A Walk With Chi
Cho Lon Alley
I took a walk with Chi the other day in the Cho Lon area of Saigon. Chi is my best friend in Vietnam. I always love hanging out with her, and she likes to shoot film like I do now, so we had quite a bit of fun. Cho Lon overlaps district 5 and district 6, and the name means “Big Market” in Vietnamese. It’s what we Western folks refer to as “Chinatown”. It’s interesting for a million different reasons, and there’s a million different things to take pictures of there, however on this day I mostly did portraits of people on the street. Read more »
Starting Over
Old Doorway
I feel, much like the name of this post implies, that I’m almost completely starting over with photography now that I’ve decided to shoot only film. Over the last week I’ve spent a few days wandering around and taking shots almost at random. Not only am I experimenting with color film to see what the differences are in different brands, I’m also getting used to shooting in black and white, and playing around with some fixed focal length lenses that are new to me. Specifically, I’m using a 50mm Nikon f/1.4 AI lens that’s very nice, but also super contrasty and I’m figuring out where and when I can use it effectively. Simply using fixed focal length is a challenge for me as well, as I’m a spoiled little brat who is far too used to his zoom lenses. I’ve got 3 cameras to shoot with now so I can keep different lenses mounted or have various films loaded and ready, however 2 of them are in the shop getting prettied up. That makes it a bit difficult for me to take multiple shots for comparisons, however that will come next week. My mornings are open for a week or so, so I’m praying for good weather early in the day. Read more »