VinaPix

The Customer Isn't Always Right!

2011-01-04T11:44:00.001+07:00

I’ve had enough! I’m giving up! No more photography! Well, no, not really… but no more commercial photography. 2010 saw the end of my career as a commercial photographer. Burnt my boats, sent out the emails, added a (big red) notice to my website and finally posting this blog. My hard earned commercial status is dead and buried: in the words of the great John Cleese it “has ceased to be, it is no more”. 2011 is going to be a year when I just shoot for myself.

I can see some of my professional colleagues around the world nodding their heads sagely, thinking that I couldn’t compete with the flood of pathetic new wannabes all claiming to be professional photographers, but who sell their time and work for peanuts (all it’s usually worth). Not so! My problem isn’t with the digital posers of this world… it’s with the big clients, the agencies and the so-called “professionals” in the photo buying community. The people who should know what they’re doing.

As everyone knows, the global financial crisis of the last few years has seen budgets for commissioned photography slashed, sales of Royalty Free images sky-rocket and more than a few good photographers close up shop and seek alternative incomes. I’ve been lucky and this hasn’t bothered me. I still get the same number of big jobs a year that I’ve always gotten… but the people I have to work with has changed. It’s this change which added the proverbial straw to the camels back… let me explain.

I did a job last year. Not that big: three weeks of work in three countries. The budget was adequate, and all my costs were covered. I explained that it was the wrong time of year weather-wise for two of the three locations, and the client understood, but decided to go with the commission anyway. So off I went: worked my ass off trying to get images of sunny beaches on gray, overcast and rainy mornings, shots of tourists having the holiday of their lives while standing around in the pouring rain and art-quality photographs of mountain sunsets which never happened!

When the job was done I returned to Ho Chi Minh City, did the normal editing and post production and forwarded the images to agency working with the client. They were pretty happy with the results, and to be honest there were one or two really good frames (which for reasons beyond me, they never used). The point is, however, that I wasn’t happy! Two thirds of the images I supplied were pedestrian to say the least. They had the correct subject matter, good composition etc, but they lacked that special light, vibrant color and that indefinable “wow” factor which makes an image jump right out of the monitor! Shot simply to meet a deadline and not because they were the ‘right’ shot.

And this is the problem: neither the client or the agency had any idea about what makes a good image… good! They were satisfied with the norm, the average, the dull and even the boring. I’d spent hours with the ‘art director’ going through the product, trying to explain why one image worked and another didn’t. I thought she’d gotten it, but she hadn’t. All that hard work, pre-dawn journeys, sweat, missed meals, late nights and everything else… for what? To have a few images that I wasn’t happy with stuck on a website. Sure I got paid. But it’s not worth it. That’s not the reason I make photographs.

So now I shoot for myself. If it takes me one day or four to get the shot I want, so be it. I’ve already begun! Just got back from Tay Ninh near the Cambodian border… spent four days photographing one building. Sunrise and sunset every day, as well as more than a few hours in between. The result? Half a dozen photos which I’m proud of! And a load more which are better than most available online (which I’ll stick on my website and sell as stock). Next I’m off to the Mekong. How long will I be there? No idea. It all depends upon how long it will take to make the photographs which I like! Couldn’t educate the customers I used to have, so now I’m the customer!

If you want to know where I am or what I'm shooting check out: VinaPix - Vietnam Image Library See you around!

Bao Loc Dawn

2010-10-13T16:18:00.000+07:00

It’s dark. It’s pretty cold. There’s an icy wind from the North West. I can’t see, but I guess there’s low cloud overhead. Maybe even some rain on the way. It’s just past three in the morning and I’m blindly feeling my way around the hotel car park, hoping to find my rented motorbike. I’m in Bao Loc, Lam Dong Province, Vietnam.

There are those who think that travel photography is all about staying in luxurious hotels or romantic resorts; shooting a few frames and then relaxing by the pool while sipping a cocktail… the James Bond school of photography. The reality is very different. I’ve been in Bao Loc for three days. Up at three every morning to capture a mountain sunrise. This is my fourth morning. I still don’t have the shot I want.

By luck rather than design, I find my little rented Honda Cub: I step out into the dark and fall over the damn thing. My fingers search out the ignition (I really can’t see a thing) and I try to slide in the key. It’s the wrong way up. It’s jammed! I’m tired. I don’t need this kind of hassle. A few four letter words and a minute later I give the starter a good kick and the ancient engine splutters into life. I’m off!

Bao Loc is a beautiful little place surrounded by green forested hills and misty rugged mountain peaks, just off highway 20, about six hours North of Saigon. For the last three mornings I’ve headed West into the wild highlands around the famous Dam’bri falls Today, I’m trying something different. To the East of town, on the other side of a deep valley littered with coffee plantations, there’s a solitary mountain with a peak which seems to always rise above the morning cloud. It’s my destination today. Only one little problem… I’m not sure how to get there.

I putter out of town on the road towards Da Lat, the tiny light on the Cub feebly attempting to illuminate the road for a meter or so in front of me. After about two klicks I realize that I must have missed the turn off I’d been looking for and turn around. There it is! If I follow this road the whole way I’ll end up at the beach in about ten hours, but that’s not my plan this time. The road twists and turns as it descends to the valley floor. It’s too dark to see, but I know that just a meter to my right there’s a sheer two hundred meter drop. I go slowly. It’s much colder on the valley floor. My teeth are chattering and my fingers are frozen stiff – god help me if I have brake quickly.

After about 40 minutes I make another turn to the right. Now I’m on a dirt road passing by dark and silent coffee farms. Even the chickens are still asleep and the dogs (more intelligent than me) are warm in their kennels. The only sound is the put-put of my little Honda. The road starts to rise and narrows to a track just wide enough to walk on. The bike is struggling to move upwards in second gear. The overhanging bamboo casts strange ghostly shadows. I’m back in the clouds, icy water runs down my face and soaks my shirt. Still the path winds upwards.

It’s getting harder now: guiding the bike between large stones I can barely see. The Honda slips to the right. The front wheel connects with a small bolder and the handle bars are violently twisted from my grip. Over I go! It’s not a bad fall, as falls go. I’m a little bruised and the skin had been scraped off the knuckles of my left hand. My ‘trigger’ finger if fine, so no real damage done. I upright the bike, kick the starter and climb back on… oops! There’s no light. I try the switch a few times. Nothing. I smack it a few times. No joy. I attempt to feel my way around the wiring to find a broken connection. Nada!

It’s almost five. I’ve been climbing an almost non-existent path in the dark for the past half hour. The bike is propped up against a tree some three hundred meters below me. I know already that there is no way I’m going to get to the top of this little mountain by sunrise. Now I’m looking for some vantage point from where I might at least get a few photos of the valley and distant peaks as the sun gives birth to a new day. Off to the East there’s already a noticeable lightening of the sky: a beautiful deep velvet blue where only minutes ago it was an impenetrable blackness.

The sky is now quite light. I have to find somewhere to shoot soon. Through the misty grey gloom I can see an open area off to the left. I force my way through a thick clump of wet bamboo. My left trouser leg catches on something and I give it a good tug. My soaked khaki pants rip apart from just above the knee to the hem. I tug again, but they’re caught fast. On closer inspection I find they are hooked up on some rusted barbed wire. I can’t be bothered with this now. I reach for my knife and cut off a large patch of cotton. I’m free. Let’s get a move on.

As the light improves I realize that I’m on the forward part of a spur, not yet high enough to see the distant mountain peaks. Now I’m pissed off with myself. Should have planned better. Not that it would have made much difference, anyway. The cloud is so thick there is no sunrise. All I can see is a faint pink glow on the other side of some bamboo and small trees. Well. I’m here, so I’d better photograph something! I unpack the tripod, set up the camera and wait for better light. I wait. And wait. And wait. After almost two hours I have… nothing! No landscape, no interesting subject, no beautiful light. Nothing! I shoot off a few frames anyway, and set off on the long trip back.

Such is another morning in the life of a travel photographer. Sometimes it works… and sometimes it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter that much, really. Here in Vietnam there is always tomorrow and somewhere wonderful to go. Even more than that, however, is the joy and excitement of ‘what’s next?’ A morning like this is not a disaster. It’s a great memory. It’s a reminder that I’m alive. It’s all part of what makes up my work and my life. I love it!

RIP Kodachrome

2010-07-25T16:55:00.000+07:00

“Do not go quietly into that dark night”

The last roll of Kodachrome has finally been “officially” processed. Kodachrome is dead. With it’s demise passes a photographic era. A time when the photographic universe was more stable, easier to understand. I know it’s a common human weakness to look back on the past and romanticize: to gloss over the less attractive parts of our personal and collective histories. The digital revolution is here, and that’s a good thing. Time and tide will wait for no man – or film. Any yet there is something tragic about the way Kodachrome has passed from our lives. Not with a bang, but an almost silent whimper.

I believe that Kodachrome deserves a wake! A real good old Irish wake! Lots of old guys sitting around a virtual Kodachrome coffin, drinking their virtual single malt whisky and swapping stories, real and apocryphal, about their departed friend. Red faces, tall stories, outright lies and continuous laughter into the small hours of the cyberspace morning. And then, a moment of collective silence as we look within, remember our debt to the one who has left us and pay our last respects.

And this for me is the saddest thing. Not that Kodachrome has gone. It’s the manner of it’s going. The psychology of the way we have simply accepted it. The real tragedy is that we seem to have become so much a part of the modern consumer society with it’s built in redundancies, it’s shortsighted emphasis on the here and now, and it’s insistent demands for function over form. In what ways is this modern throw-away culture in which we work influencing our photography? As artists are we creating a new vision of our world or just reflecting it’s cold economic realities?

Kodachrome is dead! Long live Kodachrome!

Kodachrome was born in the early 1930’s, the result of work done by two professional musicians: Leopold Godowsky and Leopold Mannes. It was first released by Eastman Kodak in 1935 as 16mm movie film, and the following year in 35mm slide format. What made Kodachrome unique was that the emulsion contained no dye couplers, making the film thinner and allowing sharper images. The downside of this was that the couplers had to be introduced during the processing of the film. This required special developing laboratories and resulted in Kodak having to include those famous yellow ‘pre-paid processing’ envelops in every box.

Kodachrome was an instant hit with amateurs and professionals alike. It was soon being produced in 110, 120, 126 format rolls and 4x5 large format sheets, with ISO ratings from 8 to 200. In addition to it’s outstanding sharpness, Kodachrome was favored for it’s incredible archival qualities: stored in a cool dark place the film can be kept for hundreds of years with no visible loss of image quality. With the rise of newer alternative films and simpler E6 processing, however, Kodachrome began to lose it’s market share. The digital revolution was the final nail in the coffin, and on the 22 June 2009 Eastman Kodak announced it was ceasing production of Kodachrome.

Over it’s 75 year life Kodachrome was used to photograph almost everything that has ever been photographed in every country on the planet and even in space. It remains probably the only film to have a pop song written about it – Paul Simon’s 1973 hit “Kodachrome”. In 1984 a then little known photographer photographed a young woman called Sharbat Gula using Kodachrome. This portrait by Steve McCurry later appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazine. ”Afghan Girl” is one of the best known and iconic photographs of the 20th century. It is fitting, therefore, that Steve McCurry shot the last produced 36 frame roll of Kodachrome in 2010.

Bạn có phải là 1 nhiếp ảnh gia?

2010-05-30T10:44:00.010+07:00

Cách đây không lâu mà vào thời điểm đó những nhiếp ảnh gia thực thụ được đào tạo và có những trải nghiệm vượt trội hơn rất nhiều so với những người chỉ có sở thích chụp ảnh.Với kiến thức và khả năng có được mà họ đã tạo nên những bức ảnh tuyệt vời dù trong những hoàn cảnh khó khăn đi nữa.Họ cũng mua và biết cách sử dụng những máy ảnh,lense và những thiết bị tiên tiến và mắc tiền nhất.

Cũng rất đáng làm tự hào nếu như nghề nghiệp của bạn là một nhiếp ảnh gia chuyên nghiệp,về phóng sự,về quảng cáo,về phong cảnh thiên nhiên hay chân dung.Họ sẽ được biết đến,được trân trọng,và được chi trả hợp lý sao cho xứng với những gì họ có thể làm được.

Tuy nhiên trong thời buổi này thì những kỹ năng như thế lại không cần thiết.Máy ảnh kỹ thuật số trung bình có sẵn chip vi tính và phần mềm đã thay thế cho kiến thức và kinh nghiệm nói trên.Vì thế bất cứ ai chưa bao giờ biết chụp hình là gì cũng có thể có được một bức hình tốt.Hoặc nếu như chưa ưng ý mấy,người ta vẫn có thể xài photoshop để chỉnh sửa tiếp.Trong thực tế,có nhiều thợ nhiếp ảnh bây giờ tốn thời gian để ngồi trên máy vi tính nhiều hơn là đi ra ngoài chụp hình!Bây giờ biết cách sử dụng những phần mềm vi tính hiện đại nhất đã dần dần chiếm ưu thế hơn việc biết rõ cái máy ảnh đó hoạt động làm sao.Và có một câu hỏi được đặt ra .... liệu cứ biết chỉnh sửa hình ảnh trên vi tính là có thể làm được nhiếp ảnh gia hay không?!

Tôi chắc rằng câu trả lời sẽ là "Không!" . Chụp hình bắt đầu với chủ thể rồi sau đó sẽ là tương quan giữa chủ thể đó và ánh sáng.Sau đó người nhiếp ảnh sẽ quyết định vị trí tầm ngắm(PoV),độ sâu trường ảnh(DoF),vị trí,ánh sáng và nhiều thứ khác nữa.Khi đã cảm thấy hài lòng hết như mong muốn của mình,người nhiếp ảnh sẽ bấm máy và thế là xong.Hoặc nếu như có khó khăn gì với chủ thể bức ảnh hoặc điều kiện ánh sáng không tốt hay những vấn đề khác chăng nữa thì với nền tảng kiến thức và kinh nghiệm thực tế nhiếp ảnh gia thực thụ vẫn khắc phục được và đương nhiên vẫn có những ảnh đẹp.Máy ảnh đã sinh ra những hình ảnh như vậy.Và đó là những gì mà việc chụp ảnh đúng nghĩa cần phải có.

Rất nhiều người hiện nay,hay tự cho mình là nhiếp ảnh gia "chuyên nghiệp" nhưng lại thật sự không biết hết cách thức sử dụng máy ảnh.Vác máy đi vòng vòng và chụp đầy thẻ nhớ Compact Flash với hàng trăm bức hình và hầu như mọi việc chỉ nhờ có camera chứ không phải là người chụp.Hình ảnh chỉ phụ thuộc vào công nghệ như của Canon hay Nikon,chứ không từ khả năng của chính bản thân thợ chụp.Sau đó họ tải hình vào máy và bắt tay vào việc....Tất cả kỹ năng cũng như kiến thức hầu như là tập trung vào Photoshop hoặc những phần mềm khác:tải ảnh,cắt xén,làm sắc nét,chỉnh tông màu,sửa này,đổi kia....Chẳng có gì sai cả nhưng lại không phải là thật sự chụp hình.Mà gọi nôm na là kỹ xảo công nghệ(digital art).

Tôi có một câu hỏi....vậy bạn là một thợ chụp hình hay là một người làm kỹ xảo?Những bức hình mà bạn đưa cho bạn mình xem,đăng lên mạng hoặc bán cho khách hàng là từ đâu có?Từ camera hay máy vi tính?Ổn thôi,vẫn không gì sai.Nhưng nếu bạn biết về những công cụ trên máy nhiều hơn camera,thì xin đừng nhận mình là nhiếp ảnh gia mà thay vào đó là người xử lý hình ảnh(digital artist).Nhiếp ảnh phải phát xuất từ máy ảnh!

Binh Thuan Travels (Part 1)

2010-05-05T10:40:00.000+07:00

Five fifteen in the morning. The first light of dawn catches the tops of the cities tallest buildings. I’m waiting for a friend, Adam. He and I are heading a few hours up the Southern coast of Vietnam. He just wants to visit some new places, well off the beaten track, and get some nice photos. I’m more focused. I want a picture of the Mui Ke Ga lighthouse at dawn. I’ve been wanting this shot for years. The lighthouse on it’s island backlit by the first pink flush of the new day… a long, long exposure to flatten out the sea leaving it an infinite mirror of pastel glass. I’ve tried for this shot half a dozen times and never gotten it. Today I’m on my way to try again.

Our plan is to take a slow ride up the coast from the resort city of Vung Tau, passing through Long Hai and then on to LaGi, in Binh Thuan province. From there it’s a mere forty minutes to Mui Ke Ga the next morning. Things go wrong almost immediately. We cross the Saigon river by ferry and set off across district two. But the road we want to take isn’t there! It used to be. I’ve traveled it many times. This morning, however, we are confronted by a massive new six lane freeway which is not yet open to traffic. It takes us another fifty minutes of frustrating searching until we are eventually able to connect with the old Dong Nai road.

Within the hour though, we are speeding up a beautiful new traffic free road. On our left are the high forested dunes and deep jungles of Binh Chau. A few meters to our right, the turquoise waters of the South China sea gently lap endless dazzling white sands. The sky above is a deep blue and the breeze is cool. This is more like it. We stop for a drink at a beautiful little wooden hotel and restaurant, almost invisible amongst the trees of the jungle. It’s quiet. Not a sound except the wind rustling the dry forest leaves and the odd bird call. I’m starting to unwind. This is where I belong. The countryside. I can see that Adam is also starting to shed the stress of city life. He’s starting to look excited at the abundance of photographic opportunities we’ve passed.

We arrive in the little fishing town of LaGi by mid afternoon, book into our hotel, and immediately set out looking for somewhere to photograph the sunset. A few kilometers North of the town we follow a little track until it ends in a tiny village hidden in the sand dunes. We make our way along a series of winding footpaths until we arrive at the beach. It’s a vast expanse of sand stretching for kilometers in both directions. Apart from three unused basket boats and one or two locals we are alone. Perfect! Perfect that is, except for the dark clouds which race in behind us and obliterate the sun. That’s it for the day. No light. No photographs. Oh well, it’s nice just to be here. Indeed, the sense of wellbeing brought about by the beauty of our surroundings easily compensates us for the loss of the odd photo tonight.

We make our way back into town and a lovely little coffee shop which I know quite well from previous visits. After carefully setting down assorted camera bags, backpacks loaded with equipment, tripods, reflectors and the rest of our kit, we collapse into comfortable chairs and order two ice cold beers. We are met with a guilty silence before the waitress explains that they have no beer. No beer! Our jaws fall to our ankles and the look of horror on our faces tell the whole story. The poor girl looks like she wants to kill herself on the spot. She flees. There’s an urgent discussion in the kitchen and after a minute or so two ice cold cans of Heineken arrive (followed within minutes by two more) Turns out someone ran up the road and bought them for us from a nearby store. Can’t beat service like that!

Next morning long before sunrise, we’re up, loaded with kit and on our way to Mui Ke Ga and ‘my’ lighthouse. Adam and I were halfway there by the time it was light enough to see the low cloud being blown over the flat sandy landscape. This didn’t look good. Let me add quickly, that I like clouds. I love clouds! They can add so much drama and depth to a photo. Unfortunately these were not those sort of clouds. These were a featureless dull grey from horizon to horizon. Guaranteed to blow out in photograph. Didn’t look like I was going to get my shot today. Once again… Mui Ke Ga 10 – VinaPix 0! Still, Adam had never been here, and it is a truly beautiful spot in it’s own right, so we pressed on.

You always arrive at Mui Ke Ga as if by accident. There’s a single lane road lined with coconut trees weaving it’s way through rice paddies. Clustered around a sharp corner are a few houses, a general dealers store and the odd coffee shop. Both sides of the road are littered with vendors selling vegetables, fruit, fresh seafood and almost anything else you might need. Almost totally obscured by stands of bright yellow pineapples and pink dragon fruit is a tiny sandy footpath. It’s so unremarkable you would be forgiven for riding past without ever knowing it was there. This little path continues for about fifty meters before it, quite literally, turns into the beach. This is Mui Ke Ga.

Before you is the ocean, dotted with wooden fishing boats painted every color of the rainbow. A few hundred meters to the left stands a small rocky island, looking pretty much like the two humps of a camels back. Rising from one of the small hills is the French built light house. It’s not, by any stretch of the imagination an attractive building. It is, however, a unique and imposing structure. The beach itself is a hive of activity. Hundreds of people gather around the incoming fishing boats. Cargoes of fish are offloaded, sorted, weighed, haggled over, sold and bought, repacked and then carted off on the backs of ancient motorbikes. It’s like this every morning… a gold mine of photographic opportunity: boats, people, activity, children, fishing nets, old weather beaten faces…

Adam is positively jumping up and down with glee as he surveys the vista before him. I sit under a large tree and order my first coffee of the day as he excitedly unpacks his camera and disappears into the mass of activity on the beach. Later as the sun cautiously breaks through the clouds, adding a little color and depth to things, I take a stroll. I’m able to grab a few shots before the clouds once again put an end to everything. Nothing exciting or earth shattering. I eventually find Adam amongst a group of woman. He’s pulling the strangest faces to try to get the attention of a young child. All he succeeds in doing, however, is making the unfortunate infant cry. Much to the amusement of the little girls mother and friends. Hours have passed. It’s time to head back to La Gi.

It’s hot. The heat is oppressive, pressing down upon the earth with the weight of all the heavens above. There’s an old farmhouse on the side of the road. It’s a lovely faded pastel blue color. The front yard is littered with bright yellow hay. The entire right side of the house is buried under a massive bougainvillea plant, awash with flowers of purple and white. To cap it all, above the front door a red Vietnamese flag with it’s victorious single gold star showing, hangs limply from a stick, as if the heat and humidity have drained it of all pride and life. Adam wants a photo. He knows the sun is too high. That the gray clouds will burn out horribly. But he wants to try. I don’t try to dissuade him. If it works it could be a great capture.

We wander into the yard, wave to a young boy sitting under a tree. Adam’s scratching around in his bag for his graduated ND filters. Already I can see he’s struggling. The sweat is pouring off him. He actually looks unsteady on his feet. Rather than offering the assistance a real friend would, I flee to the shade of a nearby tree. There isn’t a whisper of breeze. Sound seems muted. I’m not sure how long I can last. The heat is killing me. Adam courageously assembles his filter unit and positions himself for the shot he wants. He can’t take it though. The sweat is flooding salt into his eyes. He can’t even open them to find a handkerchief. His shirt sleeve is soaked through and dripping, absolutely useless. He seems to sway on his feet. He kneels for the first shot. Clicks the shutter release. I’m not sure he will be able to get up. But he does. He takes four more shots before he stumbles back to his motorbike. Totally exhausted. He may not be a professional photographer, but this guy sure has the heart of one!

I’m not sure quite how we got moving again. Even the wind caused by the bikes did nothing to alleviate our burning skin, parched throats and heat induced dizziness. We’re both in a bad way. Only a few hundred meters down the road we call a halt. Stumbling into a roadside drink stall and order glass after glass of crushed sugar cane juice. It takes another twenty minutes before I even begin to sweat! Dehydration can be a killer… but we’ve both had a great morning and lived to shoot again. Now we can swap photographic war stories and bore our friends with tall tales back in Saigon. Next on our list are the fishing boats of La Gi harbor, but that’s tomorrow morning… and another blog.

An Empty Chair

2010-04-21T13:26:00.002+07:00

I have a friend. In fact, I have more than one friend, but this friends name is Binh. I’ve known him for about seven or eight years. He works for a tour company here in Ho Chi Minh City. That’s how we met. I was doing a shoot for his boss and, as the accountant, he had to pay me. For some reason which I’ve never thought about too deeply, we just seemed to hit it off. The first suggestion of meeting sometime for a coffee, was followed by the odd night out on the town enjoying more beer than was good for us. Before long we were getting together every second week or so to drink, eat, chat or go somewhere. I remember the first time he invited me back to his home. That was when I first met his mother, Ba Hanh.

Binh’s mother had been born in the mountains North West of Na Noi. She’d had a hard upbringing on a poor farm. Her father owned a little land, but not enough to support his family. Like many, he worked the lands of the village nobles during the day light hours and struggled to till his own small plot before dawn or after dark. Old Mrs. Hanh once described to me how the family suffered when the French colonial regime conscripted her father to work on a road in a nearby province. With no income, and unable to work the lands she and her children survived by slaughtering and eating their few chickens and ducks… after that they were reduced to scavenging for snakes, frogs and snails in the rice paddies around their village

In 1941 with the world at war, the Japanese entered Vietnam. Four years later the Japanese army confiscated the rice harvest to feed their own troops and famine spread across the land. People were reduced to eating grass and old leather. Over a million Vietnamese perished. Among them were Mrs. Hanh’s two youngest children. The family walked, and at times even crawled, to the city of Ha Noi in the hope of finding food. But there was none. One evening her husband went out to search for food and did not return. He was never seen again. Over the next few months her two remaining children grew sick, and died. A family of six, reduced to one. After the Japanese came the Chinese, who stripped the city of everything of value and transported it North.

And then… the French returned. President Ho Chi Minh had already declared Vietnam to be a free and independent country, and established a popular government. The French, however, humiliated by the Germans in Europe sought to reclaim their colonial possessions. The result was what is generally called “the First Indochina War” which ended. as everyone knows, with yet another humiliating defeat for the French army at Dien Bien Phu. Following the Geneva conference in 1954 the country was divided into two. The family that Mrs. Hanh had been working for fled to the South, and almost by default she “inherited’ their small dressmaking business. It was five years later, that she married again. He husband had been a soldier at Dien Bien Phu, and after the war had returned to the capital to resume his career as a teacher.

The marriage was a good one. Two older people, both of whom had seen the worst that life had to offer, were more than content with their simple, peaceful existence. They had three children, the youngest being my friend Binh. The years of peace, however, did not last long. By the early 60’s the population of the South was resisting the ever increasingly dictatorial rule of Ngo Dinh Diem, and the North began to send men and munitions to the South. American marines landed at Da Nang in 1965, and the stage was set for another bloody conflict in a land that had known war for over a thousand years. Mrs. Hanh’s husband had wanted to “go South” but was deemed to be too old, and her children were two young. She did, however, volunteer to help at a hospital near their home.

Binh doesn’t remember much from the first years of the war, and by the time he was old enough to remember he had already been evacuated to the countryside. Old Mrs. Hanh remembers it all. She described the tiny bomb shelters build along the streets in which she would cringe alone in the dark as the bombs fell. She told me about the rationing, the shortages and about the sense of pride and purpose she and her neighbours felt in keeping the city running. She laughed as she explained how she kept shutting her eyes as she was taught how to load an anti aircraft gun on the roof of a nearby apartment building. She once told me, with tears running down her old wrinkled cheeks, about the day she went to work at Bach Mai hospital… only to find it wasn’t there. Obliterated by bombs from a B52. It could very well be the same way that Binh’s older brother died in 1973. Missing in Action somewhere on the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Long after the war ended, after finishing university, Binh found a job in Ho Chi Minh City. He brought his new bride and his then widowed mother with him. Every time I visited, old Mrs. Hanh would be sitting in her favorite chair in the corner of Binh’s small living room. Most of the time she watched TV, she really loved TV. No matter what was on, her failing eyes and thick glasses were glued to the screen. Sometimes I’d find here playing with her two grandchildren, telling them Vietnamese folk stories and snippets of family history. And sometimes, she would just sit there. Her mind filled with memories I could not even begin to imagine. I always joked that one day I’d photograph her, and she would always reply that that would be one photo I’d never be able to sell.

Old Mrs. Hanh’s chair is empty now. She died last winter. I never did photograph her. And you know what? I’m glad I didn’t. No photograph, no matter how good it might have been, could ever portray the struggles, personal calamities and pain she had to overcome and survive. No single photo could ever have done justice to the wonderful, courageous and kind soul that she was.

A Professional Rant...

2010-03-18T12:17:00.000+07:00

This week I’m going to complain, express my frustration, let off steam and basically have a good moan! The subject of my anger is photographers – or rather those photographers who call themselves ‘professionals’ when they are nothing of the sort. I know that this is a problem the whole world over, but my beef is with the assholes I encounter weekly here in Vietnam.

Photography is an interesting discipline – it’s both an art and a science. Good photography requires technical knowledge of film, light, cameras, sensors, lenses, computers, photographic paper, digital optimization, color calibration, printing… whatever. It also requires a good eye, the natural ability to ‘see’ the image, understanding of light, experience in composition, skill in the ‘art’ of photography, a sensitivity to beauty and so on.

Great photographers are not trained, they are born. Some people just seem to have that natural ability to see things in a unique and special way. When this is combined with sufficient technical knowledge and experience the world has another great photographer, and people can delight in the beautiful photographs they create. Some of these gifted folk make a living out of their art and call themselves professionals. Others, while still creating stunning images, do it only as a hobby and bring joy to themselves and those they share their images with.

In recent years, however, largely as a consequence of the development of digital technology, a third group of photographers has emerged. These people call themselves professional photographers, but generally lack either the technical knowledge or the natural artistic ability to create great photographs – in some cases they lack both the knowledge and the ability! They are, however, out there... in ever increasing numbers… claiming to be ‘professionals’... bullshitting their way into jobs… and creating chaos in the photographic world!

Here in Vietnam the problem is reaching epidemic proportions. Young backpackers arrive here on holiday with a few hundred dollars in their pockets and a digital camera hanging around their neck. Within a week or two they’ve fallen for some young bar girl and want to extend their stay – the real attraction being the relaxed lifestyle, cheap beer and easy sex. So what do they do when they start to run out of money? They suddenly start calling themselves a ‘professional’ photographer, print a cheap business card and set about looking for clients.

The crap I’ve seen over the last few years produced by many of these wannabe ‘professionals’ defies description. Now I’m not simply talking about style – I’m talking about substance – quality! I’ve seen so-called portraits where the subjects nose has been cropped right out of the image – the ‘photographer’ told me it was his “photojournalistic” style. I’ve seen out of focus pictures by the hundreds. I’ve heard of one guy who was wondering around in the midday sun (already a no no) shooting at ISO800 because he had no idea what ISO meant! And… and this is the problem… I’ve met dissatisfied, disappointed and angry clients who have spent large sums of money and received nothing usable in return.

I love the art of photography. I’m truly proud to be a photographer. I really think that photography is important to society. Indeed, I honestly believe that good photography is essential to the advancement of contemporary human culture. I’d go so far as to say that professional photography is a noble calling, deserving of due consideration and public respect! That’s why I’m pissed off with this multitude of so called ‘professionals’ who in their ignorance do so much to devalue the quality of photographic art and who drag true professional photography into the dirt where only they belong! Enough is enough!

Next week, on a more positive note, I’ll share a few ideas I have about reclaiming the place and pride of true professional photography.

A Mid-Life (Photographic) Crisis?

2009-09-14T14:46:00.005+07:00

Some of my friends are worried about me. They think I’m depressed, possibly going a little nuts. At very least, suffering a mid-life crisis! I should tell you, that although I’m not the most sociable person on the planet, I do have some very good friends. Their concern is genuine. I know that they’ve been talking about me behind my back. I sense a collective effort to keep an eye on me, to support me, to encourage me. Starting a few months ago I started to get these phone calls: How’s everything going? Anything I can do to help? If you ever want to talk, just call! When we do meet, they have begun to show me undue consideration. Sometimes I catch them looking at each other with ‘that’ look in their eyes. Yeah, they’re worried.

The truth is, however, that they have nothing to worry about. I’m fine. Really! Oh, I know that outwardly I’ve done some things that might appear somewhat strange. I must admit to saying things recently which have left folk with their jaws hanging millimeters above their toes. Sure, if you have no idea about the thinking behind many of my recent actions, you also might be wondering if I shouldn’t be checked into some home for the mentally bewildered. But please don’t worry. I’m doing well. In fact, it’s been some years since I’ve felt this good. For the first time in a long long time I have direction and purpose. I have a clear vision of what I want to do, of where I’m going and how I’m going to get there.

This is not to say that over the last six months or so, I have not had to struggle with some mammoth decisions. Indeed, I’ve been forced to look at myself and my work through critical eyes, and I have been more than disappointed with what I’ve seen. In many ways it has been a ‘dark night of the soul’ and a very real and painful journey of discovery. I guess that artists are by nature oversensitive to that which lies within and drives our creativity, but what I have been going through has far more to do with the cold harsh world of professional photography than Jungian analysis. Indeed, as I’ve shared my journey with some friends, I’ve been surprised how so many of them, on totally different paths from my own, have expressed similar questions and doubts about the craft of photography at the dawn of the 21st century. Maybe I should start at the beginning…

For as long as I can remember I have loved photography. I must have been about twelve years old when I first started developing negatives and printing photographs in a darkroom. My father, totally oblivious to the obsession he was creating, bought me my first camera when I was thirteen. By the time I reached high school I was making my own photographic paper and experimenting with anything which crossed my enthusiastic and undisciplined mind: I even tried printing a photograph of an elephant onto coarse sacking which I had treated. Not that I had dreams, then, of becoming a professional photographer, mind you. I wanted to have a life of adventure in the African wilderness where I lived. It was a life which for many years I was to enjoy, and photography was always a part of it.

I should point out that this was back in the 1970’s, long before personal computers or digital cameras were even a dream. My first decent SLR was a Nikon F3. One of the best camera’s ever made (IMHO), and I never went anywhere without one. I went through a number of Nikon bodies, losing one for example, when a hippopotamus overturned my canoe on the lower Zambezi River. Over the three days it took me to walk back to the Kafue pontoon I had dreams about shooting that damn hippo. Fortunately for the hippo, my rifle also went to the bottom of the river! By the early 1990’s I was attached to an observer team monitoring political violence, and later the first post-apartheid elections, in South Africa. In this capacity I was fortunate enough to be given some really first class formal studies in forensic photography, and was then issued with a beautiful Hasselblad. It was my first experience of anything other than a 35mm SLR and I was smitten. Needless to say, that Hasselblad saw far more use when I was off the job than when I was working. It was a sad day in my life when I had to return that camera!

To cut a long story short, the situation at home in Zimbabwe went pear-shaped and I was forced to leave. With less than a thousand dollars in my pocket, and no where to go, my future looked bleak. Within a few years, however, to my own surprise, I found myself living in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in Vietnam… and earning a living as a professional photographer! It was not something that I had planned to happen, but I was happier than I ever thought I could be. In those days the bulk of my work was simple product photography for the many new businesses which were then opening factories throughout the country. I learnt a lot by trial and error, but could never have imagined a better way to earn my daily bread, or noodles as it was in this case! Over time I was able to buy a few more F4 bodies and build up a decent collection of lenses. Working in makeshift studio conditions in factories and showrooms was far from ideal, but I worked hard and within time had contracts with a number of regional agencies.

I’m not sure where it comes from, but I was born with an incurable wanderlust: almost nothing in life excites me more than travel. I have always wanted to see what’s over the next hill, on the other side of the river or hidden deep within a forest. In addition, while I enjoy seeing new cities, strolling down new streets and sitting in street side coffee shops and watching the world pass by, nothing is as satisfying as heading off the beaten track. The wilder, more difficult, remote, inhospitable and dangerous a place is, the more I enjoy it! As I began to earn enough from my photography, I set about exploring Vietnam. What I discovered took my breath away. I’ve visited some 57 countries, and always made a point of going to those places of great natural beauty, but nothing in all my travels ever prepared me for the beauty which is Vietnam.

It is impossible in this blog, in ten thousand blogs, to describe the places I’ve been to and the things I’ve seen in this wonderful strip of land bordering the South China Sea. Vast plains of emerald green rice paddies, endless beaches of white sand lined with coconut trees, deep dark tropical jungles with butterflies larger than my hands, remote mountain tribes dressed in woven cloth every color of the rainbow, ancient incense-smoke filled pagodas buried deep in mountain caves, three thousand mystical islands rising from the jade waters of a still and silent sea. And best of all, it is almost totally unspoiled. The idea grew in me that what I really wanted to do was to travel Vietnam and record with my camera the vistas which left me so speechless. Back in those days there was almost no travel photography done in Vietnam, and clearly no market for any photographs that I did take. That didn’t stop me, though, and it wasn’t long before I was once again lusting after a Hasselblad: I wanted something bigger and better to capture the most beautiful places I’d ever seen.

But then came the digital revolution. It seemed like almost overnight that this onslaught of technology reached Saigon. Suddenly all my friends were shooting with digital bodies. Even kids I knew were walking around with little digital point and shoot cameras and photographing everything in sight. I began to get invitations to visit this or that new photographic website or online gallery. Like almost everyone else I was fascinated by the possibilities and potential of this brave new digital world. My first thought wasn’t about how I could profit from all this, but simply that I could now share my vision of Vietnam with countless thousands of faceless people around the world. Unfortunately, the 35mm positives or transparencies which I scanned with my little flatbed scanner looked like a dogs breakfast… oh well… time to invest in a digital camera.

My first digital body was a Nikon D70. Wow! Was I blown away, for the first few months, anyway. This was fantastic. I could shoot hundreds of images – for ‘free’ – and just delete the ones I didn’t want. I could adjust the ISO whenever I wanted, no more changing rolls of film. Even more wonderful: I could play with the white balance and get it just right, no matter where I was or under whatever lighting conditions I was working. And the change to my workflow was mind blowing. No more waiting days to get my negatives or positives back from the shop. Now all I had to do was to quickly glance at the histogram on the LCD on the back of the camera! Once home, it was a matter of minutes to load images onto my computer. And with all the new software on the market the possibilities were almost endless: crop, resize, enhance, clone and so on. My vocabulary began to frequently include new words unknown to me only weeks before. Digital imaging had arrived, and I embraced it wholeheartedly.

It wasn’t long, however, before I noticed that many of my friends had bigger and better cameras than I had. Suddenly, Megapixels became important. My friends made the odd disparaging remark about the size of the buffer on the D70. As time went by, I was able to compare my new images with those of other photographers, and my initial enthusiasm began to wane. The blues on the Nikon were too gray, the reds too blown and it the lacked dynamic range I wanted to provide detail in shadow areas. No problem! A few months after buying the D70 I sold it, and upgraded to a D100. My first digital darkroom had been Corel Paintshop. I liked it, and it easily did everything I wanted to do by way of image optimization. But, all my friends now had Photoshop. Not wanting to be left out, I too went and bought Photoshop. It was then that I realized my computer was not as fast as those which other professionals used, and I didn’t have the memory I needed. So again, I went shopping. I bought a new computer, with a larger hard drive. And I bought an external hardrive. And I bought a 22” monitor. And I bought a monitor calibrator. And I bought a A3 printer. And I bought a better scanner. And I bought… well, you get the idea.

It was only a few months later that I felt the need to upgrade my camera, again! The Nikon was prone to horrible banding and the blues still looked too gray to my eye. My search for a new body was a struggle. Not only did I have to see through all the hype of the manufacturers advertising, I had to learn so many new things. Suddenly it was important that I knew exactly how a sensor worked. I began buying book after book on digital technology, trying to figure out which camera had the best buffering system and could shoot faster. But was that really important to me? I then decided that I needed to understand the relationship between sensors and dynamic range – a subject which was important to me! Day and night, for weeks and months, I found myself reading books I only half understood, struggling to come to terms with this new face of photography.

I eventually bought a new camera. It was the Fuji Finepix S2Pro. A bit of a brick, and positively arthritic when judged against the speed of the newest Canons and Nikons. But speed wasn’t a priority for me. I wanted good dynamic range. I needed some detail in the shadows which the hot tropical sun forced into every picture I took. I wanted a camera which wouldn’t burn out every highlight each time I pressed the shutter release. The Fuji delivered this, and if it was a little slow… well that’s the price I’d have to pay. The only problem was that almost as soon as I’d bought the S2, Fuji announced the release of the S3! Well, I had to have that. Days later I traded the S2 and walked out of the shop with the first S3 sold in Vietnam. Then Photoshop released CS2 and I just had to have that! I bought it… and then had to order a fat book from overseas to try to understand how to use it! This soon became the story of my life. A continual search for the newest equipment, the latest upgrade, the best software. In this I was exactly like every other photographer around the world. The development of digital cameras and related software was happening at such a mind boggling pace it was a full time job just to keep up to date.

I was spending so much time and money buying new equipment and upgrading kit that I already had, I was left with almost no time or money to actually travel and go take photographs! It reached a point where I drew a line. I told myself that for the next twelve months I was not going to buy or upgrade a single thing. My priority was to shoot photographs of Vietnam and to try to develop a market for travel images. In this I was greatly aided by the situation in Vietnam itself. The government had woken up to the benefits of tourism as a source of employment and income generation: conferences were held, protocols were streamlined, visa procedures were simplified and millions were spent on advertising. Tour companies sprang up throughout the country like mushrooms after a rainstorm. Within years, Vietnam had become the worlds third fastest growing tourist destination! With the little stock I had, I went door to door, offering the earth, making deals and selling photos. It was hard work. The value of good images was not yet (and still isn’t) fully appreciated. I did, however, sell enough to afford a few more trips around the country to shoot more stock. In addition, I slowly began to get commissioned work: some of the larger tour companies, hotels and resorts had me fly to various locations and shoot material for their exclusive use. This was more like it.

It was quite a thrill at first, to see my images splashed all over the place. But it didn’t last. About half way through that first year I found myself sitting with some two dozen travel brochures in which my images appeared, and I wasn’t happy. Most of these brochures were A4 in size, folded twice along the long side, and printed in bright colors. My images were small, details were lost and more often than not my images looked like dark holes on an otherwise bright page. I thought about this. I played around with some ideas. And finally I hit the jackpot. From now on I’d shoot tightly cropped images, with very little detail and highly saturated colors: exactly the sort of thing that would jump out of the page and smack you in the eye, even if it was only a few centimeters in size. Within months I was getting new requests for images daily. I was working full time just delivering images to companies around Saigon. The demand was now there, and I had a hard time keeping up. Occasionally when I’d meet other photographers who had no idea who I was, I’d hear them complain that their client wanted images with the “VinaPix” look. The “VinaPix” look had arrived!

Over the next two years I worked like a man possessed. By now I had sufficient stock from around the country, and most of my time was spent simply running the business. I made a few short trips here and there, often with a friend – more for fun than anything else. I took a few commercial jobs, and eventually upgraded my camera to the Fuji FinePix S5Pro, upgraded my computer another two or three times, bought Photoshop CS3 and started my first website. The website was another sharp learning curve. When I began I knew nothing about Search Engine Optimization, and did everything wrong. Oh well, back to the books. To be honest, I began the website just because everyone else I knew had one. It was sort of, expected. Like so many things, however, once it was up and running it took on a life of it’s own. Before long I found myself answering hundreds of emails every month, having to learn the ins and outs of working with Dollars, Euros and Yen. From the outside I seemed to be doing well. Business was booming. Clients were happy, and I was making money. On the inside, however, it was a different story. I wasn’t happy. In fact, I wasn’t even sure that I was really a photographer any more.

Thinking about it now, I think the catalyst was when Fuji announced that they were not going to release an S6 upgrade to the S5. My first thought was “What now… do I go for the big Canon or the (then) new Nikon D3”? As I reflected upon it at length, however, I became aware of a previously unnoticed change that had taken place in my approach to photography. For me (and I think, many others) photography had become an unending and almost impossible struggle to always stay ahead of the technology curve, to always make sure I always had the latest and best equipment, the newest software and the greatest dynamic range possible from my sensor. I stood back and saw myself crawling up a mountain which will never have a final summit; endlessly upgrading in search of a peak which will never be there. My life, my work and my photography was now the plaything of a digital revolution without end. I suddenly felt very small and powerless.

Anyway, as I stood back and looked at my photography, indeed my life, I realized that I was working every hour I could fit into the day, rushing around fulfilling shoots, sitting in front of my computer into the small hours of every morning and turning out images like a photographic sausage machine. I was working hard. I was successful. I was unhappy. Somewhere over the last few years the love and passion I had had for photography seemed to have been squeezed out of me by the demands and pressures of commercial work. I had allowed the ability to use improved technology to replace my own eye and judgment: Why use a hand held light meter when the camera has matrix, center or spot metering? Why mess with exposure when the camera has an excellent automatic exposure programme? Why think about composition when you can crop later in Photoshop? In fact, why think at all? I never approached a shoot in quite such a manner, but many times I wasn’t far off. I was under pressure, I’d tell myself. The camera does it better than I can, I’d mutter under my breath. Shoot RAW and sort it out later was the thought ringing in my mind as I glanced at my watch and thought about the next job on the list.

In short, I had become a ‘digital technician’ or something… god knows what. I was working all the hours I could, but I felt I was wasting my time. I was using wonderful equipment that did most of the work for me, but I wasn’t making photographs. I was shooting pictures which sold, but put no “art” in them. I was a professional, but in my own eyes I was not a photographer. My passion for taking photographs had died. I had lost my integrity. Maybe it’s just that my approach to all this new technology was wrong, or maybe I lost focus. More likely, I think the truth is, that I spent too much time pleasing clients and not enough time pleasing myself. Whatever, the reasons, I knew I either had to make some changes, or get out of the photography business.

And so I took some time out. I farmed out my assignments. I put away my cameras. I switched off my computers. And I thought long and hard. I made lists: pros and cons. I wrestled with priorities, values and dreams. I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but it was for me a truly gut wrenching experience as I sifted through the elements which made up my life and my photography. I admit, I am ashamed to say, that a large part of the problem I faced, was one of my own creation. I was tired, physically and mentally. I was depressed to be spending the majority of my time running a business and not ‘out there’ making photographs. I didn’t even like the photographs I was taking. I’d boxed myself into a niche market where the “VinaPix” style was limiting, even destroying, my creativity and art.

Please understand… I’m not knocking those who have embraced digital technology and use it to perfect their craft. I’m not saying that the brave new world of electronic media is wrong. I’m simply saying, that for me, it isn’t right. In all fairness, let me add that I know there are many, many photographers out there, who move with the times, who have learnt to use all elements of digital imaging, and some of whom produce fantastic photographic art. I do not mean to imply in any way, that to shoot with digital imaging equipment implies a loss of artistic integrity – of course it doesn’t. The digital age is here, and here to stay. The advances made with digital technology are amazing, and I have no doubt that the developments which we will see in the next five or ten years or so will go far beyond anything we can even imagine today. I’m not throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but I have decided to make some changes.

So, what does the future hold? Well, firstly I want to take photographs again. I mean… photographs, not digital images. I’m returning to film. Lovely big Medium Format film! I’m returning to my roots, my professional training and to my original ambition: to photograph beautiful landscapes of Vietnam. I have no doubt that this will take some time, and will cost far more than I can afford to spend right now. That doesn’t bother me, though. If it takes me two years or four years, or longer, so be it. I’m no longer working to a clients schedule, I’m working to my own. Gone are the days when I fly in, spend five days rushing around trying to capture every image possible and then leave, crossing that spot off my list for another year. If I find something worth photographing, I’ll sit there for two days, or two weeks if need be, until I get the photograph that I want: until I’m sure there is no way I could improve on the photographs I’ve created.

Yes, I’m going to shoot film. That means new equipment. Strange as it may seem, I’m not going for Hasselblad. I’ve decided to build up a collection of Pentax 645N bodies and lenses. There are a number of reasons for this, primarily doing with availability of equipment in Vietnam. Having said that, while not at the top of the popularity stakes, the Pentax is a wonderful system, and the lenses are really bright and sharp. Added to this is the fact that Fuji have come out on my side and started to produce Velvia ISO50 again, in 120 and 220 rolls. What more could I ask for? In addition, and most importantly, I’ve also gone for a 617 panoramic camera. Now this is the dream machine for landscapes… nothing in the digital world can even come close. Sure, I’ve had the odd comment, like “is that your grandfathers camera”, but I must also admit to getting a kick from the look of awe on the faces of other photographers when I take this monster out of it’s case.

Shooting film will also, for me, shift the focus back to the act of creating photographs. From here on I will have to do the work, draw on my own training and experience and not depend on the camera. I know that I could do the same thing with a digital body set to ‘manual’, but it’s not quite the same. For me there is a joy in taking out my light meter, adjusting real knobs on a camera rather than scrolling down menus on an LCD. I’ll no longer have the option of optimizing a photograph in Photoshop, so I’ll have to make sure I get it right in the camera. I have no doubt that there will be times when I don’t, and I curse at an opportunity lost. Hey, that’s the way it goes. I’ll just have to work harder and make sure that it doesn’t happen too often. I must also confess, that for me at least, there is a beauty about film which I never experienced working digitally. To look at a massive, colorful 617 panoramic positive which I’ve created gives me a thrill which I never found sitting in front of a computer monitor.

A transition like this, not only from digital to film, but also from a very select niche market into the very competitive and difficult world of ‘art’ photography is not going to be easy. Even more so, as the market for large landscapes in Vietnam is almost non-existent. But I’ve created a market for my work before, I’ll just have to do it again. I guess it’s also going to be a hard time for me financially, and that’s not simply buying all the new equipment that I need. Landscape photography is expensive. The travel, the accommodation, the waiting and the shooting all costs something. In addition, it’s almost impossible to start marketing large landscape photographs until you have a reasonable portfolio. It might be a few years until I have enough material to create a new gallery on my website, hold an exhibition or begin to market my work. Again, I don’t care! I’m doing this for myself, and if it was easy it probably wouldn’t be something I’d want to do anyway.

A mid-life crisis? I don’t think so. But then, what do I know? What I do know is simple. I am returning to my first love. I’m fulfilling an as yet unfulfilled dream. I’m doing something that I want to do more than anything else in my life, and hopefully in the process, I’ll rediscover my passion for photography and create some beautiful art at the same time.

Nha Trang

2009-08-14T09:41:00.007+07:00

Maybe I plan too much? Maybe it's not a good thing to do if you're a photographer... I mean isn't photography all about waiting for that exact moment when whole universe comes together to provide that 'perfect' image. Don't the gods of photography smile on those who randomly wander the surface of the globe with camera in hand and hunger in their eyes... waiting with their trembling finger on the shutter release for that one defining vision of the world to smack them in the face?

I mean, take for example, my last trip to the beautiful coastal resort city of Nha Trang. Here in Vietnam one of the most important factors for a photographer to consider is the weather: when it's sunny in the South it's raining in the North, when the sky is blue in the mountains we have cyclones on the coast. My year is planned out even before most people a thinking about scratching around in the attic to find last years christmas tree lights.

For those of you who might be considering a trip to Vietnam a rule of thumb is to visit the South (Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta) between November and March, to visit the North (Hanoi, Ha Long and Sapa) around June or July and to visit Nha Trang at almost any time of the year. The warm waters and golden beaches of Nha Trang enjoy over two hundred and fifty days of sunshine a year. It's almost impossible to go to Nha Trang at the wrong time of year

I had booked my air ticket to this tropical paradise and then sat down to plan out my 'script'. This involves creating a day by day schedule of where I want to be at what time, what I want to shoot and from what positions or angles, an idea of how many shots I think I'll need in landscape or portrait format, wide angle or detail... whatever might be relevant to ensuring that at the end of the day I have a complete collection of beautiful, interesting, informative and descriptive images.

Something else I always do, naughty little boy that I am, is that I make time (usually late at night with a small glass of whisky) to spend hours trawling through popular online stock libraries (Getty, Photoshelter, Lonely Planet etc.) looking at what other happy snappers have shot of Nha Trang. This gives me an idea of what those evil individuals collectively known as the 'competition' have been up to, and almost always provides me with a few new ideas about how to approach, compose or light a well known subject. Seriously, this is always time well spent.

Anyway the morning of departure arrived and I woke in a great mood, brushed my teeth, packed my bags... clothing and toiletries 3.5kg, tripods 7.5kg, camera and equipment bag 12kg... and set off for Tan Son Nhat airport and a wonderful week in Nha Trang. The flight took less than an hour and as the airbus flew over the coast of Cam Ranh bay I could see nothing but blue water, kilometers of white beaches backed by green mountains. Here and there white walled houses showed through dense coconut trees, fishing boats ploughed through the ocean leaving long white wakes and close to shore I could see the darker lines of coral reefs and sandy bottomed lagoons through the crystal clear waters of the South China Sea.

Cam Ranh airport is about thirty minutes from downtown Nha Trang and after five minutes I had cleared baggage collection and was tearing down the new coastal highway. On my left rugged mountains cloaked in dense jungle rose to meet the deep blue sky and on my right lay untouched coves and rocky little peninsulas which jutted out into the endless blue of the sea. Although classified as a city, Nha Trang is in reality a small town with only one main road which runs along the beach. I stayed at the same hotel where I always stay; two stars for $14 a night can’t be beaten, and it’s only a two minute walk from the beachfront. By the time I’d booked in, unpacked and had a shower it was mid afternoon… time for a walk.

I took my beloved little Fuji S5 with a nice f/2.8 wide angle lens, slung my small tripod over my shoulder and eagerly set off. The main public beach runs for kilometers on either side of the city; a 50m belt of clean white sand bordered by landscaped gardens and coconut trees. Here and there are clusters of thatched umbrellas to provide shade for overweight lobster colored tourists. Every few hundred meters or so, set well back into the trees, are rustic cafes, bars and restaurants. As a matter of tradition I wandered down to my favorite; the Nha Trang Sailing Club. This place is a Nha Trang institution.

The Sailing Club consists of two large thatched areas open to the beach, the one is a bar and lounge with comfortable sofas which make you want to sit there all day, the other is a more formal restaurant complete with an amazing wine list and romantic lighting in the evening. The service here is as good as anywhere I’ve ever been. It wasn’t long before I had a delicious ‘sinh to’ or Vietnamese fruit smoothie in front of me; a tall glass of fresh apple and blueberry mixed with crushed ice and cream. Having missed lunch I also gave into temptation and ordered a light smoked turkey breast salad with crisp bits of crunchy bacon and blue cheese… it’s a hard life sometimes.

By about 16h30 the sun was low over the mountains and the light was nice, clear and warm. I took a stroll along the beachfront. A short walk provided a few standard stock images of white sand, deck chairs and blue water. A few minutes later my week and life almost came to a rather unplanned and abrupt end. A rather large American tourist had been parasailing over the bay, and the crew were struggling to land him on the beach. The speed boat had tried twice already and was now slowing for the third attempt. The service crew were out in force to catch the now nervous and cursing tourist, and bring him back to earth without too much of a thump. I’ve watched these same guys do this hundreds of times, and it was obvious that even they were getting worried… I mean who wants one hundred and twenty odd kilos of panicking Westerner to land on you?

Well, with the white sand, turquoise ocean, deep blue afternoon sky and the vibrant reds and whites of the parasail I just had to get a shot. I rushed in and tried to compose a portrait format picture with the parasail filling the top two thirds of the image. Blast! Wide angle lens… not the best thing for this kind of work. I moved in closer… click… click… One of the service crew I knew flashed me a rather sick smile which didn’t reach his eyes. The speedboat cut it’s engine and the parasail lost lift, he was coming down… click… click… hands reaching up to grab his legs… click… click… Suddenly the day grew dark. I was in shadow. He was coming down right on top of me! I scrambled backwards and almost tripped over myself in haste. The guy was down and on his feet, A perfect landing. It wouldn’t have been had I still been there… he landed on the exact spot where I had been standing!

Now everyone was smiles. The American was patting the crew on their backs and laughing. I casually turned and walked slowly away. I’d just made one of the oldest mistakes in the book. When viewing the world through a camera lens perspective changes. A wise photographer always keeps his other eye free to get a better view of reality. Well, no harm done. I thanked my lucky stars, however, that he hadn’t landed on me… I mean I would never have lived it down. To have survived combat, firefights, riots and all manner of extremely angry wildlife, only to be taken out by an obese American falling from the sky. My friends would die laughing if that’s the way my obituary read.

Further down the beach I found a nice spot. Set up my tripod, composed a picture; dark palm trees, sand and sea with Hon Tre island in the distance and a large sky just waiting to turn every pink, red and gold in the rainbow. This is the reality of most of what I do. Find the spot, get ready and wait for the light. Light is everything. If you are prepared to wait, to sit around for an hour or two doing nothing, to let nature do it’s thing in it’s own time you always get the shot you want. Only one problem this time. It never happened. The sky went from a beautiful pale blue to dull gray. Storm clouds had moved in over the mountains behind the city and the sun was gone for the day.

Oh well. That’s the way it goes. Nothing to worry about. I had another week to get my sunset shots. I packed up and contentedly wandered back up the beach. My favorite sofa at the Sailing Club was free, so I sat back, a smile on my face and ordered an ice cold tiger beer. Ahh… a soft chair, a balmy sea breeze, the sounds of quiet jazz and the distant crash of waves… and a good larger. Almost an hour later a summoned up the energy to move, only to walk a few minutes into town to a restaurant I’m rather fond of. So the day ended with another salad and a delicious sweet and succulent lobster. Seafood is so fresh and cheap in Nha Trang (along the whole coast, to be honest) this is not the extravagance it might seem to be. And I do love lobster. After that it was off to bed… I had plans to be up early the next morning and head out to the Hon Chong peninsular for some shots of sunrise over the sea.

I’m a morning person. Around 05h00 everyday my eyes pop open, I’m wide awake and can’t wait to get out of bed. Today was no exception. I rose and made my way through to the bathroom… halfway, I stopped… what was that noise? No! It can’t be…. yes it was… rain! I stood on my balcony beneath low gray clouds and stared at the colorless vision before me. After muttering a few choice words which would have done my Australian friend Peter proud, I headed back to the bathroom. I’m nothing if not persistent. Twenty minutes later I was crouched under a dripping beach umbrella waiting to see what the day turned up. Morning cloud is not uncommon along the coast, and by eight or so it’s normally been burnt off by the hot tropical sun. But no sunrise shots today. No problem, I have a whole week…

…My eyes blinked open, and almost closed again. Today was Monday, in five hours I’d be back on a plane and heading towards Ho Chi Minh City and home. In the last week there had not been one clear, cloudless sunrise or a single decent sunset. Sure, there had been a few hours of sun here and there that I’d been able to use, but the score was clearly: Nha Trang 10 - VinaPix 0. I had spent more time reading cheap paperback novels and drinking coffee than anything else.I had even been reduced to watching terrible cooking shows in Spanish on the hotels cable TV. I was fed up.

Lethargically I made my way to the balcony and parted the curtains to behold a dark, but cloudless dawn. Not today! My last day! What have I ever done to be tormented like this? No shower…forget the teeth… grab the camera… oh… don’t forget the tripod… where’s the bloody light meter? Go… go… go… By the time I reached Hon Chong the sun was already above the horizon, but it was a beautiful morning. The air was cool and clear, the sea a gorgeous translucent turquoise and the sky an infinite canopy of rich blues. Find my spot, Set up my tripod, bracket my shots… click…. click…click. Nice, now where’s my polarizer? Where’s my polarizer!!! (On the table in my hotel room where I’d left it after cleaning my gear last night). Took the shots, then I was racing a few kilometers up the coast as fast as my rented scooter would take me.

I captured most of the shots I wanted. Not as nice as I had hoped, and not as many as I needed, but usable. A weeks worth of work crammed into just under five hours. Not the first time I’ve had to do it, and probably not the last, but it was done and the images were safe on my compact flash. I made the airport just before final call, and as I sat on the plane and gazed out the window at the beautiful clear waters and endless, unspoilt white beaches of the Vietnamese coastline, I wished that I’d brushed my teeth.