Portraits from Hanoi

Photography

Another view of the portraits from Hanoi. This is one is and old guy. Shooting portraits is not difficult:

  1. Point your big guns
  2. Start shooting
  3. Pray that the person look at you

I was using D200 during my trip to Hanoi, thus it was at a crop factor of 1.5 which means that the longest range (200mm) is equivalent to 300mm on full frame. Which means that I am even further from the subject! Amazing.

Looking at my old photos, apart from putting a new round of flags on my old photos, but I also started to process the photo in a different way. If you ask me how I process photo, well – its different now and then. In fact, how I process really dependent on how I feel about the photo at that point of time. The same photo may look differently.

So here is a screenshot of the before and after

Below is another processing technique. In fact, this was taken from my old flickr side. I think it looks ok but it does not accentuate the character in the photo.

Old processing technique

Any – that’s all folks!

Hanoi – School Girls

Photography

After the trip to Sapa – I was obviously lazy and decided to not go Halong Bay and roam around Hanoi. The street shoot at that time wasn’t really fun. Not being a “street photographer” then, I was roaming around with a 70-200 and started shooting every damn thing that moved! Seriously.

Nowadays, when I do street shoot, the longest I carry is 35mm. Most of the time would be either 24mm or 28mm. Some instances, I will carry 21mm, but of course that is far more difficult to compose as it is very wide. In addition to that, my Leica will need an external viewfinder in order to compose 21mm. 24mm wasn’t so bad as I can just judge thru the original view finder.

Photo above, was shot from along the street. From the exif data, it was shot on 200mm, means that I was quite a distance away. Surprised to see the school girl can see me and looked at my camera. Not the best way to shoot to be honest!

Ha Mong Tribe

Photography

During Crossing Bridges, we spent a lot of time in the North, all the way to Sapa nearing the Chinese border. In fact, this is probably the northest point of Vietnam.

In the north, the tribe that is famous there is Ha Mong tribe. I presume its native to that part of Vietnam. The following photo shows a lady from Ha Mong tribe which is carrying stuffs up from village to the Sapa town. I presume that the basket must be quite heavy!

The photo below shows an old lady that’s eating some snacks. I cannot remember if those snacks was something that we gave her.

The photo below is another lady that I saw.

It was really a great trip and eye opener for me. I should revisit Sapa at some point of time. I wonder how much developed is the town.

Bun Dau Shop – Fermented Shrimp Noodle

Photography

Another throwback weekend – where I am looking at my crossing bridges photo from back in 2006!

The photo above is a shot from the road side where I took a photo of Bun Dau shop, which means (based on google as fermented shrimp noodle!).

I never tried this dish, but what intrigues me is that I managed to take this photo despite not having an eye for street photography. In fact, during this period, I am more interested in shooting portraits and as what I’ve mentioned earlier, my trip was some what wasted because I am just focused on shooting headshots, rather than shooting a “story-like” photo.

This photo is probably one my first few photo that I start indulge in street photography. Yes – I’ve been doing a lot of street shoots but to be honest, I am not good at it until Eddie (friend from Singapore) said that I need to have a story. Which is then how I started thinking on how I should be shooting street.

Things has changed, and now I am a far better photographer (and picky one too!).In fact there are times when I go out for a walk and not shoot anything (lol). But I guess, that’s part and parcel of street shoot.