What do I shoot with?

December 10, 2022

I have always been susceptible to GAS (gear acquisition syndrome), meaning that I’m easily seduced by the latest developments in camera technology. It’s been an expensive, ultimately wasteful pursuit- constantly blowing more and more cash to gain incremental or just plain imagined improvements. I have shot with Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Pentax, Ricoh and Panasonic Lumix. The reality is they all have their strengths, and they all suffer various foibles. There is NO such thing as a perfect camera. So, with that said- here’s what I presently own-

My beloved Fujifilm XT-1
My pocket rocket, the Ricoh GRIII
The large and in-charge Panasonic Lumix S1.
Note that none of these cameras are particularly nimble sports and wildlife cameras- the autofocus on all of them is pretty sluggish compared to say, Canons and Sonys. There’s a range of weights and sizes here. Camera geeks will also notice that none of my cameras has a high-resolution sensor. Here’s why: only very few people need all the pixels they are buying anyways. I still think that 16mp is optimal for an APS-C sensor, and 24-27mp is plenty for a full-frame camera. I can blow these up to decent sized prints without any issues. The added advantage of a smaller pixel count is better low light performance. I do a lot of night street stuff, and having the ability, especially on the Lumix S1, to get usable images at ISO6400 is fantastic. Finally, two practical considerations- high pixel counts means massive files, which means I would need to buy extra storage, and the actual cost of high resolution versions of cameras is generally 30% or more greater. I’m presently very happy with what I’m using.
The Ricoh is my go-to street shooter- excellent image quality from a 24mp APS-C sensor- it’s really not much bigger than a cigarette packet, and it doesn’t draw attention from people in the street.
The Fuji only has a 16mp sensor, but the files that come out of that camera are just so nice to work with- my retoucher friend, Jose says he thinks there’s something special about working at the pixel level with files from that camera. It has some kind of secret sauce.
The S1 is a heavy full-frame beast, and it is as strong as an ox. I can’t confidently take it out in all weather, which is good as I live in Saigon where it rains for 7-8 months/year. I especially like the evolution of the L-mount Alliance for lenses (Leica/Panasonic/Sigma), which has produced some of the best glass ever made. I have the Sigma 24-70 f2.8, which is an excellent allrounder, and the exceptional 85mm/f1.4, my go-to portrait lens. Its close to optical perfection, and for the money, kills all competitors from first-party brands. Sigma have been kicking goals with its Art series lenses, and the 85mm is no exception.
So, that’s about it. I have a range of cameras, each of which serves a particular purpose, and none of which I’m in any hurry to replace… well, not until the next case of GAS takes hold ;)

Dalat Rendezvous No. 6

August 20, 2022

I had my first photographic show in Dalat last weekend. Mr. Quang Troc invited me to participate, also as the first Westerner to be a part of it. The art space is very special- lots of lush greenery, and all the prints were done on weatherproof corflute and displayed outside. It was a shared exhibition with five other super-talented guys with a wide range of experience and different ages. I liked all the other works, and just wished I’d had more Vietnamese language to be able to engage with the other photographers more deeply. I especially liked the works of Mr. Huynh Than Huy - a mix of vivid color and the business of recycling, and Mr. Dinh Cong Tam- the lives of Khmer Buddhist monks in Soc Trang province in the Mekong delta. I’m more attracted to photojournalistic styles, I guess. The two young guys in the show are proper art photographers, too. Very original work.

It started to rain just before the opening ceremony, which was a bit disappointing, and the crowds were definitely lower than last year due to this. Nonetheless, it was still great fun, and very grateful to Mr. Quang for the invitation to participate.

Full catalogue is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IvZs1fG3sAMFrP1oKURnDRKHniNZH-lL/view

Ricoh GRIII Review

November 10, 2020 in Camera Review

Review: Ricoh GR III (see here for original PetaPixel published article: https://petapixel.com/2020/11/14/ricoh-gr-iii-a-real-world-review-from-vietnam/. Whilst I am certainly guilty of becoming a fanboy of whichever new camera I own, I have never written a camera review, so this will be my first. I‘ve had my GRIII for only three weeks, so I will leave this post open and update it over time.

Introduction

Ricoh is not a brand uppermost in the minds of most photographers on the market for a new mirrorless camera. Sony, Fuji and Panasonic seem to have dominated market visibility, if not the actual market, for high-end mirrorless cameras systems for the past five or so years, with late-comers Canikon gaining traction with their most recent offerings. Ricoh is probably more famous for having acquired the Pentax brand (via Hoya) in 2011, than it is for any particular camera. But, at least in one niche, Ricoh has always been there. Before Fujifilm reinvented retro chic in its X-series digital cameras. Before old-school film cameras and vinyl record collections became the sine qua non of hipster cred, the Ricoh GR camera was there, and has been there since the first GR compact 35mm film camera hit the streets in 1996.

The GR series has a storied history, especially among street photographers, and the GR III is the latest digital iteration of the camera.

The GR III is an APS-C sensor compact camera, weighing in at a mere 257g. Out front it has a fixed 18.5 mm (28mm full-frame equivalent) f/2.8 lens with a built-in 2-stop ND filter. It features 3-axis in-body image stabilisation (IBIS), rated at four stops. Out back is a 3” 1.04 million dot rear panel, but no EVF. It has hybrid phase and contrast detect autofocus, and outputs 14 bit, 24-meganickle files in DNG RAW format, making it instantly compatible with the Adobe Photoshop suite of processing software. As with the Fujifilm system, straight out of camera (SOOC) jpegs are very appealing, owing to the built-in colour and B&W profiles- more on that later. The camera has been out for over a year now, so if you like the images here and the philosophy behind the design, but still need to know all the tech-specs, there are tons of great reviews on the interweb. I’ll provide links to the better ones below. This post will be more of a real-world account of my personal experience shooting with this little pocket rocket. If you’re not up for the full read, you can cut to THE CHASE at the end for a summary.

First impressions (only marginally more boring than watching an unboxing video).

The box and its contents are small and lightweight. Inside, there’s the camera, a truly tiny battery, USB-3 (C-type) charging cable (but no charger), tiny wrist strap, and the usual paperwork, including the nowadays redundant paper version of the operation manual. I was a bit lucky. I live in Vietnam, where Ricoh makes this camera, and a local distributor had a promotional package which was hard to resist- three extra batteries, a genuine Ricoh leather case, a silicone rubber ‘camdom’, Sandisk 32gb card, and an aftermarket charger. All for the same price as the camera alone. If you live in VN, check the link below to see if that deal is still afloat.

LP Store (Vietnam) Ricoh GR III deal

Even though I had done two months of research before deciding to drop the kablinki for the camera, I was still surprised by how small it is. However, this tiny size doesn’t get in the way of the shooting experience- quite the opposite, actually. All the controls, with the exception of the button for movie mode (no one will ever use this- explanation later), are within easy reach of my right hand and are intelligently spaced so that I don’t end up smushing two or three buttons at the same time. The front rubberised grip is shallow, but substantial enough to maintain decent security in the right hand, and most buttons are within the reach of the right thumb. I always wear a wrist strap just in case I get clumsy. Although the camera feels sturdy due to its magnesium alloy construction, it wouldn’t fare well if dropped onto a hard surface.

Nice screen, but no eyehole

The rear screen is sharp and bright enough in most situations and is touch activated- a feature which can be switched off. The touch functionality supports menu scrolling, swiping through the images for review, and can be used to select focus points. The latest firmware version (v. 1.41) allows for touch-screen activation of both focus and shutter release. In other words, you point the lens at the subject, compose the image on the screen and simply touch where you want the focus point to be and you’ve captured the image. You will never accidentally activate the touch screen with your nose when you use the electronic viewfinder (EVF) because, well, because there isn’t one. For this reason, I leave the touch functionality switched on at all times.

Battery life

In order to keep the camera small and yet still be able to accommodate the IBIS, some battery capacity was sacrificed. These DB-110 batteries are tiny- only 1100mAh. CIPA rates them at 200 shots. Good luck with that. If you chimp a lot like me, you’ll be lucky to get 150 shots per charge. They are cheap though, and KingMa make an after-market version along with a kit with two batteries and a charger. They work fine for me and I always go out with at least two fully charged batteries.

Shooting experience.

This camera is a joy to use, but you must first understand its raison d’etre, and accept its limitations.

The GR III is not a sports shooter

The autofocus and burst rate are not up to speed for that. Also, shooting sports action with a 28mm equivalent lens? Nah.

Minimum safe distancing

The old saying that long lenses are for beauty, whereas wide-angle lenses are for drama and emotion is pretty much correct. So, can the GR III do portraits? Absolutely it can, but you must be careful with the composition - the 28mm lens will distort perspective in ways that can be unflattering to your subjects. If for example, you get too close to a face, the part closest the lens- typically the nose - will look disproportionately large. This distortion can be used for dramatic effect, for example by placing a subject in the corner of the composition. Careful composition is required if distortion of the facial features or the subject’s body are to be avoided. Note that this distortion is something to consider when shooting with any wide angle lens- it’s not a flaw in the Ricoh lens, which has excellent performance specs. This thoughtful composition thing is a learning curve and part of why photography is such fun.

Not a hybrid shooter.

Most YouTube reviewers quite rightly don’t bother discussing the (lack of) video capability of the GR III. The video specs top out at 60 frames/sec, 1080p. The moving images are quite soft, and the continuous autofocus is just ok. I haven’t even tried shooting video with it, as my Samsung S10e is a better video solution.

So what is this camera for? Who is it for?

In keeping with the heritage, the digital age GR cameras are essentially marketed by Ricoh as being street shooters. This is essentially true, but it sells the camera short. A better description would include something more about its great versatility.

Environmental portraits

This camera is capable of beautiful environmental portraits, in which some context is included within the frame around the subject. For me as a story-teller, this means it’s a fantastic documentary camera. Within the 28mm frame, I can make grammatically complete visual ‘sentences’ with each image containing a subject, verb and object. In the past, the photojournalist’s go-to focal length was generally 35mm. Modern photojournalism embraces a wider field of view, typically provided by a 24mm focal length, as this is the wide end of most professional standard zooms on the market. The GR III’s 28mm FOV is an excellent sweet spot in between 24mm and 35mm.

(Sidebar: composing on the rear panel)

Here’s an interesting perspective on rear panel verses viewfinder composing from a friend and semi-retired pro photographer, Robert Morehead. Robert told me that since switching out all his pro dSLR gear for point and shoot cameras a few years ago, he has found himself paying closer attention to the composition on the rear panel and little to no time in cropping his images in post. I have found this to be true for my own work, also. I usually crop to a 5 x 7 frame in Lightroom, but with the GR III, I generally find myself just leaving the image dimensions as shot. Interesting observation.

Built environment and landscape

The GR III is also great for architectural photography, with the caveat being that if you want to fill the frame with a complete building or other structure, you might need to zoom out by using your feet. This is not always possible, of course. Lately I have been taking pics of the beautiful old French colonial villas in my adopted city, Da Lat in Vietnam. These old gems are usually situated in the middle of large blocks of land, so this isn’t much of an issue. I can usually frame the villa and surrounding gardens from the sidewalk.

ISO 200, f/6.3, 1/400sec B&W cross-process preset in LRCC

The GR III can also capture landscapes, and 28mm is well suited to this task. NiSi makes a set of filters for the GR III for people who like to use slow shutter speeds in order to blur waterfalls and flowing rivers. I haven’t tried them yet, but they are receiving good reviews. Links here:

Nisi Master Series filters for Ricoh GR III: B&H

How to use Nisi filters

Mini macro monster.

I was surprised and delighted to discover that the GR is a brilliant little macro shooter. While out taking pics of the local French villas one day, I discovered a colourful orb-weaver spider waiting in ambush in the centre of its web. I switched into macro mode and snapped away at different apertures to try and capture its fine details.

ISO 200 f/5, 1/400sec. 100% crop from a different image to above.

Once I had settled on f/5.0 in order to get most of the critter in focus, the results were excellent. I used the touch-screen autofocus method for this. You compose the image, then touch the screen where you want to focus, half-press the shutter to acquire this point, then push all the way. It worked well, but if you have the luxury of being able to use a tripod in the field, you could also try the manual focus setting. There is focus assist peaking and also a magnification setting which lets you focus with more precision. Focus is then acquired by using the scroll wheel on the back of the camera. It’s slow, requiring many turns to pull focus, but it’s accurate.

One nifty feature of manual focus is that it can be instantly overriden by using the screen-touch method mentioned above. No need to switch out of manual mode to do this. I had a play with manually focusing in macro mode at home, and really didn’t see much difference in accuracy compared to using the autofocus method.

Food focus

I have been doing a little food photography for a client lately, and whilst I haven’t used the GR professionally for this yet, I can see its potential in this regard. In macro mode, you can get close enough to the subject food item to create a dreamy out-of-focus background and draw the eye of the viewer to the culinary creation on the plate.

IBIS

The GR III is the first in the GR series to sport 3-axis in-body image stabilisation. This is rated by Ricoh at 4-stops. In practice, i’ve found I can get sharp images of stationary objects at shutter speeds down to about 1/8sec. If I limit my intake of strong Vietnamese coffee, I can achieve sharpness whilst hand-holding at 1/4 sec. Quite impressive for a tiny point and shoot.

f8 and be there

The design ethos of the Ricoh GR III centres on its fitness for street photography. There are several features that make this so.

Snap focus is principal amongst them. Snap focus allows you to pre-set a focusing distance to which the camera automatically ‘snaps’ at a full shutter button press. It can also be set up to work at the touch of the rear screen. This means the camera will not waste time acquiring focus in the normal way. It will immediately jump to the focal distance you set - 1m, 1.5m, 2m, 2.5m, 5m or infinity. It is essentially zone-focusing by another name. If you choose, say 1.5m and f8, the instant you squeeze the shutter, everything from about 1m to 5m will be in acceptably sharp focus. Here’s the caveat, though- this is only true for moving subjects if you have chosen a fast enough minimum shutter speed to freeze their motion. Typically for people doing stuff on the street, 1/200sec is enough for this. For faster moving subjects like vehicles, experiment with faster shutter speeds, or follow the subject and shoot as you pan.

Ninja stealth

The understated minimalist design of the camera doesn’t attract attention. Its diminutive form factor, black body and near silent leaf shutter mean you will more likely be seen as a gormless tourist who’s strayed from the beaten path, rather than as a serious photographer.

One-handedness

The camera is easily operated on the street with just the right hand. If you’ve set up the snap focusing distance and an aperture to allow for a deep enough focal plane, you can shoot with one hand and drink a beer with the other - local laws permitting. There’s a depth of field scale on the left side of the screen which shows you the approximate range of acceptably sharp focus.

Image Quality

This is a summary of my findings after a short time with the GRIII. For a deeper dive into this aspect, have a look at DP Review here.

This camera is capable of producing gorgeous, highly detailed images. The 24mp sensor allows for some cropping latitude, and there is also a 35mm in-camera crop setting, which gives you a 35mm field of view at the expense of a third of the megapixels in the file.

The lens and sensor are perfectly matched (a bit like the Fujifilm X100 series with its 23mm f/2.0 lens, and the Leica Q with its 28mm f/1.7). This means there are no compromises regarding sharpness. The lens is easily capable of resolving the full 24mp of the sensor. Wide open at f/2.8 images are centre sharp but a little soft in the corners, as is normal for most lenses, but stopping down to just f/4 gives edge to edge sharpness. Nice!

In low light, the camera performs about on par with its competition. That is to say, at ISOs up to about 1600, files are not noticeably noisy, but by 3200, the noise begins to impact on the fine details. My maximum auto ISO is set to 6400, although in most situations I’d prefer to be shooting at 3200 or lower. Of course, all this depends a lot on your end purpose, too. High ISO noise is more visible on larger screens and in large prints.

In any case, the images that come from this camera will likely be subjected to post-processing with settings which add noise, or at least some grainy ‘character’ to the images. The very nature of the subject material this camera was designed to shoot invites the use of ‘grungy’ or old-school film presets in editing. I’m a big fan of using these myself because some of them just look so good. That’s not to say the RAW files don’t look great with the default settings of Adobe Colour and conservative sharpening when they open up in Lightroom. It’s rather that high contrast, high structure black and whites simply ‘look right’ for the street. To see what I mean, check out the work of famous Japanese street shooter, Daido Moriyama.

(Sidebar: Wabi-sabi)

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese aesthetic which celebrates the beauty found in imperfection. Daido Moriyama’s images exemplify this aesthetic. His subjects are rarely in sharp focus, the images are so contrasty that skies are blown out to white and shadows are crushed into blackened oblivion. All of which should amount to an epic photographic fail. But not so. His pictures are compelling, challenging, full of drama and intrigue.

For a great overview of the philosophy of wabi-sabi, take a look at Jamie Windsor’s YouTube episode on his favourite photographer, Nan Goldin.

Even without applying presets the images out of this camera have a certain ‘look’ to them. They seem ‘gritty’ to me, even at the base ISO of 100, and I really dig this look. I have heard pundits guessing the reason for this being the pixel pitch, the baked-in sharpening of the DNG files, or something else. I’m not a tech geek, so I’ll leave it to engineering types to work out. Suffice to say, the GR images seem to have an edginess to them that actually compliments the street or documentary vibe of scenes shot with the camera.

For those who want to exploit the GR legend fully, there’s an in-camera jpeg ‘Image Control’ setting called ‘Positive Film’ - it’s slightly old school, with strongish contrast and desaturated colours. Greens tend more toward blue, reds are a bit magenta-ish. This preset even has its own Flickr page as a mark of the reverence that fanboys have for it. Adobe LR and Adobe RAW don’t yet offer any of the Ricoh presets. This is a shame, because the B&W ones are also excellent. But fear not, there is an inexpensive work around.

Samuel Lintaro Hopf, YouTuber and Ricoh GR aficionado has produced a set of GR Positive Film emulation presets for Adobe Lightroom and Camera Raw. His package also includes some excellent versions of Fujifilm’s beloved Acros black and white film. They can be purchased here.

Whilst I’m giving him free plugs, Samuel's YouTube Channel is an excellent resource for GR fanboys and girls.

In summary, I am really enjoying the images from this camera, as well as the whole experience of using it. It’s portability, paired with stellar image quality and versatility have made it my new everyday carry. I love it!

THE CHASE

What’s great

Discreet design - perfect for not attracting the ire of people you are shooting

Silence is golden- you can shoot people at a sombre indoor event without being ticked off for noisy shutter sounds.

It’s tiny- this camera won’t be left at home because it’s too big to carry out and about- it fits in your hoodie pocket.

Image quality- the 24mp sensor and lens together are capable of taking incredibly crisp and detailed images.

Ricoh’s Positive Film jpeg preset, and the B&W preset options- the Positive Film preset has almost as big a cult following as the camera itself. Old school-ish, without looking like a cheap Instagram filter.

Macro- a great bonus feature of the camera is its ability to get close and capture details of flowers, critters, products or food. Yay!

Haptics- despite it being so small, the GR’s control layout is easily navigable with ‘normal’ sized hands. It’s designed for one-handed operation on the street.

Snap focus- this is a great feature for street, or for any situation where you need to respond quickly to a changing scene. This feature also partly negates the first item on the ‘What sucks’ list.

3-axis IBIS- excellent for hand-holding to shoot static subjects in low light.

Three customisable user modes- Although I have set two of them up, I find that the quick menu is so easy to use, that I don’t bother unlocking the mode dial to change mode settings in real-world situations.

Finally, It’s just such great fun to shoot with! I have never owned a camera before that just makes me want to take pictures as much as the GR III.

What sucks (a bit)

Autofocus- compared to much of its competition, and considering that the latest GR has phase-detect as well as contrast detect focusing, it is not the snappiest camera to lock on to subjects. This is especially true in the case of low light and/or when using the macro feature, when it can hunt for focus quite a bit. Also I found that using ‘Pinpoint Focus’ hunts more in low light than either ‘Auto Focus or ‘Select Autofocus’. ‘Select AF’ is my go-to setting.

Low light, high ISO performance- It’s not a full frame Sony, so don’t expect clean images into the ISO stratosphere. I find the GR high ISO performance on par with my Fujifilm X-T4.. Don’t forget there are flash options (see below), and also the IBIS, which can reduce the required shutter speed, and allow you to shoot at lower ISO values.

Price- It’s not cheap, especially considering its limited video specs.

Unremarkable video- Meh. There are other options for this- the best of them are from Fujifilm, Sony and Panasonic They won’t fit in your pocket, though.

Battery life- so buy some extras, Cheap Charlie!

No weather sealing- I live in a place where it rains for five months of the year, so this does suck.

THE BOTTOM LINE

If you shoot street, documentary, or just want a genuinely pocketable travel camera with excellent image quality, and if you can afford the admission price, just buy one!

Extra stuff

Here are some links to things of interest around the GR III:

Ricoh hosts a GR community webpage featuring many ‘GRists’ - well-known users of the GR series:

Ricoh GRist blogsite

Most standard speedlight systems are unwieldy on the tiny GR III. Here are two that have been well-reviewed and play well with the form factor and portability:

(manual only): Lightpix Labs Q20 II flash

(TTL metering): Pentax AF201FG flashgun

Most YouTube photography channels focus on gear reviews. This is great and provides useful information for prospective buyers of new equipment, but here are two guys whose focus is more on the philosophy of taking photographs. I have found both to be informative and inspiring.

Jamie Windsor

Sean Tucker

Dalat industry

October 06, 2020

Da Lat, in the central highlands of Vietnam is famous for its central lake, the silly Valley of Love and Crazy House attractions, as well as for its fresh air and cool mountain weather. Having lived here now for a month, it has also become apparent that DaLat is far from being a natural wonderland. The main industry is horticulture, and DaLat is Vietnam’s non-tropical flower growing capital. As a result, nearly every valley in the ranges surrounding the city has been denuded of its natural vegetation and encapsulated in a shroud of greenhouse plastic. Setting aside the obvious eyesore that this represents, it also means that the night sky is completely obliterated by the sodium orange horticultural lamps which illuminate the atmosphere and accelerate the growth of the flowers. This is disappointing for anyone wanting to enjoy a clear starry sky, but it’s not the only environmental vandalism prevalent in Dalat. Developers have also been busy destroying the built environment. One local told me that around 2,000 of the original French colonial houses which once adorned the European style avenues have been demolished within the past 10 years. Presumably this is to make way for more architectural crimes such as shitty 4- and 5-star hotels.

All that said, there are still some treasures to be found here. and one doesn’t need to head out too far from downtown before encountering the transition to more natural scenery. I’ll keep posting here on the city and its surrounds over coming weeks. I hope to one day do a complete photographic survey of the remaining colonial buildings, too. There is a curated Facebook page which is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to learn more about the old French buildings- Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DalatDLO/

Ok, so maybe I was a little harsh in those early posts. Here’s what I think now- yes, all of what I said still applies, but the benefits of living in that otherwise beautiful part of the world far outweigh the problems I see in the town. I loved living there and will definitely return to stay sometime in the future. probably not in Dalat, per se, but certainly within Lam Dong province.

Hipstamatic shots from Dalat

September 24, 2020

Recently, I updated my iPhone (only to an old 6s, but quite a leap forward from my iPhone 4). I’m having great fun reconnecting with the joy that is hipstamatic. This city is known for its natural beauty, but sadly, a lot of it has been consumed by greenhouse agriculture. Nearly all of the valleys in and around the city have been cleared of vegetation to make way for plastic greenhouses, which at night are lit by sodium-coloured lamps in order to force the year-round flowering of the yellow Chysanthemum morifolium - the ubiquitous floral tribute offered on the ancestor altars of Vietnamese houses. Anyone hoping for a glimpse of the stars at night will be disappointed too, as a result of the orange glow polluting the night sky.

There are plenty of beautiful spots remaining though, but one must travel out of town a ways to see them. I will be updating this post - and adding more posts- as I get to explore the city in more detail over the coming months. These Hipstamatic images are taken in and around Da Lat, and capture something of the mood of this lovely part of the world.

Da Lat graffiti

September 14, 2020

Da Lat Graffiti - we stumbled across a lakeside housing development which had gone tits-up in the gorgeous city of Da Lat. I'm still waiting to hear more about the details, but clearly someone bit off more than they could chew, and there are perhaps as many as 40 large villas all at the same stage of incompletion. Local and maybe some Saigon artists have festooned these joints in fine style.

gun-toting tot

September 13, 2020

WARNING! Residents of Phu Nhuan District, Saigon are advised to stay behind locked doors until further notice. Seen earlier this evening terrorizing small businesses on Phan Xich Long St., this 2-year old gun-toting tot patrolled the street, demanding free fruit smoothies and a nappy change. Shit-scared pedestrians described her as "unhinged", "cute", "adorable" and "a bit stinky". Local SWAT teams are en route as I post. Take care out there!

TV, that great mesmerist.

September 12, 2020

another old post, but still relevant…

war and memory

September 10, 2020

(Originally written in 2010)

Some time around midnight on Saturday September 24th 1977, several small bands of Khmer Rouge guerillas crossed the frontier along Tay Ninh province, Vietnam in a coordinated series of raids. They cut a swathe of prodigious violence through the border villages, accounting for between 400-600 lives before being repelled by the Vietnamese army several days later.

In tiny Xa Mat commune, four kilometres from the border, the bodies of 11 young schoolteachers were discovered in and around a disused well that was located at the rear of their bamboo and thatch living quarters. Those in the well had died whilst hiding there after the KR threw in a concussion grenade, causing the well to collapse. Four bodies found outside the well had gunshot wounds and at least one of the females had been mutilated in some way before she was shot. Over the last few years, I have interviewed several of the victims’ family members and friends in order to construct a detailed picture of what happened on that night.

The site of the massacre has been preserved and in 1999 a cenotaph was erected in memory of the victims. On my previous visit to the site three years prior to this one, I found it dilapidated and in need of maintenance. On 11 September 2010 the government completed a major renovation of the site and held an opening ceremony to which all the living relatives were invited.

Pictured at her graduation is Phạm Thị Thanh Nga (deceased) and, on the anniversary of the massacre are her younger sister, Phạm Thị Anh Đào (57) and older brother, Phạm Thanh Cùng (64). Their father discovered Nga’s body lying on top of the well on the Monday following the attacks.

At age nine, Nga assumed the role of caring for her siblings following the mother’s untimely death from illness. There were seven children in the family at that time. Nga continued her schooling and was a conscientious student, excelling in the sciences. Her father encouraged her to study medicine. She sat and failed the entrance exam twice, but achieved grades sufficient to pursue a science course at university in Saigon. Her father and other family members were less enthusiastic about this and her youngest aunt, herself a teacher, suggested she should instead attend a teaching course in Tay Ninh. Nga was into her second year of study when the 1975 ‘liberation’ of Saigon occurred, marking the end of the Vietnamese American War.

She was sent to work at the school in Xa Mat in 1976 and earned little in her first year as a graduate teacher. In 1977, she began to receive a subsistence wage (around 45VND), which was supplemented with a 1kg rice ration, 100g of MSG and a couple of kilos of sugar.

On the night of the attacks, rockets and gunfire from the border were heard in distant Tay Ninh City and the family began to worry for Nga as she would usually have returned home by mid afternoon (Nga rode her pushbike 40km to and from the border hamlet every week). The family was unaware that the teachers had been enjoined to remain at the schoolhouse into the evening to make sweet porridge and paper lanterns for the children to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. On the Sunday morning, the father went to the office of education and learned of the fate of his eldest daughter. He wasn’t permitted to retrieve her body until the next day due to continued occupation of the area by the KR. He eventually rode a coal-fired steam cart to the site along with education department officials and other family members. Along the way he encountered appalling carnage “…there were bodies everywhere- children were torn in half!”

Nga’s father cleaned and prepared her body for burial at the place where she was killed. She was wrapped in a nylon shroud when the family received her on the evening of Monday 26th. The siblings implored their father to let them see her, but he refused. Despite saying that he was glad she had not been killed in the same gruesome way as the children he’d seen on the road, he firmly resisted their pleadings. “They shot and killed her, and I cleaned and wrapped up her body- that’s all you need to know’, he said.

Nga was 25 when she was killed.

Burmese Bus trip from Hell.

September 08, 2020

Ok, so here's the bus trip from hell. We started off in Bagan and got a minibus to Magway in Burma's central west en route to Sittwe on the Bay of Bengal. That was four hours of discomfort, but nothing compared to what followed.

In Magway, Western tourists are a rare species and the locals reacted accordingly- laughing at us, trying to be helpful, touting for our business, etc. We had to wait there for a further three hours before our 'luxury sleeper bus' arrived, also presumably from Magway. So we ate curries and drank the marvelous local stout (8.1%) called Black Shield.

Then the shit started.

We'd no sooner gotten on the bus and started moving when the driver suddenly stopped and he and a small group of other blokes crawled underneath it and emerged with some kind of sealed, cylindrical engine part. They then dissected it and replaced the O-ring on the disc of a large plunger. By the look of the part, and the red auto-transmission fluid which drained from it, I guessed either it was the power-steering or the brake booster unit. It was concerning, but I wasn't freaking out... not yet.

By the time they'd got it back together and re-installed, we were running three hours late.

About an hour and a half up the road, this time at a remote restaurant/beer station in the dead of night, we stopped again. Again the driver and his crew removed the same part and proceeded to operate. My mate, Paul and I couldn't sleep for anxiety and frustration, so we watched the repair this time, and drank cups of the crappy '3-in-one' coffee powder mixed with lukewarm water. Another two hours elapsed before the booster unit was reinstalled.

Then one of the 'mechanics' proceeded to wrap himself around the rear wheels and bark instructions at the driver to activate and release the brakes. So now we knew. We’d definitely had a problem with the braking system- they were bleeding the brakes- in the dark. Great.

The driver then did a quick series of brake tests, backward and forward, jamming the brakes on and throwing the passengers around inside. If they weren't awake, they sure were now.

Finally, at about 2.30am, we were back on the road. Paul and I couldn't sleep for fear for our lives. And, with good reason. Within 30 minutes we were crossing a mountain range that divides central Burma from its west coast. The single-lane road was treacherous; steep climbs were followed by precipitous drops into mulitiple hair-pin bends. At numerous points, the road was either still under construction or under repair. Evidence of landslides from the previous wet season was abundant. Two vehicles couldn't pass, so one had to give way to the other, or back up out of the way. It took six hours to emerge from the tallest ridges onto a relatively gentler series of foothills, and a further five hours to descend to the flatlands on the other side of the range. I remember then thinking that the bus driver must be totally fucking exhausted.

Aside from a mildly amusing war being waged between Paul and the boxes of goods badly stacked up at the rear of the bus which kept falling on his head, we thought we'd survived the worst of it. I lapsed into a light sleep. Then suddenly the unmistakeable sound of a road accident and the bus halted abruptly. I was fully awake now. people were yelling and standing up, a little panic ensued as passengers realized that the front door had been stoved in by the impact, and the only egress was through the side windows.

We threw our luggage out first to locals who had quickly gathered at the site, then clumsily alighted on the ground, six feet below.

Only then did it it become clear what had happened. We had collided with another bus coming from the opposite direction, and then had veered to the right, slamming into the corner of a bridge guardrail. Had it not been there, we would have then plunged five meters into a trickling creek.

Local villagers swarmed the scene and helped everyone disembark from both buses. Miraculously, there were no injuries- on either bus. I started taking photos and thought originally the other bus was at fault. But then I saw the skid marks from the other bus. There were none from ours. It appears as though our bus driver had either A: fallen asleep at the wheel, or B: had hit the brakes, which then failed, possibly due to the original fault which he'd tried to fix for a total of five hours.

The pictures in the documentary and street section tell the story, anyways.

The drama hadn't quite finished yet. The buses weren't going anywhere, and had blocked the road. The cops eventually arrived and forbade anyone from leaving the 'crime scene'. We had to present our passports before we were allowed to make arrangemnets to continue our journey. We had thoughts of staying the night in the village. Eventually, we were released and hired a 3-wheeled tuk-tuk to Mrauk U, the site of an ancient city and the next nearest town. Mrauk U was 40km down the road, but about 20 minutes into the journey, we passed another accident. Two villagers on a motorbike had collided with another tuk-tuk. Both were face down on the roadside, the man was motionless, unconscious or perhaps dead, the woman with her longyi hoiked up over her waist, exposing her bare backside was at least breathing. I wanted to cover her up- there was no dignity here.

We sped past, and I felt guilt at not demanding that the driver stop and let us render assistance. There were others already at the scene, and what could I do anyways. Haaaiiizz. It made me reflect on the trivial nature of existence, the cheapness of life, and all of that. Haaaizzz.

We got into Mrauk U at dusk and did the usual running around looking for a suitable guesthouse. We found a primitive $10/night affair, but it could have been The Park Hyatt. It felt so good to be horizontal, alive, and asleep.

The next day we took a private riverboat from Mrauk U to Sittwe, where we discovered that we had risked our lives to visit a nondescript backwater, with nothing to commend it as a tourist destination. But it was the most relaxed we'd felt on the whole journey.

hem_project

August 30, 2020

Hemmed in

Fujilove Magazine submission October 2020

With the exception of a few months in New Zealand, I have spent the best part of the last decade living and working in Saigon, Vietnam. It’s a city of nominally nine million people, but unofficial estimates that include expats and foreign contract workers run to 13 million.

When I first took up residence here, I lived in a narrow cul de sac in the suburb of Phú Nhuận, one of the most densely populated parts of the city due in large part to its myriad alleyways or hẻm, in Vietnamese. At first, even finding my way home at night was a challenge, so I used a mnemonic from my drumming days to help. RLRLRR. Go past the language centre on the corner, then take the first right, then left, then right… you get the idea.

These ‘hems’ (there’s no plural ‘s’ in Vietnamese) form labyrinths of self-limiting living and mixed purpose spaces throughout Saigon. For this FujiLove story, I revisit life in the hems of Saigon, focusing principally on four localities: Phú Nhuận District, Phạm Ngũ Lão, Bùi Viện and Trần Hưng Đạo Streets( District 1), and the notorious former slum area around Tôn Đản Street in District 4.

On the right-hand side of the first hem on the way to my former home is a sliver of a dwelling which literally looks as if it were glued onto the front of a much bigger house. I came to know the occupants quite well. Recently I visited them for the first time in years and was invited in to take some pictures. They are a nice family – a husband, wife and their two kids, whose certificates of academic achievement are still proudly displayed on the rear wall. I’m not certain of the precise dimensions of the building, but you can get some idea from the picture here. At one end is the kitchen and cooking area - it’s possibly 1.2 metres in width. This tapers to about 600mm at the opposite end, where there is a ladder leading up to the next two floors of equal dimensions. It was night time when I visited, and this gave me a good opportunity to capture the essence of such cramped living in low light, creating the impression of even less space.

Around the corner from the sliver house is a fantastic old wok kitchen that has been operated by three generations of the same family. It’s precariously situated outdoors beneath an old timber and tin living quarters on the intersection of three hems. Motor scooters, pushbikes and pedestrian traffic stream through here at a steady rate around dinner time, which of course is when the family is busiest cooking. The husband and wife team stand side-by-side throwing woks of delicious noodles, beef and seafood over twin gas jets. They frequently glance over their shoulders to micro-assess the risk posed by the approaching traffic. Sitting at a table and watching their skills under this pressure is quite an entertainment.

Saigon is a riot of crazed colour, especially at night. The X-T4’s auto white balance does a great job of deciding on a ‘doable’ colour temperature from all this chromatic chaos. In post, I left its choices largely unchanged but selected Classic Negative as my go-to profile. These pictures were processed initially in Capture One Express, but some local adjustments were made in Lightroom Classic. I decided to use 16 x 9 framing for most images in this story. It seemed to make sense, lending each scene a more cinematic, narrative feeling.

By far the tightest of the hem networks I photographed was in the Trần Hưng Đạo area of District 1. Many of these hems are barely wider than a man’s shoulders and yet bustle with life. Several enterprises can be witnessed in full flight – A kids’ makeshift summer classroom, a hairdresser, a food stall run by an eccentric old guy and his wife - all within the same 50 square meters. I took with me the X-T4 and two lenses – the 16mm/f1.4 and the 16-55mm/f2.8 zoom. I did find myself wishing I owned something wider, perhaps the Fujinon 10-24mm zoom, or even the third party Laowa 9mm/f2.8, which I’ve heard good things about.

The next series of pictures comes from one of the most historically significant hem networks in District 4. The area was largely overlooked in the early French planning of the city, which focused on developments to the north, and an ad hoc residential precinct grew organically along the canal which was once the port area. It became a classic portside slum occupied by vagabonds, poor rural folk who’d migrated to the city in search of work, gamblers, racketeers, hustlers and hookers. One of the original corrugated iron shacks is still standing.

The most famous alley here is Hẻm No. 148. It was the home of Saigon’s most notorious gangster, Năm Cam. Although the violence and illicit activity of the past have mostly subsided, the alleys here are still imbued with a vague sense of threat. I visited Hem 148 on two occasions. Locals forbade my access to certain areas in no uncertain terms.

Despite this cool reception, as well as snapping pics of a construction site and a living-room shoe factory, I was able to grab a few shots of the locals gambling, both men and women, who were at first welcoming, but soon grew tired of my lens in their faces. An interesting point here is that when I flipped out the screen in order to take an overhead shot, the men instantly accused me of shooting video, and at that point I was told to leave. I’ve developed a keen sense of self-preservation in these situations, and so complied without argument. I have to say that perhaps the X-T4 paired the 16-55mm zoom is not a great fit for this kind of shooting- it’s conspicuously professional and attracts too much attention. The tiny 16mm/f2.8 would have been a better choice for shooting here. Much less intimidating.

I love exploring these tight spaces. I’m constantly fascinated by the stories that they offer up, and by the resilience and enterprise of their inhabitants. Some might see this kind of photography as intrusive or even objectifying - more so than regular street shooting. After all, I am often pointing my lens directly into people’s private houses and, by extension, into their private world. But I think context and intent really matter here. Wherever possible I try to engage with my subjects, and I never take a photo if asked not to. But of course, there’s a fine balance between projecting good faith and missing the moment.

Finally, a few notes on the X-T4 from a newbie owner. Regarding the tilty-flippy screen, I have to admit that as I’m primarily a photographer, I’m not a big fan. I think it only really appeals to vloggers, who in any case would probably opt for a lighter camera body than the X-T4. Just my two cents…

On the plus side, the autofocus was confident and nimble. Image quality at low ISOs is superb, but noise does begin to impact fine detail above ISO 4000. The overall build standard and weather-sealing of the camera are excellent, and I’ve taken it out in tropical rain with no problems whatsoever. These narrow alleys are severely light-deprived and basic IBIS was engaged on the X-T4 for most shots in order to keep ISO low. I kept the f-numbers a bit higher to keep some context in the backgrounds, and the slower shutter speeds helped to capture the motion of the ubiquitous scooters. This of course resulted in less than sharp faces at times, but I think nailing the moment is more important in this type of photography.

I also still enjoy being able to glance down at the top dials and know where I’m at before lifting the camera to my eye. My hem project is ongoing and being a denizen of the hems myself, I guess I’m also documenting my own story. With the right lens choices (smaller is definitely better) the Fuji X-System is uniquely suited to this sort of urban exploration.

lockdown_Q3

August 07, 2020

The first lockdown in Saigon was well subscribed, with most locals ‘doing the right thing’ which to this day has resulted in a disproportionately low number of infections and deaths for this city. Vietnam in general has been a model nation on how to do it right. For this I feel oddly patriotic (I have lived here 10 years), and uncharacteristically proud of the people here. There are a few exceptions, though…

A man gives his son a haircut on the lawn beside the canal. As in the west, hairdressers were forced to shut shop during the recent lockdown due to Covid-19. Scenes like this were not uncommon.

A woman exercises on the canal near my house, defying all the tape designed to warn people off the equipment.

A lottery ticket seller snoozes beside the canal on Hoang Sa St. in District3, HCMC. Like many disabled people in this city, he derives his livelihood from the sale of the tickets. During the lockdown, lottery sales were banned- hence the empty clip… — A lottery ticket seller snoozes beside the canal on Hoang Sa St. in District3, HCMC. Like many disabled people in this city, he derives his livelihood from the sale of the tickets. During the lockdown, lottery sales were banned- hence the empty clipboard. God only knows how these people got by. Whilst there are a few charities which cater to the needs of those with disabilities, there really is no specific program set up for them as exists in the global north. My son has cerebral palsy, and thankfully lives in Australia, where such work programs are government funded and his needs are well-met. I often wonder what his life would have been like had he been born here.