If there is one thing that characterizes my travels, it is wandering. Exploring. Finding the nooks and crannies of new and old cities. Including my own.
I love glancing — and walking — down back alleys to see what’s there, climbing hills and objects to get another view, and — when I have my camera in hand — being a tourist wherever I am.
I love the beauty of nature and of urban portraits.
I love the familiar and lifeless made personal. The transformation from forgettable background to memories. From downtown back alley to “the back alley with numbers written on the metal door that’s sunken into the wall. There was a piece of ice hanging onto its anchor for dear life, dancing around in the wind, right over there.”
I wanted to start the photo challenge again, and thought bottles of liquor would work well with the theme of “illumination”, giving a chance (and challenge) to work with the various shapes and colours that are out there.
I went with Bombay Sapphire and Jack Daniels, as the gin bottle is a lovely blue with clear liquid, and the whiskey bottle has such a distinctly recognizable shape.
Steve let me use a few of his softboxes for the shoot, along with one of his speedlights. My main focus was the Bombay Sapphire bottle, as it nearly glows when you use the light properly. The Jack was a bit of a disappointment, as the bottle and liquid are both dark, so try as I might, the light would just get sucked up with nothing but glare to show for it.
This shot was the surprise of the night, though — cropping a shot of the entire bottle just above the shoulder, as I really liked the colour of the whiskey in the neck (this is what I had been hoping for with the whole bottle, and might still go for by removing the label), as well as the look of their trademark “No. 7”.
The original shot also works well when cropped just above the main label, as it’s more recognizable as a bottle of whiskey (and still a compelling photo), so I might put that up later for comparison.
it’s an odd feeling to go for a stroll in the middle of the night on an airplane and realize that the window covers are blocking mid-day sunlight. 4AM is no longer such in this state of timezone flux.
the plan is to stay up all “night” so that we can easily get back on the Manitoba clock when we hit the land of the free. we’re arriving at 7-something PM Vancouver time, having left 11:55PM that same night Taipei time. it’ll do a number on you, for sure.
to keep myself busy and awake, i’m skimming through the last seven months of photos from life and vacations, picking the keepers for a slideshow this weekend. luckily for me, the in-flight entertainment system includes new albums (I didn’t even know half of them had been released, since I’ve been completely out of the loop in the past year) from Coldplay, The Black Keys, and Florence + the Machine, and others.
Every time I listen to the Black Keys, I wonder why I don’t listen to them incessantly. They’re so much fun with just the right grit thrown in.
Back to the photos. At the rate I’m going through them right now, I might actually have some to post in the next few days. I’m already over a month behind in sharing photos from the dance exchanges we hit in Vietnam and Cambodia, so that’ll probably be my next photo culling/posting project.
The first stop on our dance-fueled tour of South-East Asia was Hanoi, Vietnam. There was no dancing, but there were friends and relaxing, which was exactly what we needed.
We stepped off the plane and realized very quickly that we should have checked the weather report before packing our carry-on bags. Luckily, we had each packed a pair of jeans and a light sweater, though that almost didn’t happen since we were coming from a very hot and dry stint (mid to high 30s) in Kanchanaburi.
After getting through Vietnamese Passport Control, we were welcomed by our hosts, Dan and Michelle. While I had met them once before, quite a while ago, I didn’t really know who they were when we landed. That changed quickly, as the entire four days we spent with them were like days spent with good friends.
Our view in Hanoi.
After relaxing and being introduced to Avatar: The Last Airbender, we saw a bit of the town, took in a tourist attraction or two, and took a few photos. Some activity-specific posts will come in time, but here I wanted to show an overview of our time in Hanoi.
The places we’ve been in South East Asia all have their similarities in architecture (among other things), but Vietnam is the place where the narrow building was king — even in establishments where you wouldn’t expect them to settle with a narrow plot of land.
A single-wide hotel in Hanoi.
Yes, it does look like this hotel only has one room per floor. And yes, this was a common sight with businesses and homes in Vietnam. They likely had more rooms in the back, but nothing like the hotels we were used to seeing in Bangkok — let alone Canada.
There were some attractions that were easier to discover than others, and this one kind of snuck up on us as we were walking along the lake in the touristy area of Hanoi:
Beside the naga bush was a symbol of Vietnam’s place in the world. Or, at least an artist’s rendition of Vietnam’s place in the world.
Sometimes the best scenes unfold around you when you least expect it. We were walking along, on the way to some delicious Papa Roti, when a wall of balloons appeared in the road ahead. It was one of those times I was very happy to have my camera at hand.
And finally, a visit to the lake temple wouldn’t be complete without some serious pondering, courtesy of Kelly.
Our time in Hanoi was short, but it was just what we needed after the last few months and weeks of being on the go in Thailand and before the next few weeks of dancing and being on the go in Vietnam and Cambodia.
I left it in Part 2 with a possible solution and a new approach to memory card management. It’s been working fine since updating the firmware and formatting the card in-camera a few times. Since then I’ve relaxed my proposed approach without any problems. Specifically:
I have plugged the SD card directly into my computer’s card reader for importing, and this has not been a problem;
I have deleted individual photos in-camera without problems;
I have deleted all photos in-camera through the “Delete All Photos” menu option without problems.
So, really, it looks like it was a firmware update that did it. Update the firmware in your cameras, kids. And format your memory cards in-camera before using them.
I’ve taken thousands of photos on that card since fixing the problem, so it’s definitely working as it should.
