Hoi An Photo Workshop

 

This morning at 4.45am I got picked up at my hotel to go on a photo workshop trip to a local fishing village a few kilometers outside Hoi An. The tour guide was the Dutch Pieter Janssen who has lived in Vietnam for the past 8 years, working as a photographer. We were only 7 participants this morning, a really nice little group which meant we all got to have a little one-on-one time with Pieter so he could show us basic settings on our different cameras. On arrival at the "harbour" from which the boat to the fishing village departs, we sat down for a cup of coffee (hugely needed for some people who were struggling staying awake) and had a quick chat about basic photography settings like aperture, shutter speed, exposure composition, ISO and different pre-set settings. Afterwards it was time to go to the village where Pieter along the way told us more about settings, introduced basic concepts of lighting when photographing, talked to us about composition of photographs and probably the most interesting topic was that of portrait photography when travelling. He taught us some tricks on how to break the ice and start engaing with the locals to make "friends" in 15-20 seconds so that asking to take photos of them doesn't seem so strange or intimidating. It was very interesting as I usually don't like to ask and therefore either don't get any photos of the locals or only get photos with mini people in the distance. As we walked through amazing scenaries, river landscapes and the village itself we got the opportunity to try some of the camera settings he had told us about and try some of the tricks of engaging with the locals - It was a really, really great experience!! After breakfast in the village we went to see a fish sauce factory which was a very smelly experience but this gave us a chance to try low light photography. After this we went back to mainland where we jumped on bicycles and drive the 4km back to the old town of Hoi An. I am far from a good photographer yet but I am slowly improving and have by now completely moved away from the auto-settings (am a little proud haha) - I guess from here it is all about practice! Below are some of the photos I took during the trip, unfortunately I haven't had a chance to edit them (except the first one) so they come as they were shot :) Enjoy!!