Jeff Cable's Blog

Sunday, November 27, 2022

Vietnam Photo Tour: The hard working people

One of the highlights of our photo tour to Vietnam was the photographing the people from this country. And let me tell you, these people work really hard!

After spending a couple of days on Ha Long Bay, we spent some time in the surrounding area. We came across these women working hard in their fields. You can see the green onions in the foreground and the banana trees in the background.

I was shooting with the Canon R6 with the Canon RF70-200mm lens set at ISO 160 (the cleanest ISO for these cameras) and at f/2.8 to create as much separation between my subject and the background. We watched these ladies watering this large field by hand, filling these water buckets at a nearby watering hole and then walking through the fields. They repeated this over and over. This would be strenuous for a younger person, and I was totally impressed by their strength.

This woman was harvesting the green onions, one bunch at a time.

After harvesting the scallions, she brought them to her husband and another woman who cleaned them and got them ready for sale.

I encouraged everyone to get down low so we could see their faces. For this shot, I decided to focus on the scallions instead of the face.

After photographing the people in the fields, we walked through one of the small towns. We came across this woman who was drying the rice in her courtyard. As I watched her tossing the rice in the air, I mentioned to the group that this would be a great time to slow the shutter of the camera to show the motion of the toss.

Speaking of hard working people, this is a photo I took of Nguyen (our awesome and hard working guide). I saw this curved stairway with the blue doors and thought it would make for a perfect background for portraits. I ended up taking portraits of all of our tour attendees here as well.

One of our guests, Bob P, even took a photo of me in this location.

It was fun to watch these men playing their game.

The people of Vietnam were very friendly and welcoming.

They had no problem with having their photos taken (unlike some other countries where it is discouraged).

This artisan was putting together what was to be an amazing ceramic wall mural.

Being that the country has only been open to visitors for 25 years, we were really impressed by the friendly and welcoming people. A couple of people have asked me how we were received, as Americans in Vietnam. I can tell you that there was absolutely no negative interactions. As our guide told us, the people of Vietnam look forward, not backward.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the people of Vietnam.

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Thursday, November 17, 2022

Vietnam Photo Tour: Two nights on Ha Long Bay

We were 5 days into our photo tour of Vietnam when we made our way to Ha Long Bay. This was a bucket list location for many of our guests (myself included) and it did not disappoint. We had spectacular weather and the constantly changing views were incredible.

We arrived at Ha Long Bay and were taken to our "junk". Let me tell you, this boat was anything but junk. It was awesome!

This was my room on the boat, which was super comfortable. I should have taken a photo of the bathroom, because it was also really nice, and had a porthole window in the shower. The window was always propped open, which gave me amazing views while showering. I love that!

As I mentioned, the weather was perfect with temperatures in the mid 80s and a beautiful breeze.

As the boat cruised along slowly through the bay, the photo opportunities of the limestone islands were endless.

I was sitting on the deck of the boat, relaxing and taking in the sites. I saw this ornate carving and thought it would make for a different view of the bay.

On our first night, we were treated to a beautiful sunset. All of us met on the upper deck and took photos. I was using my Canon R6 and the Canon RF24-105mm lens. This was a great chance for me to teach a lesson on exposure compensation and how to properly expose for the sun.

After this we had a lovely dinner on the deck of the boat.

After capturing the sunset, some of our guests were anxious to get up at 5am to capture the sunrise. I am not much of an early riser, but made sure to join them (albeit only for 20 minutes before going back to bed) to see what transpired.

The sun did not present itself like in the evening, but we loved the different layers of rock and color.

Here are some of the other boats that were docked for the evening.

The next day we cruised around for a while and then spent the afternoon on a small private beach. Honestly, I was not sure I would enjoy this, as I have a hard time sitting still for 5 hours. BUT, it turned out to be one of the best parts of the trip.

We swam in the water, took turns kayaking, ate an awesome lunch, and relaxed with this view.

I took my iPhone with me on the kayak and watched this family fishing from their boat.

Our second night treated us to yet another pretty sunset. This is definitely the right time of the year to visit Ha Long Bay. The weather is not stifling hot and the sunsets are better.

On our last day on the bay, we cruised along the different rock formations and just enjoyed the views.

We also visited a floating city.

This man was enjoying his Pho breakfast from his floating home.

I loved the colors of the fishing boats, in contrast to the rocks and greenery of the background.

This last shot was taken by one of our guests. Hans brought his new drone with him and asked me to help him with the setup. After some tweaks, we got him up and running (literally) and he captured this great view of the bay.

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Saturday, November 5, 2022

Vietnam Photo Tour: An early morning trip to the flower market

After our visit to Sapa (featured on the last blog post), we took an overnight train back to Hanoi. We arrived at the train station bright and early in the morning (5am) and headed directly to the flower market.

The flower market was bustling at this early hour, with all the local vendors purchasing their daily allotments.

And like most of the people in the city, the bulk of these merchant traveled on motorcycles or other small vehicles.

These people could transport a lot of flowers on a motorcycle!

The vendors were very friendly and had no problem with us taking their photos.

The colors and assortment were breathtaking.

I was using a Canon R5 with the Canon RF 70-200mm lens. This allowed me to take wide shots and come in close.

This was the first time that I have ever seen flowers boxed like this.

Everywhere we turned there was another booth bursting in colors.

Of all the booths at this market, and there were tons of them, this one was my favorite.

I was blown away by these beautiful arrangements. I asked how much one of these would cost, and was shocked that they were less than $20. I wish I could get this quality and price at home!

This woman was working endlessly to keep her booth refilled.

Amazing, right?

Even though we had spread out across this market, I had a bunch of our photo tour guests with me when photographing this booth. I taught them to shoot wide (like you saw before), but also to get in tight and shoot detail shots like this. I loved the water that was on the rose pedals, and wanted to highlight that in this photo. I took this photo at f/6.3 to make sure that there was selective focus, but not too selective.

This woman was excited to show us how she prepared her flowers. She even offered to let some of our guests give it a try.

We were watching the woman cutting her flowers when I looked up and saw this lady walking towards us with flowers in hand. I quickly reframed and shot this photo. Once again, this shows the amazing eye detection focus of the Canon R5.

It was 6:30am and the market was done for the day. We had finished shooting and we were getting ready to get back on our bus. As we stood on the side of the road, I realized that I should have tried motion panning the people as they left the market on their motorcycles. Luckily, there were still a couple of people still on their way out. I saw this man coming towards us and quickly raised the camera and panned at the exact same speed that he was traveling. Shooting at 1/25th of a second, I hoped I could nail this shot. I was very excited to get this motion pan in perfect focus and showing him with a bike full of colorful flowers. I have already made a large 24x36 print of this on my new Canon Pro-4100 printer. I am going to frame it and put it up at the house.

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