TIME Magazine: Typhoon highlights illegal logging in Vietnam
TIME picked up an image from my coverage of Typhoon Ketsana a few weeks back. The story is about illegal logging, and how the Typhoon washed thousands of logs down from the mountains to the coast, pretty much exposing the illegal logging industry for all to see. Literally. Heard about this story a few weeks [...]
Xxxxxxx Magazine defaults on payment (but then Facebook comes to the rescue)
UPDATE: After posting this blog, and a similar post on Facebook, I got a phone call from the magazine in about 5 minutes, agreeing to pay, in exchange for taking down the Facebook post. Wow, that was the quickest turnaround I’ve ever encountered. “The power of Facebook to speed up late payments” deserves its own [...]
Fotorim magazine interview, HIV/AIDS project
Berna and the good people at Fotorim magazine must have been a bit starved for content for their April issue, as they kindly produced an interview with me, discussing a project covering HIV/AIDS in Vietnam and thoughts on photography in general. You can read the whole thing in both Turkish and English over here on [...]
GOLF Magazine : Tour of Duty
The February 2009 edition of Sports Illustrated’s GOLF Magazine features a story I shot late last year about Ron Chambers, an American veteran who returns to Vietnam to reconnect with the country he fought in as a marine 40 years ago. I haven’t seen the print edition yet, but the article is online here. This [...]
Hanoi’s blue notes
Last week I was shooting an assignment on the jazz scene in Hanoi. I’m not sure if Hanoi’s reputation for having an actual jazz “scene” is warranted, but if there is a scene, its focal point has always been – and continues to be – Minh’s Jazz Club, in the heart of the old quarter. [...]
TIME Magazine Hero of the Environment 2008: Vo Quy
I had a really fun portrait assignment with TIME Magazine last week. They were doing their environmental heroes issue, and Hannah Beech had written about Vo Quy, a gentle, good-humoured 79 year-old ornithologist and a strong voice for environmental awareness in a country that has seen incredible urban and industrial growth in the past two [...]
John McCain’s host at the Hanoi Hilton
Meet Tran Trong Duyet, a former guard at the Hoa Lo prison (Hanoi Hilton) in Hanoi where Republican presidential hopeful John McCain spent over five years as a POW after being shot down over Hanoi during the Vietnam War. The image on the Left is Duyet today, the image on the Right is a portrait [...]
Olympics Postmortem
The Olympics have come and gone in a flash. I was in Beijing for almost a month, and it really seems like a matter of a few days. Well, time flies when you’re having fun and getting very little sleep. It was an incredible experience in many ways. First of all, my team at epa [...]
No blogging, please, this is the Olympics!
It appears most blogs, even those that seem to have nothing to do with China or the Olympics, are blocked here in Beijing. And this is still after the whole affair last week with blocked Internet access for journalists during the games. Some were lifted, some were not. So you can now access Amnesty International’s [...]
First we take Beijing. . . .
Flying to Beijing tomorrow for the insane circus-circus of the Olympics. I’ll have about a week to roam around, check the venues, work on some features, buy some groceries, and generally get my bearings and then BANG! the opening ceremony on the 8th, followed by a few weeks poolside in the cube shooting swimming, diving, [...]
HIV/AIDS in Vietnam
I recently completed an assignment with UNAIDS in northern Vietnam. We tried to show some of the projects that they’re involved in here, from an MSM (Men who have Sex with Men) cabaret night in Hanoi, to HIV/AIDS clinics, support groups and rehabilitation centres in the surrounding countryside. Its a tricky topic to cover here, [...]
Vietnam Wedding Photography: not just a catchy name
A little self-promotion here: Vietnam Wedding Photography, a joint-venture with fellow Hanoi-based snapper Aidan Dockery, is now in full swing. The new website is scheduled to be up and running in a few weeks, and in the meantime there’s a little blog we’re posting with photos from wedding shoots around the country. Its an interesting [...]
TIME magazine’s Best of Asia, 2008
A few days ago I wrote about a magazine client calling up and asking if I had any stock images of the Reunification Palace in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). I did, and quickly supplied them with an online lightbox to select from on my Digital Railroad archive. Incredibly easy and efficient. That client [...]
Bye Bye, Barbers
Hanoi’s iconic news source Timeout reported in March that the city’s street-side barbers will soon be a thing of the past as authorities continue their efforts to clean up the streets. Roaming vendors of all sorts are feeling the pinch, and many are likely to be left behind as the city modernizes at warp speed. [...]
From the archives, Vol.I – Reunification Palace, HCMC
An editorial client contacted me last week, asking if I had any images of the Reunification Palace in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). Luckily i really love that place, and I have a set of images shot a few years ago. I quickly dropped an image set onto my Digital Railroad online archive, and [...]
Portraits: Hanoi International Music Festival
This past weekend was the first ever Hanoi International Music Festival, organized to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Minsk Club, the venerated Belarussian motorcycle appreciation society. Bands and DJs from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Thailand, England and, of course, Vietnam played all day long at the American Club, and all night long at various [...]
A Halong Bay fashion shoot
Marie Claire’s latest issue features a fashion spread shot in Halong Bay, through the lens of Richard Mazzucco. You can view the spread here Pretty pictures, but is it a bit too “Indochine” (dreamy colonial nostalgia)?