Vietnam Photo Tour: The people and rice fields of Sapa

The second stop on our Vietnam tour was a place called Sapa. Located in the Northwest region of Vietnam, this area is known for the rice terraces and high mountain terrain.   

We got up early in the morning and boarded our bus for the 5 hour long ride out of Hanoi. We left the big city and headed up into the mountains. We had great weather, with big puffy clouds. At one point, I asked our guide if we could pull over to get a photo of the scenery. This photo was taken about 2 hours from our final destination. So pretty!

As we climbed higher and higher into the mountains, we started seeing the rice terraces, built into the hillsides. Once again we stopped to get photos, this time capturing the workers harvesting the rice.

At one point along our drive, I saw this pattern of mountains draped in clouds and knew that this would make a dramatic photo. I took a monochromatic shot like this in Switzerland years ago, and it is still a favorite of mine.

On our first full day in the mountains of Sapa, we walked through a village of the nomadic tribes people called the Red Dao. I was carrying a Canon R5 and a Canon R6 camera with me, with the Canon RF 24-105mm lens and Canon RF 70-200mm lens.

This was a great chance to teach the group about taking portraits, thinking about the aperture of the camera, the lighting, the background...

This woman was working in a market that we visited. I loved everything about her look, and also loved that the artwork behind her made the perfect background.

We visited many different temples on our trip, and stopped at one that was right along the Chinese border. Normally this border would be bustling with energy with people and vehicles crossing between China and Vietnam. But all import, export and other crossings have been stopped due to the pandemic.  It was eery as there was absolutely nobody visible on the Chinese side. They have all been quarantined to their apartments for months!

Inside the temple, there was an elaborate prayer ceremony happening. We all watched and photographed this colorful event.

After exiting the temple, I looked up and I really like isolating the dragon on the roof against the nice blue skies we had that day.

Of all the photos that we took in Sapa, this is one of my favorites. And here is why... When we were driving to visit a market early in the morning, our bus was heading down a hill and I saw this scene with the rice terraces and one lone tree. I knew that this would be a great shot, and asked if we could stop. Our guide said that there was no good place to pull over on the way down, but that we would try to stop on our way back in the afternoon. I marked the spot in my mind, and made sure we stopped on the way back. Our guide said that in all his years guiding in this region, nobody else had seen this and asked to stop and photograph it. I love finding unique photos!

On our last day in Sapa, we had overcast weather. That worked perfectly for photographing waterfalls, so that is exactly what we did. We all grabbed our cameras and tripods and I taught the best way to capture water in motion. Most of the exposures from my Canon R5 (with the RF 24-105mm lens) were taken between half a second and 2 seconds, using a Tiffen circular polarizing filter. 

I even set up my tripod to take photos of each of our photo tour guests as they came down the steps. You can see some of them coming down behind me in this photo.

As we walked through another town, we came across this woman who made fabric in the area. You can see that her left hand has turned indigo from the dies they use.

Of course, we took lots of photos of the rice fields.

Great patterns and lines.

I saw this little boy peaking out from this doorway and had to get the shot. 

This last shot is yet another favorite from the trip. We were walking through another market and someone spotted this woman sitting low by some produce. She had SO much character in her face, we just had to photograph her. I took the photo really quickly, because I did not want her to pose for the shot. I wanted to get the real expression on her face. Thank goodness for the eye detection on the Canon R5 to lock in instantly. Looking at the lines on her face, it just makes me want to know more about her life. 

Next up, I will share with you our early morning visit to a local flower market.

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If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Cuba, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. 

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Vietnam Photo Tour: First stop - The city of Hanoi

I just returned home from our photo tour of Vietnam and Cambodia, and let me tell you, there is so much to photograph in these locations! This was the first time for me in these countries and I am excited to share the photos with you all.

We started our tour in the city of Hanoi, waking up to rainy weather. The great news is that the rain stopped almost at the exact time that we arrived at our first stop, the Tran Quoc Pagoda.

As you can see, the rain had stopped, but there were no blue skies to be had. 

The overcast skies did provide nice even light for close up photos, so I instructed the group to shoot more detail shots, isolating the buildings more than the sky. 

One of the things that I like to teach is to look for unique photos in each spot that we would visit. In this case, I found this small plant that was growing in the tiles of the roof. Using selective focus, I relied on the repeating pattern of the roof to draw your eye back to the plant.

I saw this lady praying at the pagoda, and took this photo as she prepared to put incense in front of an alter. 

As we exited the pagoda, I saw this area that would be perfect for a group shot. I took the photo, and then had our guide, Nguyen (3rd from the right), take another photo with me to the right and I combined the two images in Photoshop. 

As we drove through the city, we came upon this famous street where the train comes incredibly close to the homes and shops on the side of the tracks. If you look closely, you can see the yellow line showing the safe distance from the train. Recently there was a man killed here, so the police block the street (allowing only residents into the area) every time a train approaches.

While we waited for a train to approach, I decided to teach some motion panning. There are millions of motorcycles in Hanoi, so I wanted to capture that and tell a story with a photo. I took this shot at 1/10th of a second and panned my Canon R5 and Canon RF 24-105mm lens at the exact same speed as the bike.

As the train approached, the police pulled a barrier across the road and everyone scrambled to get a photo of the close proximity of the oncoming locomotive. In hindsight, I realized that the best shot would have been to lay the camera down on the street and use a wireless remote to fire the camera. Oh well...maybe next time.

As we cruised around the city,. I kept with the motion panning instruction, since everyone loves it so much. Myself included.

We went to the tomb of Ho Chi Minh. We did not go inside, but we did photograph the building and it's surroundings.

Next to the Ho Chi Minh is the Presidential Palace, where the president works but does not live. 

As I was walking back from the palace, I saw this woman posing for a photo and quickly grabbed this shot. I loved the way her red dress popped against the background.

As I was returning to our meeting location, some of us were lucky enough to see these soldiers preparing for a changing of the guard. 

One of our attendees was photographing this young lady, so I used this as another teaching opportunity, showing him how he could shoot through the flowers to make it a more interesting portrait.

That evening, before dinner, I took the group out for some night shots. I knew that, even with the cloudy weather, we were likely to still have deep blue skies during the "blue hour" in the evening. 

Our hotel was located 2 blocks from this lake, which made it an easy walk to our location.

It was a really long first day in the country, but a really great one too. Our next stop was to visit the area of Sapa, to see the beautiful rolling hills and rice fields. I will post those images on the next blog entry.

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If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Cuba, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. 

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Photographing fire dancers - The fun and the challenge!

A couple of weeks back I photographed a really fun event that culminated with a group of fire dancers putting on a show along the edge of a small lake. I was only told about the surprise about 30 minutes before the show, but this gave me just enough time to think about how I would capture this unique show. 

The first thing I did was to ask the fire dancers when the show would start. They said that they were ready to go, and as I watched the blue hour fading away, I encouraged them to start right on time. 

At first, I thought that I might be better off using a flash (with the power turned down), but after taking a couple of photos, I did not like the images I was capturing. They looked too "flashed". 

I figured that the best way to capture the fire dancers would be with a slow shutter speed, and since I had very little ambient light to work with, and I really didn't want to crank my ISO to some crazy level, my shutter speed was slow regardless. I started with my Canon R3 (with the RF15-35mm lens) at ISO 800 and a shutter speed of 1/10th of a second. 

I shot a lot of images knowing that any large movement by them or me would result in a poor image. 

I tried to take the most photos when the dancer's face was still, so that I could get their face and eyes sharp, while having motion in the fire. As it continued to get darker, I increased my ISO to 3200, and still only had a shutter speed of 1/20th sec.

This is one of my favorite images, because I love the reaction of the kids reaching out towards the fire. The smiles and excitement on their faces is priceless.

Once again, I was waiting for the dancer to stay still while twirling the fire.

Because of the slow shutter speed, I was getting really nice motion in the fire.

I should mention that each of these photos have been retouched in Photoshop. I did not do too much to them, but decreased the highlights (so that the fire was not too white), and increased the shadows (so that you can see the people and blue sky better).

The closer the dancer and flames were to me, the more light I had, therefore getting a slightly faster shutter speed. This photo was taken at 1/50th of a second with the same ISO 3200 and f/2.8 settings. 

Just like when I photograph sports, I look for the peak of action and the best reactions. 

This woman was putting the flames in her mouth and the intensity on the kid's faces says it all.

This guy was spinning the flames and I saw that his body was subtly lit by the flames. I waited for him to hold the one flame in front of him to rim light his face and fired away.

Towards the end of their performance, they came out and danced in a group. I debated my choice of lenses before the show started, but having the RF15-35mm wide angle zoom lens proved to be the perfect choice for this show.

As the show was wrapping up, I did get up and move closer to the dancers.

I also moved from my original spot (I was sitting right in front with the crowd) to get shots of the dancers and the party guests, who were thoroughly enjoying the performance. 

The show started at 7:40pm, and as you can see, by the time this photo was taken at 8pm, the blue hour was over and I only had darkness in the background. 

Assuming that I already had some nice photos captured, I decided to experiment and lower the ISO to 1250, shooting some images at 1/2 sec to get even more motion blur. The face of the dancer is not as clear, but I do like the movement of the fire.

The dancers came out for an encore, so I quickly switched back to ISO 3200 to capture the last images.

Half way through the show, this guy did a quick movement of the baton and the flames exploded from each end. The kids went wild.  I did not get great shots of that. But he told me that he was going to do it again. This time I was ready for it, and bam! 

The show ended and I went over and showed the dancers some of the images on the back of the Canon R3. They loved them. I was happy to share these images with them as well.

As I always say, I love capturing new things!

Thanks to everyone at Pyrophoria Fire Troupe for the entertainment and challenge!

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Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
__________________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Cuba, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. 

__________________________________________________________________________