In Hoi An...Day Two

Photo © tewfic el-sawy

Having woken up really early in the hopes of catching the fishermen  hauling their catch did not make any difference, as there were no fishing boats which venture out to sea this morning....the level of water was unusually high so that may have played a part in it.

The main objectives of the rest of the day was for the participants start working on a personal photo essay, and learn the fundamentals of Soundslides. We had also booked a model for an afternoon photo shoot.

I initiated a photo essay which deals with an octogenarian and his wife who both own and operated coffee house, and hope to produce along the lines of the successful One In 8 Million series by the New York Times.

Photo © tewfic el-sawy

Finally, we hired Tien...a beautiful model from Hoi An, and spent the better of a late afternoon photographing her in the Old Quarter of Hoi An. The photo shoot lasted longer than anticipated as we sought to squeeze every little moment of light.

Photo © Maika Elan- All Rights Reserved

The Soundslides session in the afternoon was held in the bar of the Hoi An Hotel. Sound editing classes via Audacity will start in Hue.

In Hanoi....!!

 After a long flight on Malaysian Airlines (excellent service, brand new aircraft, etc), and connecting from Kuala Lumpur, I landed in Hanoi and whisked to the workshop's hotel Golden Silk Boutique Hotel in the midst of Old Hanoi.

Grabbing my street photography favorite, my scarf and my cell phone I chanced the notorious streets of the quarter. I have to say that despite my having not slept for quite a while, the photo opportunities in these streets are just staggering.

Having risked my life in the streets of Cairo, Delhi, and New York City...amongst many other large cities, I found that crossing the Hanoi streets and dodging the scooters not such a big deal (so far).

Most of the group participants are arriving in waves today, and the workshop officially starts tomorrow.

  

Vietnam Is Next....

In under 10 days, I'll be once again back in South East Asia...this time in Hanoi, to lead another of my photo trips Vietnam: North Of The 16th Parallel Photo Expedition/Workshop™!

The itinerary will only include the northern half of Vietnam...so the title of the photo expedition is based (almost) on The Seventeenth Parallel, which was the provisional military demarcation line between North and South Vietnam established by the Geneva Accords of 1954. It will include Hanoi, Hoi An, Hue, Halong Bay and naturally Sapa and Bac Ha.

On this itinerary, the participants will be emulating real-life photo assignments, and produce multimedia bodies of work ready for publishing. The workshop is devised for photographers interested in documentary photography, ethno-photography and multimedia, and for those ready to create visual projects from their inventory of photographs, and learn how to control story length, intent, pace, use of music and ambient sound, narration, field recordings and interviews.

The participants are from the United States, Canada, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Australia...a veritable multinational group.  I will be assisted by Maika Elan (Nguyen Thanh Hai), an award winning freelance photographer from Hanoi.

From a technical standpoint, I will be putting my two "rangefinders" (M9 and the Fuji X Pro-1) through their paces on this trip. Probably shooting in monochrome in the Sapa and Bac Ha, and color (with the Canon 5D Mark II) on the rest of the itinerary...with mostly wide angle lenses on all my cameras.

Everything is prepared and ready...the hotels, the visas, the internal flights...and even the local eateries seem to have been alerted of our arrival.