Aaron Joel Santos: Ha Giang (Vietnam)

Photo © Aaron Joel Santos-All Rights Reserved

Aaron Joel Santos is a freelance travel and documentary photographer based in Hanoi, Vietnam. He is represented by Wonderful Machine in the United States and by Invision Images in Europe and Japan. His clients include The Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia, The Daily Telegraph and The Boston Globe. He is available for assignments across Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

Most of Aaron's galleries are of projects in South East Asia, and include documentary travel, as well as commercial work such as photographs of hotels and resorts. I particularly liked his Ha Giang black & white gallery. Ha Giang is a province is in the northernmost part of the country, and it shares a long border with China's Yunnan province. It has many cultural festivals due to the presence of more than 20 ethnic minority groups.

Aaron also uses PhotoShelter to host his image archives, and you can see his collection of images of Laos, from the World Heritage town of Luang Prabang to the waters of Vang Vien and the capital of Vientiane.

Paul Levrier: Mekong Delta

Photo © Paul Levrier-All Rights Reserved

I've posted the work of Paul Levrier before on The Travel Photographer's blog, but he just alerted me that his website Visions of Indochina had been updated, and now included large sized images...and he was right. His portfolio is certainly large sized, making it easier and more enjoyable to appreciate.

Having said that, I especially liked his must-see new section On Assignments which features his work from Can Tho, the largest town in Vietnam's Delta, where his intent was to record life on the Mekong river and its famed floating markets. He used a wide angle on a number of his shots, and with the extra large size he chose for his images, they appear almost life-like.

Reading Paul's notes on his accompanying blog, he tells us that while tourists usually visit the Cai Rang market, the largest on the Mekong, he headed instead to Nga Bay, but found that the local authorities had closed and pushed the vendors further up river to a rural location called Cho Noi...which was difficult to get to, and was consequently free of foreign sightseers.

I traveled to Can Tho in 2003 (eons ago, it now seems) photographing for a NGO, and unfortunately had no time to photograph the floating markets. After seeing Paul's images, this is high on my to-do list.

Al Jazeera: Vietnam

Photo © Nicole Precel_Courtesy Al Jazeera

If you think Al Jazeera is only an excellent source of international news, and the Arab satellite television channel that left all our cable networks in the dust during the momentous events in the Middle East, you'd be wrong because it also features photography essays such as the one by Nicole Percel's Vietnam: Between Tradition & Modernity.

In February 2011; Nicole Precel and Nick Ahlmark were in Chi Ca Commune, a cluster of villages in Xin Man district, part of Ha Giang province in northern Vietnam, the poorest province in the country, to make a movie for the final episode of Al Jazeera's Birthrights, a series examining maternal health around the world.

Al Jazeera also features social documentary work such as the accompanying video The Mountain Midwives of Vietnam.

Thomas Jeppesen: Vietnam

Thomas Jeppesen is originally from Denmark, and currently working in Vietnam as the director of an advertising agency in its capital, Hanoi. This gives him ample opportunity to photograph its streets and its vicinity.

He bought his first DSLR a couple of years ago, and developed the photography bug. He enjoys the post-processing phase of digital photography, and this shows in his gallery of Vietnamese portraits, which are mostly in black & white. Some would say they're somewhat overly contrasty, but that's a look that many B&W photographers seek.

Thomas also has a set of galleries of Hanoi street scenes and Vietnamese fashion models.

Raphael Nguyen: Vietnam

Photo © Raphael Nguyen-All Rights Reserved

Photo © Raphael Nguyen-All Rights Reserved

Raphael Nguyen is a French-Vietnamese photographer, who moved to Vietnam in 1999. He lived Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and finally in Hoi An in the very center of the country. He travels within the country, uses either film or digital cameras; Nikon FM2, Nikon F3 and Nikon D70, Canon EOS 5 D and Canon EOS 5 D Mark II.

I was drawn to his gallery of Daily Life in Vietnam with over 100 intensely saturated color photographs of various areas of Vietnam. These range from simple portraits, lifestyle shots, culinary images, environmental portraits etc. The ones I liked most and feature here are of Hoi An, and these two underscore Raphael's photographic style...which gives his images an overly golden saturated look.

Hoi An's old town was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO as a well-preserved example of a Southeast Asian trading port of the 15th to 19th centuries, with a unique building with local and foreign influences. I was in Hoi An for a couple of days while photographing for a NGO in 2003, and had little time to photograph for myself. I sense it's time to return and redress this shortcoming.

Paul Levrier: Visions of Indochina

Photo © Paul Levrier -All Rights Reserved

 Paul Levrier is in a good position to photograph all over South East Asia and in particular in Indochina. He's the managing director of a travel company specializing in Vietnam (where he's been based for the past 14 years) and Cambodia.

He's also the founder of Visions of Indochina which is a digital image bank/library. Whilst one needs to register to gain full access to the library, there's enough there to satisfy all Vietnamophiles (is that the right term?) with lovely images of its various festivals, as well as a section for multimedia.

Since the site is principally an image bank, its navigation seems a little quirky but you'll get the hang of it and you'll find lovely photographs of Vietnam, as well as Laos and Cambodia.

Nguyen Thanh Hai: Hanoi

Photo © Nguyen Thanh Hai -All Rights Reserved
Nguyen Thanh Hai is known as Maika Elan, and is a young Vietnamese freelance photographer based in Hanoi whose work is just delightful.

Maika was a selected participant in the Creative Economies workshop at the Asia Europe Forum for Young Photographers in Malaysia, and at the 2010 photojournalism workshop with the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation (IMMF), where she received awards for the best photo essay and best single photograph.

I was initially drawn to her gallery of classical drama, and then to her photographs of Inside Hanoi...which I strongly encourage you to peruse. Maika's sense of color and compositional skills will impress you. I also urge you to visit her Lomography section, which she lets her color affinity loose.

In my view, Maika has an extremely bright future in photography.

Julie Aucoin: Redux

Photo © Julie Aucoin -All Rights Reserved
I've already mentioned Julie Aucoin on this blog, but I've thought of re-posting her recent work which includes a number of South East Asian countries to include Vietnam, and this image of a Bac Ha woman.

Julie who's based in Nevada, describes herself as a passionate photographer, an adventurous traveler and experienced stage manager. She's one of those photographers who, as a child, perused the pages of the National Geographic magazine and this implanted peripatetic seeds in her.

The earlier post on Julie is here.