Hey, there!
In my last entry, I told the story of my trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam last two weekends through a collection of photos, taken with my iPhone and processed with VSCOcam.
If you haven't read it yet, check it out here.
In this entry, I'll still be talking about my trip to HCMC, but in another light.
This time, it will circulate around a few street shots that I took on my trip.
Now, you may be wondering why I used the term "stripping down".
It might even be the very reason you're even reading this entry right now.
Quite suggestive, although the thought of me actually displaying public nudity is a thought better not thought.
What it actually means is that I only had very basic gear to utilize for my photography.
If you've been following my blog and my progress as a photographer, you should know that I own a small variety of DSLR gear, my favorite combination being my D7100 body and the 35mm f1.8 DX.
However, as in Bali, I let my brother use my prime lens for his photography which left me with the basic kit lens, the 18-105 VR as I had already sold my 18-200 VRII.
At first, I really didn't want to use it, at all.
It was fine at first since I had borrowed my friend's Nikon FE10 film camera to use, which I did use ... until it somehow broke right as I got to the hotel in HCMC.
My phone served me well but there was still this longing to shoot high resolution photos with a camera, so I sucked up my sulk and shot away with the D7100 + 18-105 VR.
Little did I know that it was really all I ever needed.
I took this photo on the first day in HCMC.
I like this photo as it portrays the reality of HCMC.
You have the street vendors, bikers, tourists, apartments, run-down buildings and a whole sense of what it would be like being in HCMC.
There is a great sense of dimension in the photo, which draws you way to the deep end and the colors in the forefront pop out of the mundane background scene, which (for me) makes the photo interesting.
This photo was taken on the second day in HCMC, when my family and I were on our way to see the water puppet show.
It was 3PM in the afternoon and the sun was shining beautifully.
I guess it's a norm for Vietnamese people to go to the park as early as 2-3PM.
We even saw people play tennis under the scorching hot sun around that time, too.
Anyway, I saw this man sitting alone on the bench, blissfully reading his book.
He looked relaxed and the greenery that surrounded him gave an extra natural look to the photo.
I love the composition in this photo, in that the subject isn't obvious, yet you know where to look and what to look out for.
The fact that there are sun rays hitting the man from his front side depicts an untold story, as if he is receiving enlightenment from knowledge.
There is a Malay saying, "ilmu cahaya kehidupan" or "knowledge is life's light".
This intertwines beautifully with the light shining on to the man who is buried deep in his reading.
We went on a cruise along the Mekong River on our third day in Vietnam.
There was a series of places we visited with our tour guide Nhu (if I'm not mistaken), who took us to taste natural honey, had us listen to traditional music and so on.
I took this photo on the "small boat to go to the big boat" as she had put it.
We got onto a small boat (sampan for those who know) that fit about five or six passengers and were shipped through a channel.
I love this shot as it shows who the boat drivers (what else am I supposed to call them?) really are; just people trying to make a living.
You can see the hot sun bathing this woman with all its heat and light, creating a dark shadow casting over her shaded face and also the shaded waters.
Even I was about well done once the boat trip was over.
Many men and women work all day pedalling these boats to receive occasional tips from tourists to survive.
In the background you can also see a group of other tourists on the same cruise and a few other empty boats waiting to be loaded.
As I used the 18-105 VR at its widest angle, here, there is a sense of closeness and a feeling of being right there in the scene.
The fact that we see her face makes this photo more personal, even without the eye contact.
I shot this photo on the night of the same day as the photo above.
I believe that this is one of my best street shots that I've taken, and I'm pretty darn glad I decided to check out the Ben Thanh Night Market that night.
We were out just strolling around the market, taking our last shots since it was also our last night in Vietnam.
I tried to take photos of the surroundings, all the bikers, the hectic traffic and the crowd at the market.
Of course, I did get the shots I wanted but none of them really spoke to me.
Until this fellow photographer entered the scene.
This is one of those photos that might not appeal to most people but I consider it to be a one in a million shot.
Look at the photo.
What do you see?
You see a man squatting down on the road, holding his camera, waiting for a shot.
His eyes focused, intent, calmly waiting for that money shot every photographer yearns.
Beside him is an official, regulating the market visitors and making sure of ... something.
Anyway.
Look further into the photo.
There are people at the stall, peeping into the cauldron to see if anything is worth buying.
Deeper into the scene there is a group of people talking to each other while sitting on their motorbikes, because the leather seats are way better than the gravel underneath their feet.
You have the zebra crossing on the ground acting as leading lines that create dimension and depth while the black and white processing gives a dramatic feel to the photo.
All these people are frozen in time, stagnant and unmoving.
A perfect pause.
But that's not just it.
In front of the official is a motorcycle that had just speedily passed him.
And onto the main road you see more bikes moving.
There is a father giving a piggyback to his daughter, walking along the main road, in a sort of dangerous manner.
The blur from the motion of these motorbikes embody motion and speed, actually making the photo seem alive with movement.
The tranquil scene we previously saw in the photo is broken by the imagery of fast vehicles and locomotion.
A perfect opposite from the stagnant space of the previous description of the photo.
A total turn-around.
A black to a white.
And all of this exists in the same photograph, which also seems to be perfectly divided in half by the official standing in the middle of the photograph with his signboard.
Two opposites happening at one time.
Moving and stopping.
Black and white.
The one in a million shot.
I thought it would be a good thing to do to take a skyline shot from my hotel room.
It's not the best of shots and there isn't a main focus of the photo.
The clutter in the middle of the photo throws me off and there aren't any interesting combinations of colors.
Even so, I thought it wouldn't hurt to try to get a sense of HCMC from another perspective.
Hence, this photo.
The mentality of some people that they need good gear to get good photos is often a deterrent to those who don't have supposedly "good" gear.
Not all of us who are into photography actually make a living out of our family portraits or vacation snapshots.
We like photography for the beauty of it but with more snobbish photographers lurking around on the internet and in real life, we tend to be daunted and have a negative mindset.
I wanted to overcome this mindset that I also had by just taking out my camera and began looking for good photos.
All these shots became possible once I set aside the material aspect of photography and focused more on the aesthetics.
I wanted to show myself and everyone else that even the basic tourist photography set-up can produce emotionally fulfilling and aesthetically pleasing photos.
All in all, I feel that whenever I seem to find myself in a position where I don't know where to go or what to do with my photography, I just strip down and go back to the basics.
In my last entry, I told the story of my trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam last two weekends through a collection of photos, taken with my iPhone and processed with VSCOcam.
If you haven't read it yet, check it out here.
In this entry, I'll still be talking about my trip to HCMC, but in another light.
This time, it will circulate around a few street shots that I took on my trip.
Now, you may be wondering why I used the term "stripping down".
It might even be the very reason you're even reading this entry right now.
Quite suggestive, although the thought of me actually displaying public nudity is a thought better not thought.
What it actually means is that I only had very basic gear to utilize for my photography.
If you've been following my blog and my progress as a photographer, you should know that I own a small variety of DSLR gear, my favorite combination being my D7100 body and the 35mm f1.8 DX.
However, as in Bali, I let my brother use my prime lens for his photography which left me with the basic kit lens, the 18-105 VR as I had already sold my 18-200 VRII.
At first, I really didn't want to use it, at all.
It was fine at first since I had borrowed my friend's Nikon FE10 film camera to use, which I did use ... until it somehow broke right as I got to the hotel in HCMC.
My phone served me well but there was still this longing to shoot high resolution photos with a camera, so I sucked up my sulk and shot away with the D7100 + 18-105 VR.
Little did I know that it was really all I ever needed.
The everyday.
I took this photo on the first day in HCMC.
I like this photo as it portrays the reality of HCMC.
You have the street vendors, bikers, tourists, apartments, run-down buildings and a whole sense of what it would be like being in HCMC.
There is a great sense of dimension in the photo, which draws you way to the deep end and the colors in the forefront pop out of the mundane background scene, which (for me) makes the photo interesting.
Knowledge is life's light.
This photo was taken on the second day in HCMC, when my family and I were on our way to see the water puppet show.
It was 3PM in the afternoon and the sun was shining beautifully.
I guess it's a norm for Vietnamese people to go to the park as early as 2-3PM.
We even saw people play tennis under the scorching hot sun around that time, too.
Anyway, I saw this man sitting alone on the bench, blissfully reading his book.
He looked relaxed and the greenery that surrounded him gave an extra natural look to the photo.
I love the composition in this photo, in that the subject isn't obvious, yet you know where to look and what to look out for.
The fact that there are sun rays hitting the man from his front side depicts an untold story, as if he is receiving enlightenment from knowledge.
There is a Malay saying, "ilmu cahaya kehidupan" or "knowledge is life's light".
This intertwines beautifully with the light shining on to the man who is buried deep in his reading.
Tip me.
We went on a cruise along the Mekong River on our third day in Vietnam.
There was a series of places we visited with our tour guide Nhu (if I'm not mistaken), who took us to taste natural honey, had us listen to traditional music and so on.
I took this photo on the "small boat to go to the big boat" as she had put it.
We got onto a small boat (sampan for those who know) that fit about five or six passengers and were shipped through a channel.
I love this shot as it shows who the boat drivers (what else am I supposed to call them?) really are; just people trying to make a living.
You can see the hot sun bathing this woman with all its heat and light, creating a dark shadow casting over her shaded face and also the shaded waters.
Even I was about well done once the boat trip was over.
Many men and women work all day pedalling these boats to receive occasional tips from tourists to survive.
In the background you can also see a group of other tourists on the same cruise and a few other empty boats waiting to be loaded.
As I used the 18-105 VR at its widest angle, here, there is a sense of closeness and a feeling of being right there in the scene.
The fact that we see her face makes this photo more personal, even without the eye contact.
One in a million.
I shot this photo on the night of the same day as the photo above.
I believe that this is one of my best street shots that I've taken, and I'm pretty darn glad I decided to check out the Ben Thanh Night Market that night.
We were out just strolling around the market, taking our last shots since it was also our last night in Vietnam.
I tried to take photos of the surroundings, all the bikers, the hectic traffic and the crowd at the market.
Of course, I did get the shots I wanted but none of them really spoke to me.
Until this fellow photographer entered the scene.
This is one of those photos that might not appeal to most people but I consider it to be a one in a million shot.
Look at the photo.
What do you see?
You see a man squatting down on the road, holding his camera, waiting for a shot.
His eyes focused, intent, calmly waiting for that money shot every photographer yearns.
Beside him is an official, regulating the market visitors and making sure of ... something.
Anyway.
Look further into the photo.
There are people at the stall, peeping into the cauldron to see if anything is worth buying.
Deeper into the scene there is a group of people talking to each other while sitting on their motorbikes, because the leather seats are way better than the gravel underneath their feet.
You have the zebra crossing on the ground acting as leading lines that create dimension and depth while the black and white processing gives a dramatic feel to the photo.
All these people are frozen in time, stagnant and unmoving.
A perfect pause.
But that's not just it.
In front of the official is a motorcycle that had just speedily passed him.
And onto the main road you see more bikes moving.
There is a father giving a piggyback to his daughter, walking along the main road, in a sort of dangerous manner.
The blur from the motion of these motorbikes embody motion and speed, actually making the photo seem alive with movement.
The tranquil scene we previously saw in the photo is broken by the imagery of fast vehicles and locomotion.
A perfect opposite from the stagnant space of the previous description of the photo.
A total turn-around.
A black to a white.
And all of this exists in the same photograph, which also seems to be perfectly divided in half by the official standing in the middle of the photograph with his signboard.
Two opposites happening at one time.
Moving and stopping.
Black and white.
The one in a million shot.
Skyline.
I thought it would be a good thing to do to take a skyline shot from my hotel room.
It's not the best of shots and there isn't a main focus of the photo.
The clutter in the middle of the photo throws me off and there aren't any interesting combinations of colors.
Even so, I thought it wouldn't hurt to try to get a sense of HCMC from another perspective.
Hence, this photo.
The mentality of some people that they need good gear to get good photos is often a deterrent to those who don't have supposedly "good" gear.
Not all of us who are into photography actually make a living out of our family portraits or vacation snapshots.
We like photography for the beauty of it but with more snobbish photographers lurking around on the internet and in real life, we tend to be daunted and have a negative mindset.
I wanted to overcome this mindset that I also had by just taking out my camera and began looking for good photos.
All these shots became possible once I set aside the material aspect of photography and focused more on the aesthetics.
I wanted to show myself and everyone else that even the basic tourist photography set-up can produce emotionally fulfilling and aesthetically pleasing photos.
All in all, I feel that whenever I seem to find myself in a position where I don't know where to go or what to do with my photography, I just strip down and go back to the basics.
"Because you never know where you'll go until you know where you come from"
Check out more street shots from Vietnam at my Flickr photostream here.
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