Stop Press - Amazing Discovery!

Stop Press - amazing discovery! In order to take pictures you have to get your camera out of your bag!

I was in London yesterday. I had an appointment in the morning then planned to have lunch and go for a photo walk. But you know what, it was pouring with rain, not a hundred percent of the time, but kind of 15 minutes wet, 10 minutes dry - you know the kind of thing. 

After lunch it was dry so I wandered aimlessly around the shopping center near the Olympic Park looking for inspiration. (This is not where I had planned to go but had the merit of being mostly under cover). I have taken pictures here on several occasions and the shine had rather gone off. I really couldn’t see  anything worth getting my camera out of the bag for. 

 Then I spotted some Rosemary bushes in pots outside Jamie’s Italian, not terribly exciting but the most interested thing I’d noticed. I got out the camera and took a few shots and leaving the camera round my neck wandered on. It was as if the sun had come out (it hadn’t)  suddenly I was aware of all sorts of interesting things to capture.

I was drawn to the window displays 

The lovers

The bike racks 

And, in particular, to this little boy chasing a red balloon 

I honestly don’t think I would have noticed any of this if my camera had still been in my bag. The act of taking it out seems to have been the catalyst for really opening my eyes to what was around me.

A Sense of Place - Week ONe

I have just started Kat Sloma's course 'A Sense of Place'. In this first week Kat has posed the question 'Do you travel to photograph or  photograph as you travel?'

Thinking about this question I realise I photograph as I travel.  However I  try to take my camera with me most days as you never know what unexpected treasure you are going to find, even when you are  somewhere you know well.

Both these sets of pictures were taken during an impromptu lunch hour walk last summer.

I derive a lot of pleasure from coming upon things unexpectedly so would not always want to plan my travels around things I have identified that I really want to photograph. I also think taking photos of famous monuments is often very difficult, unless you are able to spend days in preparation. Thus my recent photos of Angkor Wat were not particularly successful whereas I was really pleased with a picture of the captain of our boat on Halong Bay that I couldn't have planned for in the same way.

 

Similarly my attempts to capture the Temple of Literature in Hanoi weren't crowned with success but I was very happy with the pictures I took of some of the young people I saw there.

When I came to look for photos to illustrate this point, I realised I had already deleted most of the more general views of the Temple of Literature!

It will be interesting to see whether, as I get more deeply involved with photography, my perspective changes on this!

A Visit to the Village

As part of our recent trip to Vietnam and Cambodia we were thrilled to be able to visit Honour Village, a childrens village founded by Sue Wiggans a retired school teacher from the Isle of Wight. More info about the village here

The first challenge was to get to the village from Siem Reap, where we were staying in order to visit the magnificent Angkor Wat temple complex. Sue had sent us detailed instructions which we proved to be incapable of conveying either to the hotel receptionist or the tuk tuk driver. The solution was to ring Sue who asked one of her Cambodian staff members to instruct the driver on our behalf. Then we were off,  bouncing along the hot and dusty road sometimes, but not always, missing the inevitable potholes! After about half an hour and a couple of wrong turnings we arrived, hot,  dusty and pleased to be there.

Our first impression of Honour Village was of happy smiling children - one that has stayed with us! 

After a Welcome from Sue we were taken on a tour of the village. There are over 50 resident children ranging in age from under fives to older teenagers. These are children who have lost their parents or whose families are unable to care for them at present. 

In addition to the resident children, more than 300 children come for lessons from the surrounding villages to supplement the education provided by the Cambodian state. It is normal in Cambodia for parents to pay for additional lessons for their children to ensure they pass their grades which with class sizes up to 60 can be a challenge for some. Many parents cannot, of course, afford this and the lessons available at Honour Village help to fill this gap.

Sue told us that they were hoping to get a government sponsored teacher to work at the village and that this would make a significant difference to the status of Honour Village. In the meantime as we walked round we saw several classes in action teaching  Khmer  and English. Some children were using the small library and others were playing in the garden. More classes would begin at 2 including Sue's kindergarten class.

There was also evidence of the challenge of keeping house for 50 plus, I was glad the washing wasn't my responsibility  - as it is there is a line for each of the houses and the housemothers are responsible for the task.

As we were leaving Sue and the Honour Village  manager began to look at the children's grade cards from the local school - the idea that education can provide a way out of poverty is a central tenet of the philosophy of Honour Village and the children are given all the help and encouragement possible both in terms of their work at the  local school and their lessons at Honour Village.

Honour village is doing great work helping children and families in Siem Riep if you would like to support them in this work you can make a donation here.

A lotus flower is the logo for Honour village together with the words

TRUTH - TRANSPARENCY - INTEGRITY

a visit to Honour Village allows you to see these values in action

Holiday Snaps - Sharing the Fun?

Holiday photographs present an innate dilemma - what do do with them once you get home? In the past, before digital cameras, we used to send them off to be processed and end up with physical evidence of our holidays which we could put in a album or allow to gather dust on a shelf. Of course we can still print off our photos but I suspect most of us just don't bother.

Modern alternatives include make a book of memories using Blurb or similar, uploading the whole lot on to Flickr or a similar platform and sending our friends and family the link, or uploading to Facebook or another social networking site.

This year I have come up with another alternative - the time capsule. As I have mentioned before I am taking a course with the wonderful Xanthe Berkley which is inspiring me to do things a little differently and I plan to make a series of 2 minute films which capture the essence of different parts of the holiday. check out the first one here.

Vietnam Vignettes 1 City Life from Barbara Evans on Vimeo.

 So far this is proving very successful - when people have asked to see photo's I have sent them the link and a surprising number of them have actually watched it and commented favourably. I think a real plus is that you get get a sense of a place very quickly and can always watch again if you want to focus on a particular aspect.

Holiday Snaps?

We have just returned from a wonderful holiday to Vietnam and Cambodia, our first major holiday since I became really passionate about photography. This has presented me with a number of challenges, the first being why I am taking photographs? What is the purpose of it? The 1,800 or so pictures I’ve taken they can probably be broken down into the following categories:

Photographs of things I want to remember I’ve seen.

These come under the heading of traditional holiday snaps, not necessarily things that are intrinsically beautiful or fascinating, but things that appear ‘different’ or unusual that I want to record so that when I get home I know I haven’t imagined them.

The photos were taken at the tomb of Tu Duc at Hue where dressing up clothes are available for anyone who wants to play at  being emperor and concubines. We were lucky enough to arrive just as this group were ready to have their photo taken. 

Photographs of famous monuments / beauty spots.

Tricky this on several counts, when you're on a group tour, as we were, you don’t get to pick the time of day or light in which you see places. Plus I’m still saving up for a wide-angle lens. Plus you can almost always get a postcard that is better than anything you can take yourself unless you can inject another point of interest into the photo (other than yourself!) to make it a little different.

The top picture is one of the temples at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the bottom one is from our cruise on Halong Bay - both of these are UNESCO World Heritage sites

Flowers, colours, shapes that may or not speak directly of the place you have been visiting but have a universal appeal

I love these lotus flowers for their colour and shape as they unfurl - they also happen to be the national flower of Vietnam as well as India

 People, the life of the country. Photographs of people wearing local dress, national costumes, doing every day tasks or on special occasions 

Luckily for photographers most people in Vietnam seem happy for you to take their photo and will often smile and  wave to show their approval if, for example, they are passing on a motor scooter (more about traffic in a later post)

The first of these pictures was taken on the Meekong Delta. The other two of women tending rice paddys and a herb garden were taken on the drive to Halong Bay from Hanoi. 

‘I woz here’ photos

I’ve never taken very many of these and have always felt slightly baffled by the number of people who seem to feel that a photo of a monument isn’t valid unless they are in it as well, to prove they’ve actually been there. That said, I did take a few of this type of photo this time mainly with my iPhone  to pop on to Facebook.

These were taken outside Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum in Hanoi, at the Cu Chi tunnels in Siagon, demonstrating exactly how small a space the Viet Kong were living in during the war, and enjoying a fresh coconut drink whilst travelling on the Mekong Delta