{"id":142583,"date":"2019-05-09T19:25:03","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T02:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/?p=142583"},"modified":"2019-05-09T19:25:11","modified_gmt":"2019-05-10T02:25:11","slug":"the-alley-night-street-photography-in-ho-chi-minh-city-vietnam-by-wouter-vanhees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/09\/the-alley-night-street-photography-in-ho-chi-minh-city-vietnam-by-wouter-vanhees\/","title":{"rendered":"The Alley: Night Street Photography in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam by Wouter Vanhees"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Wouter Vanhees<\/a>: Although I live in Hanoi, I travel to Ho Chi Minh City regularly for work. At night, when my meetings and work stuff is finished, I like to explore the inner city to do street photography with my Ricoh GR2. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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During one of these walks in early 2018, I stumbled upon a small street with the usual abundance of street food restaurants, small houses with open front doors for everyone to catch a glimpse inside and simple grocery shops. Even though there are thousands of similar streets and alleys all over the city, this particular one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s location instantly struck me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Passing through a narrow lane off of one of the main roads, fenced off to secure some surrounding construction sites, I immediately noticed that the alley is sandwiched between two huge real estate projects. These could be seen as symbols of Vietnam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent economic development and increasing prosperity, its luxury apartments, upscale dining options and shopping malls catering to Ho Chi Minh City\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s upcoming middle-class. Yet in the middle of all of this, there is this small, local alley, which seems to be worlds away from all the modernity surrounding it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When I discovered the alley that evening, I started making photos, and I found myself unable to stop. I went back there several times over a period of about 9 months, and this edited series is the result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lessons learned \/ tips:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
  1. Whenever\/wherever you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re traveling: always take a camera with you! You never know what you might encounter.<\/li>
  2. For me the Ricoh GR2<\/a> is perfect for this kind of situation: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s small enough not to get in the way, yet it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s good enough to get excellent results. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nimble size also doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t shout \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcPHOTOGRAPHER!!\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, so people were always very relaxed around it. If anything, they were interested in what I was trying to shoot.<\/li>
  3. I found this alley by sheer coincidence, having decided to walk into the opposite direction of where I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d usually go, not knowing where I would end up or what I would find. So: explore different paths<\/strong>. Worst thing that can happen is coming home without any interesting photos (although that chance is probably very slim)<\/li>
  4. When you think you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re onto something: persevere<\/strong>. Explore a subject, location, situation,\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 from different angles and over a longer period of time. I was lucky enough to have the chance to go back to this place several times with intervals of weeks or sometimes even months. This gave me the opportunity to get familiar with the location, while I was still able to look at it with a fresh pair of eyes during each visit.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
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    Follow Wouter’s blog here ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Wouter Vanhees: Although I live in Hanoi, I travel to Ho Chi Minh City regularly for work. At night, when my meetings and work stuff is finished, I like to explore the inner city to do street photography with my Ricoh GR2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":142585,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-posts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Wouter-Alley-4.jpg?fit=3591%2C2379&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142590,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142583\/revisions\/142590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}