A random assortment of things I have seen and shot during the week.
Black Dogs and Burning Bicycles
Round up of the photos I’ve taken over the last couple of weeks. I seem to have gotten very lazy with photography recently, which I fully intend to rectify soon.
All photos taken in Hanoi; I’m hoping to do some road trips soon so I have some new places to shoot. I’d also like to start concentrating more on creating black and white images, taking photos of people and experimenting more with the style of my photos.
Inspiration # 3, Olivia Bee
I am so jealous of this girl’s photographs! Not only was she commissioned by Converse at age 14 to create an ad campaign for them, she has since gone on to work for Hermés, Fiat, Nike Vice magazine and the New York Times.
Now 19, she is currently working as a professional photographer in New York. Olivia started out by taking photos of her teenage friends and states Nan Goldin and Annie Leibovitz as influences. She says she uses photography as a way of recording her youth and describes photography as a personal experience.
” I make my photographs for me, it’s my diary, truly, and I want these images to document everything that is happening now, because these are memories that I know I don’t want to lose”.
I wish I could find out more about her photography methods and whether she is solely a film photographer.The light effects she creates in her photos are incredible and I am generally just a big fan of their grainy, poetic aesthetic.
I also appreciate this quote about her own photography
“I strive to capture the ordinary, in an extraordinary way. Life is beautiful, perfect, and cinematic, if you look at the right moments. It’s not always an accurate summary of life in general, but it is those specific moments that make it worth living anyway.”
Yes.
Golden Slumbers Fill Your Eyes
The Beatles, Abbey Road
Here are some of the photos I’ve taken this week. I seem to have spent a lot of it chasing the perfect lighting down by the lake, drinking beer at the pool and discovering new Vietnamese street food. Oh, and teaching the odd child the English language. Summer makes me happy to be back in this city.
Rainbow Coloured
I took most of these out the back of my friend’s house. It amazes me that you can drive out of one of the most central areas of Hanoi for about 5 minutes and all of a sudden it feels like you’re in the middle of the country side. I’ve spent the last couple of days taking photos out there and I keep discovering new and amazing things like the umbrella garden. This city will never fail to surprise me.
All of these were taken with different sheer fabric placed over the lens. Love how it kinda looks like I used expired film and I’m definitely keen to experiment with this more. I found the photos were more successful with sheer cotton than polyester and that if you put your camera on a high F stop, you won’t see the weave of the fabric in the photos. Changing the white balance also affects the final colour of the photo almost as much as the colour of the fabric used.
Happy experimenting!
A List of Fun Things to do with Cameras
I’ve been reading a lot of photography blogs recently, and as a result there are now a lot of things I want to try out, both with my current camera and by experimenting with disposable cameras. Thought I’d jot down a list before I forgot what they all were. Yes, I realise that a more normal person would just go find a piece of paper, but I’m living out of a backpack and can’t find anything at the moment!! I was also hoping this would serve as general inspiration for anyone reading this. Feel free to leave extra ideas in the comments!
The disposable cameras are going to need to wait until I get paid next month unfortunately…I do however have a sneaking suspicion that they may be something that’s hard to find in Vietnam? Also I’ve heard that getting film developed here is a bit of a nightmare. None the less I intend to persevere.
Digital
. Shooting through fabric. Was thinking of heading to the fabric market and stocking up on lots of pieces of semi sheer fabric and then placing them over my lens. This is how I shot my featured image. I find they look the most successful if you put them on high contrast when photo editing.
. Thin coloured paper. Same idea as above. It would also be fun to cut patterns out of the paper before putting it in front of the lens.
. Cellophane, to go both in front of the lens and the flash.
.Colour in sellotape with felt tips and then stick strips of it over the lens.
. Clear plastic transparencies to go in front of my lens, which I will colour in with felt tips, scratch up, write shit all over and so forth.
.This bokeh tutorial. Although, I was thinking of doing stars instead of hearts.
Photo taken from Globetrotter Diaries.
Film
.At some point I would love to get my hands on a Diana F + lomography camera. I don’t like my chances of getting my hands on one here in Vietnam, so this is something that may need to wait until I need to do a visa run to Bangkok.
I love how gloriously retro it looks as well. Image taken from Lomography.com.
. I want to try shooting double exposures by using the same roll of film twice through 2 different disposables. I realise the results of this are going to be somewhat unpredictable, so was thinking of making small sketches of what I’ve shot ( or what I think I’ve shot) from the first time I put it through the camera.
Image found here.
.Light leaks. Apparently achievable by bashing holes into the side of a disposable camera with a screwdriver. Sounds like fun.
Found here.
. Ditto fucking up the lens with a hot screwdriver or fork. Things you could just never do with a camera you were going to have for longer than a roll’s worth of photos.
Image from BluebloodRed, found via Warm Blooded
I may add to this later, but this is all I can think of for now. Realistically it’s gonna take me months to try all of these ideas out. Hopefully the examples of which should start popping up on this blog soon!
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Back in Hanoi where I used to live for 14 months and in the process of sorting my life out. The day I no longer live in a hotel will be the best of my life! It’s strange that coming back to the weirdest city I have ever lived in feels like home.
Inspiration #2 Neil Krug
I discovered the work of Neil Krug from the amazing blog 500 Photographers. Krug uses Polaroid film that has been expired for several years to create many of his images and is inspired by B movies from the 60s and 70s. He is also interested in a futuristic, sci-fi aesthetic and likes to render 3D animation; an example of which is shown on the album cover for Gravity the Seducer. One of his most famous works is the Pulp Art Book, which contains a series of portraits of his supermodel wife and muse, Joni Harbeck.
He has also produced album art for My Chemical Romance, Ladytron, The Scissor Sisters and The Pierces. I love the grainy, dreamy quality these photographs have and they make me realise how much I would like to start working with film.
Ladytron
Mahaulepu
Bonnie
Lauren Marie Young
Ladytron
Flower Girl
Mirrors
Reverse Skydiving
Ladytron
Mara Hoffman Aloha
Death Valley
On the Road
On the Road
All information and images sourced from here , here and here.
“No matter how much I wanted all those things that I needed money to buy, there was some devilish current pushing me off in another direction — toward anarchy and poverty and craziness.”
-Hunter S. Thomson, The Rum Diary
No other quote exemplifies my life quite so well at the moment. Photos of my trip back to Hanoi where I now live again, via Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Saigon. Amazing going back to Siem Reap after 5 months; for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, it’s one of my favourite places. It was awesome being recognised by some of the Honour Village kids when I went to see them, and I’m hoping I can get back there to volunteer sometime soon. There was also the obligatory second visit to Angkor Wat, which was almost as mind blowing as the first time around. Currently in Hanoi, living in a strange hotel room on the roof top, where I occasionally catch glimpses of rats in the corridor and am trying to find a job. As you do.
Let's Run Away and Have Adventures 