THE CLAPPCOLUMN
Hanoi, Vietnam. 11:51am. 14 August 2022
After travelling two hours, David discovers the location was so much smaller than expected, and then weather took a turn for the worse…
Have you ever looked at a house on an estate agent's website, then when you viewed the house, find out it's much smaller than you'd thought, and realize you were the victim of a super wide-angle lens? I'm sure it's happened to us all. This was the case when I arrived at a surprisingly compact and bijou incense factory in Vietnam, and what happened afterwards prompted some super fast decision making, and arguably the best shot of the trip.
It’s the beginning of August in Vietnam and Rach and I have arrived in Hanoi. We are going to join a tour with my friend (and fellow Canon photographer) Julian Elliott, taking in as many cities that coincidentally begin with the letter H. The huge metropolis of Hanoi is first up, but we will soon clock up Hue, Ho-Chi-Minh and Hoi-An.
CANON PRO CLAPP
Lens Canon EF 100-400mm f/4-5.6L IS II USM
Exposure 1/30 sec, f/16, ISO800
After arriving a couple of days early we have endured two solid days of torrential rain. Surprisingly, it has been welcome relief from this summer’s drought, but after wearing a rain cape during a storm, my sodden trainers have lead to suspected trench-foot. The novelty is wearing off fast.
Another sodden dawn shoot, this time at a flower market, leads to some amusing video, but that’s about it. The bus takes us back to the hotel for breakfast and then we tool up again. The rain cover for my Thinktank bag's been extremely useful.
We spend the morning at a pottery village and meeting an elderly gentleman who makes bamboo fish traps (pictured above). This is the tourist trail; what you do is try and adapt it into brilliant photos. We have a delightful morning in conversation thanks to our excellent guide, Trang, who takes us on another journey through the countryside, this time to visit an incense factory, where they make incense sticks.
In my mind, I am confused. I cannot work out for the life of me what place will look like. I have seen the sea of cerise pink domes in travel guides before, but what are they like this? How big is this place? It has to be huge. Wrong.
We drive down an ordinary street and park outside a fenced enclosure. The gates swing open and there it is – the sea of cerise pink. Okay, let’s rephrase that to a
