Just came back from a great trip to the Pu Luong National Park about 4 hours away from Hanoi, Vietnam by motorbike. This was mostly a trip to relax with some good friends and just enjoy where we are.

The bike trip was amazing both going to Pu Luong via the Ho Chi Minh Highway and then on the way back through some back roads. This time of the year everything is super green and it is hard not go ohhhh and ahhhh as you drive along the picturesque roads.

When we got to our destination we went waterfall bouldering, hanging out with the locals at the “pool”, a little bit of hiking and some fishing. It was all very stressful as you can imagine. If it could get any better, on the last night we were there we got to see a wicked lightning storm.

I have never visited a national park in Vietnam but after this trip I defiantly want to go see more.

Here are some not so serious images from the trip. Enjoy

Here are some of the images I captured while wandering around this particular neighborhood for the day. Thanks for looking.

In about the middle of last year I started to get a lot of inquires about doing some wedding photography in Vietnam. I have always wanted to shoot weddings as, to me, it is a documentary photography paradise, filled with ample supplies of emotion, passion, light and of course great moments all waiting to be captured. This is a great experience to document and now I love shooting weddings! I was lucky enough to get some wedding work in Hanoi, Vietnam and Hoi An, Vietnam at the end of last year and have a couple more already for 2012. As to organize my images I have finally put together a small business, MWeddings, and a dedicated website where my portfolio of images and videos can be seen. I hope that people looking for a wedding photographer in Vietnam or Southeast Asia can find me easier and can see my work.

Thanks for checking it out and hopefully I will see you at your wedding.

Back in November I was contracted to develop the creative idea, direct, shoot and edit a Trailer and a Program Identity for a Vietnamese TV show about the everyday little things we can do to make life, the environment, pollution ect better.

It took me 1 day for shooting and 1 day of editing after I had an idea on what I wanted to do. Nothing fancy, clean, simple and to the point.

I headed out to get daily life scenes of Hanoi which was done with a mix of timelapse and regular footage. I wanted to show that even though we are all busy and hustling around the city it only takes one moment to make where we live that much better, which is basically what the TV program is about.

Everyone was happy with the results and the Trailer and Program Identity started playing on National TV back in December.

Trailer

Program Identity

Yes more than normal.

What I do like is the calm and tranquility that replaces the chaos that was just one week before. This is the first morning of Tet. If you are ever lucky enough to experience it, it would be to experience Hanoi, Vietnam in its true Zen like or Valium induced state. The streets are empty except for the odd straggler here and there. You can hear birds clearly while walking down some of the larger streets in the city like Dai Co Viet. People are in a joyous and festive mood and will let you take photos of them with no problem (big deal for me as the ratio of asking is usually 1/3). All in all, it is really amazing and a joy to experience.

Since most photographers love to take photos or get assignments of the leading up of Tet, I thought why not show the actual first day of Tet and how calm it is and what remained after the chaos has subsided. So I set out at 6 AM and anyone I saw on the street I took a portrait of them. Got to say after 3 hours there were not so many portraits as it was really that quiet.

My first intention was to do this purely with images, but as my time on the street progressed I wanted to capture the sounds I experienced in the hope of helping place you, the audience, next to me in my morning journey. Sorry the sound is not better all I had was my iPhone, but I think it can still put you in the setting

I hope everyone has a great new year. May the year of the dragon bring you luck.

It has been just over a week since I got back from the 2011 Eddie Adams Workshop. I must say I had a great time there and made some really good friends. Recently I was contacted by Wonderful Machine owner Bill Cramer, who was a real pleasure to meet at the workshop. He asked me to write a little bit about my time at EAW and it got me thinking once again about exactly all that I experienced there and what I took away from all the sleepless nights.

I know it might sound cheesy but, an EAW acceptance was something I had strived for ever since I first heard of the workshop. Since I didn’t go to photography school, being accepted was for me, a total a validation of my work from the industries best people. It felt really great when I found out the news. During my time there I made some great new friends I hope meet again in future, listened to amazing speakers and began the foundation for lasting relationships with some of the editorial industries best editors.

One of the most memorable moments of the workshop for me happened after it all ended. I was sitting drinking a coffee the day after and thinking about everything when I realized that EAW was like a team building and bonding experience between photographers, editors and the suppliers that work in our industry. For me, this is a very rare experience and I would imagine it is rare in our industry as a whole to connect to people like you do at EAW. I now can see why many of the editors and organizers of EAW use words like “Family” and “Love” to describe how they feel about the participants and the experience in attending EAW.

I thought to myself at that moment, how often do photographers get to just talk to editors you don’t know, one on one, like a normal person where your not selling yourself? Most of the time when I talk to a editor I know they are very busy and are tired of being bombarded with emails and promos of photographers selling themselves. So to be able to have a normal conversation that wasn’t 5 min long and then later show my work for another 30 min was just amazing.

It was also a great opportunity to meet a lot of the industries suppliers like Anthony Pak from Manfrotto who hooked me up with a bunch of missing parts (I know I owe you a photo. I promise it is coming) and hanging out with J.C. from B&H during my whole assignment day talking about life and of course photography. These are good people who work in the industry and want to help photographers do their jobs. Now that we know each other, I’m sure  i will be a loyal customer to them and they will be happy to help me out in the future.

EAW gave me the opportunity to meet all these great people from all over the industry and connect with them on a personal level and hopefully make new friends in the business.

It was truly a once in a lifetime opportunity and I will never forget it. Thanks to all the sponsors, editors, producers, black team and the Adams family for continuing this tradition in pushing and inspiring new generations of photographers.

For me this made my trip from Vietnam very worth while and something I will remember forever.

The photos above and below were from my assignment, which was to shoot downhill mountain biking. On my assignment, I meet 15 year old Taylor who is a fearless pro downhill biker. Needless to say I love what I do and had a great time shooting the sport even if I’m not a “sports” guy. Thanks again EAW. Love you all.

I a couple of months back I was selected to attend the 2011 Eddie Adams workshop which is a pretty big deal for photographers. If you haven’t heard about it here is a little background about what it is all about.

The Eddie Adams Workshop is an intense four-day gathering of the top photography professionals, along with 50 carefully selected students and 50 selected professionals. The photography workshop is tuition-free, and the 100 students are chosen based only on the merit of their portfolios.

It was an amazing experience where new relationships with photographers, editors and suppliers are made and good times are had by all. I will post some more later about my experience there in another blog post.

For right now here are some snap shots I took while I was running around the city meeting up with friends and family as well as going to the epic B&H.

Last week I had a photography assignment shooting a corporate event at the Nam Hai which is between Da Nang and Hoi An, Vietnam. I have to say the Nam Hai is pretty amazing and I have had the privilege of staying there so I know it rocks. My assignment was pretty straight forward and my clients and subjects were really great to work with. As with all assignments you get a couple of hours of down time so I went around taking some images of this beautiful place. There are a some amazing resorts in Hoi An and Da Nang but for me I am hooked on the Nam Hai, but have heard the Fusion is pretty good. Later this year I have another 2 photography assignments down in Da Nang and Hoi An and hopefully with a little downtime I will be able to take some more images of these other resorts. As always thanks for looking.

Tube Mogul Research

These days I do my fair share of videography / multimedia / photo film or whatever you want to call it. Probably more than the average photographer and I love all the creative options it offers in being able to tell a story .

That being said, if you do start to get into this type of work you will probably run into lots more paperwork, budgets, scripts, 20 page proposals and complicated production schedules than your average photography job. Another thing I also find, is that most of my clients think they get more value for their money if they have a longer film. i.e. 10 min or 30 min.

The problem with that idea is that most of my clients don’t show their video in a movie theater or on TV, it is shown via the web with all the distractions of email, Twitter and Facebook to steal their audience away from their video. Clients love the web because it is an extremely cost effective way to publish their video to the public and it has added benefits that TV can never have like viral dissemination to help spread their message to more people than they could reach by themselves.

Most clients think that everyone will of course want to watch their video because they are amazing and if they don’t, it’s because you didn’t do a good job.

Well …… sort of.

Most of us that are hired for this type of work know how to make something that isn’t total crap, which is why they hired us to start. Where you failed in doing your job was not in the content that you created but that you didn’t convince the client to change the length of the video to something more watchable online. So as you can see this is pretty dam important. If you don’t convince your client to change their epic film ideas to something more realistic and effective they might think you did a crap job even though you didn’t.

So how do you convince your client to change their 15 min epic corporate video to a 3-5 min video?

1. Ask them when they last watched a video in full online? What kind of video was it? How long was it? If it was a corporate film or NGO film that is more than 5 min put it on in the office and wait to see how long it takes for someone to start talking. Most of the time I find people start talking in 2-3 min. AMAZING!! You prove your point right there.
2. Next show them some independent marketing research to back up your professional opinion. This helps out a lot with skeptical clients.

Ok the first part is easy and may be enough to convince your client, but sometimes …. I know wait for it…. Clients are difficult. Shocker I know!!!

So now armed with some independent marketing research on online video length you can change their mind and earn some professional respect to boot. But wait! Where is this marketing research your telling me about??? Well it is below so stay with me.

Back in old 2008 a great photography professor at the University of San Francisco, Ken Kobre, found some companies that published their research about the length of time people will watch online videos. Now you won’t find this awesome research on his new site but thank god he didn’t delete his old blog and you can still see his informative blog post here: http://kobrechannel.blogspot.com/2009/01/whats-perfect-online-video-length.html

Now I wouldn’t tell a client that “Ken Kobre says this and that,” even though he is my hero for publishing this great post. I would point them or give them a link to Tube Mogul. Tube Mogul is the company that did the research and they would be the authority http://www.tubemogul.com/research/report/18

I also like the other research that Kobre found from another source but strangely enough their website doesn’t work anymore.

Finally, I have found some other peoples thoughts about this topic that is more current than 2008. Here are the quotes:

Jeff Misenti – VP of Fox News Digital – “the drop-off (watching vid online) after 90 sec is pretty severe.”

Joel Schwartzberg, – A director at PBS digital – “[he] cites attention span of 3 minutes for video.”

Anyways, I hope this helps you out on your next web video project. If you have any comments, strategies or other research you use to convince your clients to change the length of their video, please share them below in the comments.

I went to the Red River to talk to some people there and ran into a really nice boat captain. Even though he didn’t really know where I could find stuff related to my topic he did his best in explaining some places he thought I might be interested in going.

I first came across him as he was sitting on his barge checking himself out in the mirror. I proceeded to go over to him and after a chat he allowed me to take his portrait. One of the great things working on a new project is all the people you meet on the way. Some good, some bad but the adventure and experiences in the process are one of the many gifts a new project brings.