Jake Catlett Photography

More Market Flowers

Hi everybody!  I just got back from a week long trip to Nha Trang for some SCUBA diving.  I intended to put this post up before I left, but the last 4-5 days here in Saigon were pretty hectic and I just couldn’t get around to it.

Hell, I intended to put these photos up months ago, but…  well, I suppose I don’t have an excuse for why it’s taken me over two months to get these posted, but whatever, here they are now.

As I mentioned in a previous post, every year at Tet Holiday (Vietnamese New Year) flower markets get set up all over the country.  These photos were taken at a few different flower markets in and around Ho Chi Minh City back in February.  I’m a big fan of macro photography, and I find flowers to be fun and challenging to shoot.

In southern Vietnam, apricot flowers, or “hoa mai” as they’re called here, are ubiquitous during the new year holiday, and evoke a festive feeling similar to what a Christmas trees do in western countries.  In fact, yellow flowers in general are all the rage, and it’s the predominant color at any flower market you go to at that time of year

This shot of “hoa mai” with Saigon’s town hall, one of the most noticeable examples of colonial French architecture in the city, is probably my favorite of the series I took around town over Tet holiday.  I was trying very hard to not only capture pictures of flowers, but to also put them in a context which makes the images 100% Vietnamese.  I think I got that on this one, as well as a few of the previous shots.  This was also an extremely difficult shot to pull off, not only because hand-held macro shots are just tough to begin with, but aligning the photo so all the lines in the building in the background were flush was quite difficult.

Finally, this one here is a tip of the hat to our friends from Hanoi.  While the yellow apricot flowers are par for the course here in southern Vietnam, in the north the seasonal flower is the peach blossom, which is pink.   The “hao đào”, or peach blossoms, are more difficult to find here in Ho Chi Minh City, and according to my girlfriend they’re smaller and less healthy due to the different climate when you do find them.   So, while I didn’t concentrate on trying to get pictures of these pretty pink flowers, I figured it was the right thing to do to add at least one image to this post.  We wouldn’t want our northern colleagues to feel left out, now would we?