Photographers get bored. Something new and shiny grabs our attention, foreign destinations dangle in front of us like carrots. Our cameras sit on shelves when we’re home and not on the road or in the studio. It happens when you live in places people love to shoot, too.….…Or, maybe its me and not photographers in general. But I’d guess this happens to a lot of people. You’ve seen something a million times, the shine isn’t as bright isn’t as bright as it used to be despite still being endlessly photogenic to so many others, it becomes the mundane. And, then you have a friend come in town and you get to see your city as a tourist all over again and all of a sudden its shiny again. This time, my good friend, Nev and his partner Jacky, dropped me a line that they were going to be in Saigon for a few days and they’d love to go out shooting like we did 8 years ago the last time he was in Saigon. So of course, I said yes and got excited to play tour guide and act like a tourist in my own town. Every time I step outside of my routine and go shoot in Saigon just for the pleasure of shooting, it’s always a good time. Seeing places with new eyes and all that, right?
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Tips and Tricks: Using Light to Simplify Compositions in Travel Photography
Living in Saigon, street scenes are usually busy, chaotic, and have a million things going on everywhere, all at the same time. It’s sensory overload sometimes even after a decade of living here. Shooting these scenes, it’s often easy to fall into the trap of trying to capture everything all in the same frame. We see so many interesting things and we snap away. But most of the time, the result is an image with about forty bajillion competing elements and the viewer is left wondering what the subject of the scene is. It’s like drinking out of a firehose. Not great. That said, there are many ways to avoid this, but one of my favourite ways is letting light guide my compositions, and my viewers’ eyes, to a clear subject. It’s a fun way to cut out some of the clutter and refine and focus your images when the scene is otherwise filled to the brim with everything….all at the same time.
Read MoreTravel Diary - Sri Lanka Part 1 : Columbo
I got a little shutter happy this past trip to Sri Lanka and ended up with far more images that I cared to sift through, but with that, I had the fun problem of trying to pare down the mountains of images into something that would be not akin to drinking out of a firehose. So, here we are. This first batch of images are all from Columbo and it’s not hard to understand how I got a bit overzealous and snapped away if you get to travel here. While most people hop in and out of Columbo, I absolutely love shooting here. The Columbo Fort station, Pettah Market, it’s a street photographer’s dream. Keep checking back for parts 2 and 3 where we head down to the beaches and to the old Dutch fort of Galle. On that note, we’ve extended our Sri Lanka photography tour next year and so sign up over here and join us!
Read MoreTravel Diary : Komodo and Nusa Penida, Indonesia
It’s been crazy busy lately, so I’ve had a backlog of images from some travel earlier this year and I’m just now able to get to these. Over the summer, Komodo was calling and I definitely answered. The small town of Labuan Bajo was a dusty little town the last time I was there and while its still a small town, it’s definitely not dusty anymore.
Read MoreTravel Diary: Coron, Philippines
It’s been over 8 years since I’ve been to Coron and I’d heard things had changed drastically since then, so as I headed back to the land of WW2 shipwrecks and incredible scenery, I wondered how this sleepy town of my memory had changed. While there’s actually a pub that serves craft beer, and there’s a bit more traffic, it still had much the same vibe as I remembered.
Read MoreTravel Diary: Siem Reap and the Temples of Angkor
Recently, I had the opportunity to hop over to Siem Reap to revisit the temples of Angkor for the first time in 9 years. My previous visit was my first to Cambodia and within 6 months of moving back to Southeast Asia. Needless to say, it was an incredible trip to an absolutely magical place. The temples of Angkor are out of a storybook to say the least. It was a lesson in very early rises to avoid the crowds and to see the temples at their very best. Moments of stillness as the sun peaked through the jungle burned some truly unforgettable memories into my mind. So, when the time came to take a weekender, I was quick to jump at the chance. I wondered how Siem Reap, the city just a few kilometers outside of the temple complex, had changed over the last decade. Had it fallen victim to overdevelopment and lost its charm? Had it survived the pandemic? Would the magic I experienced exploring the temples still be there years later? I had so many questions. One way to find out, right?
Read MoreTravel Diary: America Part 2 - El Paso, Texas
Growing up, stories of El Paso were often the topics of road trips as my father drove us from Georgia to Texas to visit my family in Dallas/Forth Worth. My father attended the University of Texas, El Paso for a time, so stories of Juarez, the desert, and the big skies of west Texas were spoken fondly of as I sat and listened in childlike awe of a place I had never seen until much later on in life. Perhaps some of the details of life in a border town during the 70’s were omitted, but I can just imagine the shenanigans he got into. I wish I could go back and speak to him as an adult (RIP Pops) and hear the more mature versions of these stories. Hell, maybe they’d be the same stories and I’ve had this idea of what it could have been like in my head and it’s nothing more than that. Maybe it was far wilder than I imagine it was. Either way, the lure of El Paso has been in my head from a very young age despite not ever really spending much time there.
Read MoreFishing Villages in Central Vietnam
Recently, I had the opportunity to hop up to central Vietnam and jump on the tail end of one of our Central Vietnam photo tours. It’s always lovely to get to this part of the country and with Quinn joining too, a stellar day of shooting with friends was guaranteed. As a guest, I got to explore this little area a bit more than when I’m teaching, so it was a chance to see this place with some new eyes and a different approach. Not to mention seeing friends whom I haven’t seen since covid reared its ugly head. Okay, enough prattling, here’s a selection of some of my favorite frames.
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