Jeff Cable's Blog

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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Friday, October 28, 2022

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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