So the worst kept secret on the planet is that this year kinda….sucked! Of course it started out with good intentions, with work aplenty and travels plans abounding, and then, well we all know what happened! I guess to a certain extent, I have to count my blessings that I spent the year in Vietnam, but watching the situations around the world, especially in my own country, haven’t exactly decreased my stress levels.
So, here’s a little look back on the images I was able to make this year. Not as many came from far flung destinations as I hoped, but there were a few trips in store, as well as some work to keep a roof in our bellies and food over our head. Come along with me on a look back on a year we’d maybe like to forget sometime soon!
The first assignment of the year had my traveling all the way to Brazil to photography a factory for of my long time clients. Being a long way to go, I wanted to break up the trip, so a few days stop in Istanbul was in order. The next thought had me bringing the wifey along, and even after a few kerfuffles with tickets and visas that extracted a bit more from my bank account than intended, I’m glad we did, as it was our only trip for the year! Here’s a few of my favorite images and check out many more in the blog posts detailing the trip here and here.
Once I was back on the ground in Vietnam, it was the infamous Tet Lunar New Year here. After a few days recovering from the jet lag, and a few more spent with family in the countryside, it was time to get back to work! The next task was to wrap up a project I had started shooting the year before with the historic Caravelle Hotel. They had just finished revamping all the interiors some 60 years after their original inception, and of course they needed new photographs of everything. The teams there were a joy to work with, and the early winter light and lack of rain was good to us, so we knocked out everything in 3 days and then I spent the next few days face down in Photoshop making the images even prettier!
Switching gears from commercial to editorial work, as I’m fairly accustomed to, brought about the next project. I was contacted by a lady named Margot in the US who needed a photographer on the ground here in Vietnam to create some images for a very special project. After her father was lost in the early days of the Vietnam War, before she really knew him at all, in adulthood, she wondered about the children of Vietnamese soldiers who were lost in the war as well, and they connections they might share. She started the Two Sides Project to delve deeper into this part of our history.
Some years prior her and a few others with similar backgrounds visited Vietnam and made a film that’s very much worth watching. She was now visiting again, to work on more stories and meet others that lived on both sides of the gun. The people in these images were either pro Communist fighters, or the children of. Through a lot of stories, smiles and tears, it’s pretty apparent that a reconciliation was reached after all these years.
We were hoping to publish some of these stories in April to coincide with the end of the war, but obviously, the pandemic seemed to control most of the media cycles at this time, so hopefully the time will be right again to tell these stories in more depth.
Flipping back to the commercial side of things, I was commissioned to make some lifestyle images for the newly opened Movenpick Phu Quoc resort. I was partnering with my wife’s company, Saigoneer, and to seal the deal I guess, she offered to be a model, along with our 20 month old little girl. A good deal for me I thought, I got to spend time with my family while I worked, and made some lovely images of them as well!
By the time mid-March hit, we were all but officially locked down, that would come in just another week or so. We were able to move about a bit, albiet carefully and with masks on. I was contacted by a lovely French couple who had just been married, but as the situations were, weren’t able to have a big group or a photographer at their wedding. So, their idea was to don the dress and tuxedo again, and make some images in the hotel where they were married a few weeks prior. Over the course of a few hours, we shot in the lobby and a bit in their room and made some nice images! You can see a few more in the blog post here.
By April, we’d been experiencing the world about 23 hours a day by looking out our windows. Luckily, it’s a nice view of the river and the city from our 25th floor perch, but still with as much as we all love each other, we were starting to go just a bit batty!
Once day it struck me, I have everything we need to keep mildly entertained for a short time at least. A portable photography studio, plenty of lighting gear, and some paints and we had one messy and exciting Saturday (well, for about 45 minutes plus 2 hours of clean up!)
Other ideas had me experimenting with some black and white photography with my model wifey, and even a self-assigned task to dress each other up in whatever you find around the house. So these images exist now!
By early May, it seemed Vietnam had done a damn good job of controlling things, and restrictions lifted and flights reopened. So, what else can a photographer whos been caged up inside for 3 months do? Call his friends, get on a flight and go on a road trip!
Somehow we managed to convince our better halves that it was fine to travel again, so I set out with my good friend and colleague Etienne from Pics Of Asia Photography Tours, with a few other guys as well on a trip from Central Vietnam up to the mountains and caves of Phong Nha. The trip is documented here in more detail, so check it out!
So I know I was about the last photographer to finally buy a drone in 2020, but I finally did. And it was great for a few months, until it decided it didn’t want to live with me anymore! Long story short, pilot error, and it now lives in the top of a mountain in Ha Giang. But no worries, another shall be mine soon enough.
But while I had it, it sure was fun making photos and videos with it. Check out a few snaps and a video I put together from it’s first venture out in Vung Tau.
In late September I was sent to Dak Lak Province in the Central Highlands coffee region on assignment by an agency in London called Arete Stories The client was Costa Foundation, of coffee shop chain fame, and I was to document a number of kindergartens they have helped build in the region to support the children of the coffee farmers they work with. The idea is that when their young children have a good and safe school to attend and learn at all day, the parents are able to work in the fields more, thus earning more income and are better able to support their families. Our visit happened to coincide with Tet Trung Thu, or the Harvest Festival in Vietnam, so each school put on a quite a big performance, and the kids were all beaming with excitement, so that was good noisy fun!
After another sort of flare up of the virus at the end of summer, by fall things were ok again, so of course, I was dying to hit the road again! I had an idea all year to visit northern Vietnam in the fall, as it had been a few years. Up until the last minute, I wasn’t sure if we were going to make it happen, but…yes! This time, it was to be an amazing week of riding motorbikes through the mountains of northern Vietnam with my good friend Lee Starnes. There’s a blog post here and here with the rundowns of what we got up to.
Luckily, the year finished off with a bit of work, and the flavor it all seemed to come in was corporate. I was commissioned to do some personal business portraits for an Australian guy who was new in town, and then a portrait assignment for a business magazine in London. And finally just yesterday, I did the first of two parts of a corporate shoot for an investment firm in HCMC and Hanoi.
So those are the last and first shoots of the old year and the new year, and here’s to hoping 2021 has a lot more and better things in store for us!
