south east asia | Without an H

Coming soon: Downriver

downriver (final)

My new photobook, Downriver, will be available soon. Watch this space for further details.

June afternoons

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A few more photographs taken in Hanoi over the last few weeks.

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Weight

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I’ve written before about how it often seems like all the hard work in Vietnam is done by women. No-one works harder than the women who carry these don ganh through the streets.

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Late afternoon and early evening – when it’s not raining – is such a good time to take photographs in Hanoi at the moment. Walking around with the camera as the daylight fades is a hot and sweaty experience at this time of year, but a very rewarding one, as I think that the warm light from the low sun brings out the best in the city.

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BOY, BE GREAT

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Hanoi cafe culture

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Late on Sunday afternoon, I came across these two gentlemen, customer and proprietor of a Hanoi street cafe. Cafes are everywhere in Hanoi, big and small. This is one of the smaller ones.

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One man and his dog (and other pictures)

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These small, yappy-type dogs, as Eddie Izzard calls them, are unaccountably popular here in Hanoi.

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Coffee break

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In these hot and humid Hanoi afternoons, sensible folk take shelter in the shade with a cold drink. Foolish people wander about taking photographs.

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Post 168, in which Jon remembers how to take photographs

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Six street portraits from a walk around my Hanoi neighbourhood this afternoon. Things have been slow on this blog of late, but I’m hoping that that is starting to change.

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Lost and found

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In my idle moments – and I have a few – I often ask myself about what I was doing one year ago. Posing this question again earlier this week, I thought back to the little window of time I spent in Saigon after returning to Vietnam from the UK and before leaving on my Mekong trip. At the end of April last year, I was making plans for my upcoming travels and waiting for my Chinese visa to come through. I also took a few pictures out and about in Saigon, pictures which I had forgotten about until this week.

They’re a little different to the photographs I’ve been taking in Hanoi recently – colour rather than black and white, and taken with a standard zoom rather than my 35mm lens, so the framing is a little tighter in some of these than in my more recent shots. Right now, I’m not sure which approach I prefer, but I’m glad that I found these pictures gathering digital dust in a neglected corner of my Lightroom catalog.

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