Saigon Punk Chronicles : Frank Turner, 7uppercuts & Papa Lam

Another chapter in the Chronicles and what a chapter it was. The fine folks at Loud Minority put together an absolute banger of a show. Frank Turner boarded a plane in London, got off of the plane, and played a show a few hours later… If you didn’t know this, you’d have been well impressed by his performance and the energy in the room. Knowing this, it’s ever more impressive… What an absolute professional road dog.

Callum from 7uppercuts started the night off with Skeleton Goode as his backing band with his solo stuff under the name Papa Lam. Really looking forward to see how this progresses, fun stuff in kind of the same vein as Turner. 7uppercuts then got on stage and ripped it up setting up for an absolute barn burner from Frank Turner. The fact that a guy can get up on stage with an acoustic guitar and have people lose their minds like I was watching Bad Brains is quite honestly mind boggling. Can’t give this man enough credit. He played one crowd favourite after the next and ended things with Skeleton Goode coming back on stage as his backing band. As I watched from the balcony, it felt like I had stepped back in time and was watching one of the great punk shows of my youth. This type of energy in a room isn’t the norm so being able to see it in Saigon was pretty special.

For the photographers, these were shot on my Sony kit with a 28mm prime lens that I’ve not used in ages. Normally I’ll use a 18mm for these type of shows and get up close and personal, but opted for a bit of a different feel for this. Allowed for a nice little happy medium in this venue.

Papa Lam

7uppercuts

Tips and Tricks: Technical Perfection is Overrated.

Coffee factories are full of steam, dust, and typically…. DARKNESS. When the light pours in from the windows, you get this incredible atmosphere, but then you’re stuck with such a huge variance in light values that if you expose for your highlights, everything else is nearly black, but if you expose for your shadows, say hello to a millIon blown highlights. Usually when I’m teaching photography, I often encourage students to pick one and shoot to that limitation. Don’t try and satisfy both gods, because you’ll end up pissing them both off and end up with something pleasing neither. So what do you do? I’m not really in the camp of appeasing any gods, so I guess it’s a bit of dancing with the devil and doing whatever gets a compelling image or story. This is often tricky when it comes to photographers as we’re so obsessed with everything being technically “perfect,” that we get lost in the forest for the trees. Moment is always better than technical perfection, so never mind the noise, crank that iso, blow a few highlights and forget about everything you’ve been taught thats supposed to make a good photo. If it works, its not wrong, right?

Of course there are some little tricks you can do, but ultimately in these types of situations, something’s gotta give. It’s just up to you what you can let slide. All of these images are shot with the little fuji x100v. Not exactly known for its ability to handle high dynamic range. But this isn’t a pristine commercial shoot, the subject matter is a bit rough around the edges, so having a bit of technical imperfection isn’t a deal breaker for me. Medium matches the subject? Maybe I’m making excuses for poorly executed images. But that’s what I’m telling myself, and I’m certainly not losing any sleep over it. These were all from a recent trip from Buon Me Thuot down through Dak Nong back to Saigon with Etienne Bossot from the Pics of Asia fam. Let me know your thoughts and make sure to head over to Etienne’s site to read his thoughts on shooting in challenging environments.

Travel Diary: Hoi An

This past week, I headed up to Quang Nam to meet up with some photographer homies for a motorbike trip up into the mountains and up the Ho Chi Minh Road for a few days. I expected epic photo ops and to come back with a memory card filled with bangers. Mother nature had other ideas and it was overcast and drizzled off and on the entire time so my camera stayed in my bag more often than not. So, instead of focusing on photography, the same weather that made for pretty forgettable photos was absolutely perfect for riding. That said, when we got back to Hoi An, I was itching to find some light to make some photos. While the light wasn’t the best that afternoon, I headed out on a sunset tour with Etienne. If you’re not familiar with Pics of Asia, it’s time to get acquainted. I’m a little biased in that Etienne is a long time friend, but his tours are incredible. Everywhere from Hoi An to Bangladesh, Pics of Asia runs photography tours based on ethical travel photography and breaking bread with locals. Shameless plug, I’m co-leading a workshop in Sri Lanka this January and we may have one spot left. hint hint.. It’s going to be incredible.

So, off we went into the fields and into the villages on the outskirts of Hoi An. First stop was a little spot making My Quang noodles. My Quang is one of my favourite Vietnamese noodle dishes and is a speciality of Quang Nam. Thus the name. We then headed out into the neighbouring fields as the workers finished up their day and were heading home as the sun quickly dipped towards the horizon. It wasn’t exactly one of those show stopping golden hours, but there was nice drama in the skies and sometimes, thats enough. The drama in those skies turned out to be an absolute downpour around 7pm, so when I met a friend of mine for dinner in the Old Town, it was largely empty after the rain stopped. Right after a rain is one of my favourite times to shoot, so I happily snapped away. Reflections, mood, atmosphere…. love it..

Saigon Punk Chronicles : Aftershock

This past Sunday I headed out to a show and to see some old friends I hadn’t caught up with in a while. The bill consisted of HSA, Song Am, Katto Katto, District 105, Cut Lon, and Luan Quan Collective. A mixed bag of genres and I wasn’t familiar with all the bands, but I knew there’d be some thrashy goodness with Cut Lon and of course the homies in D105. I didn’t get images of everyone, but I decided to shoot this a bit differently than what I’ve been shooting this project and brought my studio lights in much like I did back in the day in the States. It’s going to take some tweaking, but here we are and it’s nice to get a different look. I’m not going to divide the images up into bands this time around but rather an overall vibe of the show.

On a side note, I tried to mosh last night and father time quickly put me in my place and now I’m limping around like geriatric. Lesson learned. Stay in my lane. Press the shutter. Stay out of the way of the kids. This is a game for the youngins’. Until next time, here are the images from last night.

The Week in Photos: Volume 5

We’ve wrapped up a few commercial projects and had a few days before preproduction started on a couple of others, so I wanted to go out and shoot some images for myself a few days this week. Technically some of these are from the week before, so this is the week(ish) in photos. I’ll get better about the scheduling of this whole thing, but it’s been hectic lately so this will have to do until I get it together on the schedule.

Looking at what I’ve shot recently, I’ve noticed how I’ve gradually been shooting more and more at night. I think this probably has to do with a smaller camera that I can take with me on social outings and snap some images along the way, but also I think I’ve just become more and more intrigued with how pools of light and their contrasting shadow makes for such dramatic moody images. If you’ve been to Saigon, you’ll know how frenetic it is and how there’s never any shortage of energy when you’re walking around the city. Similarly, its easy to have very busy compositions and I’m a minimalist at heart. Using shadows to hide distractions and isolate my subjects is always going to be my first approach. So here’s the last week and a half in photos.

The Week in Photos: Volume 4..... a bit delayed

I started this whole series of The Week in Photos to keep the creative juices flowing and partially because I have this little camera that I can take everywhere with me and it’s just so fun to shoot with. I debated on whether or not to mix in travel images and maybe some of my actual work, but that seems a little messy and my sense of order wouldn’t let me go down that road. So maybe I should rename this “The week in photos when I’m not working or on the road or have a million other obligations”……probably not. But in any event, I had these photos from right before I headed out on the road and forgot that they were even on the hard drive until I started importing some random images from this past week. These are from around a month ago. So here’s The Week in Photos. From last month.

Recent Work: Editorial Furniture Photography for Spazio Bressan

Something must be in the water. In the last few shoots, we’ve been given a metric ton of creative control and while that’s incredible, to whom much is given, much is expected. We were tapped to create some editorial style images for furniture designers Spazio Bressan and after just a short chat, it was pretty clear we were going to have some fun with this one. Hard light, shadows as compositional elements, graphic…all the good stuff. Immediately excited, I ran off to start creating mood boards. After using some new AI tools to create the moodboards, we had a clear direction and execution on the day of the shoot was a breeze.

We wanted to make super clean images and really lean into shadows as compositional elements to create mood and direction in the visuals, so we used hard light to make those shadows CRISP. It was an absolute pleasure and so much fun being able to put something different out into the world. Thanks to the fantastic team at Spazio Bressan for the trust and I cannot wait to see how the projects evolve in the future!

The Week in Photos: Vol.3 - Rainy Season's Arrival

It looks like rainy season has decided to make an entrance. Cue thunderstorms, unexpected downpours, and slight inconveniences in travel - read ridiculous traffic. While most lament the rain, photographically I’m loving it. The light right after a storm, drama in the skies, reflections… its a new season and it’s nice to have something different to photograph. While I don’t have the seasonal changes like I did in my upbringing, I love having the demarkation of time through different weather. I’ll take what I can get. No waxing on poetically this week, just the images of the week. Complete with the obligatory reflection shots, and they ain’t stopping any time soon…so get used to it until the rains cease in around 6 months. There are some randoms from the day to day sprinkled in as well for good measure.

Most of these were taken on the Fuji x100v, but I snuck in a couple from my Sony kit too. Can you tell which ones they are? Put your guesses in the comments! Also, everything edited in Capture One or is straight out of the camera with most of the Fuji shots.