06-JAN-2008
Making incense, Binh Hduc, Vietnam, 2008
While traveling upriver between Long Xuyen and Chau Doc in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, we spent an hour or so visiting with people in a small village devoted entirely to the manufacture of joss sticks used in Buddhist rituals. The women would glance over at us every now and then, but were essentially focused on their task of assembling the sticks, which are used as sacrificial offerings. I base the triangular composition in the horizontal carpet of red incense sticks. The two women run up one arm of the triangle, while a tree trunk runs up the other. The woman at the bottom wears the traditional Vietnamese conical hat, while the woman on top does not. This is a small village and almost everyone who lives here seems to be in the incense business. The businesses are family enterprises, and I have a hunch that the woman on the top of this image is further up in the hierarchy than the woman at bottom. Her position at the top of the triangle may well be an appropriate one.
27-DEC-2007
Market breakfast, Dalat, Vietnam, 2007
This woman was enjoying a bowl of soup for breakfast while I made her picture. She saw me, but her mind seemed elsewhere. She wears the traditional round conical hat, so common in rural Vietnam. The hat itself takes on triangular form when perceived in a photograph, and in this case it acts as the apex of a triangular composition. The table at which she eats is filled with bowls and soups. I make that horizontal row of materials the base of a triangle. The woman rises up from it in triangular fashion, largely because of the shape of the hat she wears. She is mostly obscured in shadow with highlights on one hand and on the top of the hat. Yet that is enough to at least imply a triangular shape. I normally try to avoid placing my subjects in the center of my frame. Yet with the triangular composition and her imperious, dignified manner, the center placement is appropriately formal.
06-JAN-2008
Illumination, Long Xuyen, Vietnam, 2008
Long Xuyen is the second most prosperous town in the Mekong Delta, after Can Tho. The body language of this man in the Long Xuyen market offers a perfect complement to the geometric play of light on the wall. They join to create a triangle. The triangular composition here implies a grounded person who is in no particular hurry to do anything. The pile of stuff that surrounds him is largely subdued in shadow – the light illuminates just face, wall, and what looks like a circular bundle of straw. I was very fortunate to pass through this market at this particular moment. Any earlier or later, and this triangle would not be here.
