Good Morning, Vietnam

SOME OF MY FAVORITES FROM MY WORKSHOP TRIP

NOTE: These images look vastly better if you view them on a laptop or desktop computer screen. If you can, please look at this page there, instead of on your phone where they'll all look tiny. Many thanks in advance. :)

IT TOOK AROUND 26 HOURS TOTAL TO GET TO HANOI. TOTALLY WORTH IT.

It was photos and stories from my dear friend and colleague Rick Sammon who got me interested in going to Vietnam in the first place. It had never really been on my radar until Rick returned from a trip there and his images really got me intrigued. When I told Rick I was so impressed with his experience that I wanted to do a workshop there, he offered to help in any way he could, and he was a huge help and major inspiration for the trip. His input, ideas, suggestions and hook-ups in Vietnam made a huge difference. Thank you, Rick! :) Getting to Hanoi is not easy (well, not from where I live, anyway). Flying from Tampa to Atlanta, then Atlanta to Seoul, South Korea, a long layover, and then five-hours to Hanoi. Once we landed, my co-instructor Erik Kuna and I hit the ground running. We grabbed a taxi from the airport to what would be our home for the next eight days: the five-star Hotel de la Opera with its ideal location and great staff. Soon 14 photographers from all over the US would be joining us, but first we had lots of location scouting to do. We put our bags in our rooms, and headed downstairs as we had our fixer and a driver all lined up to scout locations we had researched in advanced. We arrive for any workshop a few days early so Erik and I can visit locations where we're planning to take our workshop participants, so we want to see it in person, find all the best vantage points, make sure the shooting opportunities are as good as we had hoped, and if they're not for any reason, we scratch it from our list (and we always wind up scratching a few). We also take a few shots at each location, though in the scouting phase, we are rarely there in good light, so we kind of "get what we get," but once the workshop starts, we get the phot crew to these locations in early morning or dusk light. On Day One of our scouting, we hit two places we thought would deliver some great shooting opportunities: (1) Soy Sauce Village (seen directly below), and our awesome Fixer, Nuygen (his knickname is simply "N") knew a family in the village, and got them to open up for us, so we had the run of the place. This shot was taken from a small space on their rooftop. We also scoped out an Incense Factory that same morning, and we climbed up the somewhat precarious ladders so we'd have another overhead shooting location (see right below the soy sauce photo). I'll tell most of the rest of the story in the captions, but I will be back to talk about our overnight cruise to Vietnam's Halong Bay.

Above: The women here in Soy Sauce Village are working with Fermented Rice while will be used in creating the red soy sauce you see in the tall pots.

Above: A woman spreads out the Incense bushels in an incense factory about 40 minutes outside Hanoi. I love the intense colors of the incense, and the overhead shooting locations makes the area look huge (as you'll see in the behind-the-scenes shots later, it's not nearly as big as you might think (well, it surprised us).

Above: We were inspired by a photo we had seen from this area, so we hired a young woman named gọc Ánh, a professional model based in Hanoi. I brought the outfit with me in my luggage (thank you, Etsy) and had it pressed by the hotel before the shoot. , We hired three of these boats for a short cruise in the bay, and gọc Ánh went with us for this shoot. It was pretty cool because she moved from boat to boat so everybody had an opportunity to shoot with her, and she was fantastic (and very, very patient).

Above: This is us out on the bay during our shoot (360° photo by Broto).

It's not a tuna boat. It's a Kuna boat.

Above: Just after dawn in Halong Bay, as seen from the balcony of my stateroom. It's amazing – you can wake up early, and just walk out to your balcony and start shooting.

Above: This wonderful store is very popular with the Instagram crowd, and it's on a very busy street (and immediately to the left of this scene is…wait for it, wait for it…a Popeye's Chicken. One of the few American chain restaurants we saw in all of Hanoi (in fact, we only saw one McDonalds, a KFC, a Circle K, and a couple of Starbucks). I had the gentleman you see on the right sit there for our crew – we hired him for the morning, he was a friend of "N's" and he was awesome.

Above N got is into a family's home who make fishing baskets. The light was beautiful, and they were warm and welcoming.

Another shot from that same location.

Here's a behind-the-scenes shot of the fish basket shoot.

Above: This was right after our previous shoot, and a tip of the hat to Mr. Kuna who turned us on to his great shooting angle (I was off to the right so a different temple would appear behind her on the left , as seen below). Our awesome fixer N arranged for a woman on a small boat to row our model out to this boat so we could create this shot.

A FEW MORE FROM THE INCENSE FACTORY

If you could brave the steep ladders without rails, there were shots to be had up there. As someone who has a serious fear of heights, I can tell you, I did not enjoy the process, but it was worth it to get those shooting angles.

Here's a behind-the-scenes video from the Incense Factory. It's way smaller that I imagined. I pictured rolling fields as far as the eye could see, but yeah, it was about the size of three tennis courts.

Above: Ladies and Gentlemen, here he is – the miracle fixer himself, N. :)

THE SCARIEST STREET IN HANOI

It's called "Train Street" and during the day it's a huge tourist attraction (this is why we scouted it during the day, but took our workshop crew there at dawn when it was empty and the light was much better – see the opening shot at the top of this page). The street looks barely big enough for the train to fit, and if you're there when it comes by, you literally have to stand up against the wall or sit at one of the cafe's that line the street with your knees turned in sideways because that huge diesel train, which is about 15 cars long, is only about 6 or 8-inches from you. It's a rush, lemee tell you!

Above: Don't worry – this is after the train had already passed by. If you stood out there while the train was coming, the cafe owners would have run out and pushed you up against the walls – it's that tight. You have about 6-inches between you and train. This would never fly in the US, but amazingly only three people got really hurt here last year.

Above: This gives you an idea of how close the trains get to you. Yikes! It's a bit of a heart stopper.

Above: This is why we get there at dawn. In the day when we were scouting, there are tourists everywhere, and it's hard to get a clean shot (as seen above), but at dawn, we were pretty much all alone. .

Above: Here's a group shot of our Hanoi Photo Crew (see those tables on the side? They remove those when the train is about to come down the street or it would knock them over.

Our model, back in Hanoi in the Temple of Literature.

This was shot though the slats on the right side (shoutout to Ken for finding this shooting position).

THIS IS HOW WE ROLL!

This is how we moved throughout Vietnam – on a roomy 32-passenger bus with driver (photo by N). Check out Mr. Kuna way in the back flashing a peace sign.

THE WONDERS OF HALONG BAY

During the workshop we took an overnight cruise to one of the most famous, and beautiful, places in Vietnam – Halong Bay. It's about 2-1/2 hours by bus from our hotel, and we got to spend the night on the ship, so we'd have sunset one day and sunrise the next on the ship. What made this work so well is we didn't have to check out of our hotel in Hanoi – we were able to keep our same rooms, so when we got back from the cruise, we all already had a keys, so we just went back to our rooms (no check in/check out hassles). The ship itself was pretty amazing – kind of like a big luxury yacht. It had beautiful staterooms (see the short video a few spots below – I think it was nicer than my room in the Hotel, and the food on board was terrific! The ship was too big to come into the dock so we had to take a 45-minute tender ride out to board the ship (check out Ken's group selfie on board the tender below).

That's us tendering out to the ship (group selfie by Ken Sasaki). Right above that is us on the ship after an enormous buffet (the food on the ship was really good, with a huge selection). Above that Camille and Joanne are chillin on the ship with some incredible views.

Above: No, it's not a tour of my bathroom (well, it is part of the tour). It's a short video tour of my stateroom on the ship. It was nice enough that I made a video (but with an unfortunate thumbnail).

I set my alarm for 5:20 AM, walked out on my balcony, and the water was pretty still and the sky was pink. I love it. Shooting from my balcony. After a few shots I threw my pants on, brushed my teeth, and headed out to the desk where Erik was already out there shooting, and the color had already changed, in just those few minutes.

Above: This was my favorite rock (actually called "Karst towers"), and I wanted to include the fishing boat on the left of the tower to give it a real sense of scale (those Karst towers are huge!).

It's possible that the sky in this photo is better than I remember it from that morning. Hey, anything possible (for people with Photoshop).

Our Model Came With Us To Halong Bay

Another shot in that row boat in Halong Bay. We had to take the tender from the ship out to a small dock in this area.

This one, too, where our model is wearing a ceremonial dress and hat.

This shot was taken on the back of the ship.

Here's a behind-the-scenes with our model and N on the right side.

Back On Dry Land

One from Train Street just after dawn.

Here's another from "Soy Sauce Village"

And here's a wide shot of what it looks like in person, from the rooftop shooting spot. This is definitely when you need a zoom lens to isolated the workers.

Kuna gives a thumbs up from that overhead rooftop shooting location.

More Behind The Scenes

If you went a little wider with your lens, you'd see the Popeyes Chicken location killing the shot you saw of the beautiful building on the right. During the day there's so much traffic – that's another reason why we got there just after dawn.

This is Lara Anderson being presented with her award for "Best Image of the Workshop" as voted by the Photo Crew on the final day of the workshop. Everybody gets to submit their one favorite photo and then we all vote on it. Congratulations to Lara – her image was amazing!

Here's the restaurant and atrium at our hotel where we'd have a super yummy (and extensive) breakfast buffet each morning.

I took this overhead shot with my iPhone at the restaurant we gathered at for our opening night's dinner. It's a famous (and very popular) pizza place called "Four Ps Pizza," recommended to us by Rick Sammon himself.

The Glorious Mr. Kuna on the back of the boat well after our dawn shoot in Halong Bay. You can see one of the tenders we were on to his left. We towed two of them with us wherever the ship went, which was just in the Halong Bay area.

It's more than just work at our workshops. Here's some of the crew samplilng some local treats. L to R: That's Broto, Ping, Ken, and Haressh.

A One-in-a Lifetime Event

We had an incredible experience in a fascinating place, surrounded by some of the coolest people, and it made for an extraordinary week. We saw so many amazing things, and learned a lot about the culture and history (N was a wealth of information in those regards), and had some great meals, and lots of learning and laughs along the way. It's a trip I'll never forget. A big thanks goes to N, our incredible fixer, miracle worker, interpreter and guardian of the crew. He was absolutely fantastic, and that's underplaying it. His energy, enthusiasm, and ability to make the impossible happen was truly a gift to the whole workshop. Also thanks to Jimy, our travel guy in Vietnam who hooked us up with a great hotel, bus, wonderful model, and most importantly, N. I owe a debt of gratitude to my friend Rick Sammon. Without him, and his wonderful images and stories, I never would have gotten to Vietnam and I'm so glad I did. Rick is the best. The. Best! Thank you, my friend. You were right – Vietnam is awesome! I love it, and it loved us all back. Also thanks to the amazing Mr. Kuna, who did a marvelous job as always, and he's just a lot of fun to do these with. He loves this stuff as much as I do, and he now ranks Vietnam as one of his favorite places (and thanks for encouraging me to plan a workshop there, and for coming along and working hard to make it a great experience for everyone, yours truly included). Thanks for letting me share my trip with you. :)

One For The Road

Camera Info: Photos taken with a Canon R6 II and a Canon 24-240mm lens, along with my trusty iPhone 17 Pro.

CREATED BY

Scott Kelby

Credits:

@Scott Kelby (unless otherwise noted)