong local belief that making offerings here is good for business.

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I've visited here several times, & am always impressed by the high traffic of Chinese devotees coming, worshipping, praying & going.  There's a nearly frantic pace to a lot of it.  Almost like a borderline obsession to take care of this routine need before moving on to other daily activities.  I know that many of the people must attend there daily, because on random visits several months apart I've found myself observing some of the same devotees.

Gratefully, worshippers here very open to having visitors mingle among the devotees recording images of their devotion.  

Last February--while participating in a Thaipusam workshop led by Matt Brandon & Gavin Gough--I was assigned to choose one of several musical scores, go shoot some subject, & create a slideshow put to that music.  When perusing the offered selections, the pace of this piece* immediately reminded me of the daily activities at the Goddess of Mercy Temple a few blocks away.  My wife & I trotted down there.  I realized that to capture the feel of the place, I needed to somehow demonstrate how the tempo of the worshippers tracked with the musical piece.  Shooting high volumes of images with my battery grip seemed like the answer--although it almost felt like someone might accuse me of a cheap spray & pray approach.

In the end, I wish I'd shot slightly longer strings of action.  Analyzing the beats per minute & the length of each measure of music, & the number & nature of the images in my "bursts", plus a lot of quick math calculations guided me in matching sequences to lines of music.  The ability to copying develop settings across several similar images in Lightroom was very helpful too.

In the end my colleagues selected my slideshow for this assignment as their top choice, though honestly I thought Tim Steadman's beat mine hands down.  See it here--  https://vimeo.com/36561351.  But he'd just won another award, & our group couldn't let one guy walk away with all the awards, right?!

Enjoy!

*Jardin, The Motorcycle Diaries, Gustavo Santaolalla