‘Phuket is waiting for you, guys!’: Tavepong Pratoomwong’s best phone picture

Joined by his wife Mai and daughter Milan, street photographer Tavepong Pratoomwong was on holiday in Phuket, a 90-minute flight from their home town of Bangkok, when he took this photo. He’d heard that the nearby Mai Khao beach – the longest on the island – was a great place to watch planes landing and taking off from the airport close by, so the trio set off from their hotel.

“Milan was only five and we found out pretty quickly that the plane noises scared her, so Mai took her back to the hotel while I took some shots.”

Pratoomwong had hoped to capture the planes and hadn’t planned on the people taking selfies in the foreground. “It seemed lots of people had had the same idea as me,” he says. “I didn’t ask them to pose; they didn’t even notice me.”

He tried a few shots on his digital camera, too, but preferred how the images on his Sony Xperia X came out. “I adjusted the contrast and brightness a little – that was all it needed.”

He says that back in 2017, when he took the photograph, it didn’t have much meaning for him, but after the pandemic, during which Thailand lost its crucial tourist income, he sees it differently.

“We have beautiful beaches on the Andaman Sea and incredible Chino-Portugal architecture, plus the nightlife and food are incredible,” he says. “Phuket is waiting for you, guys!”