This is a bit of an unusual post as I am unable to reveal the client for this assignment but it was a fantastic shoot and I’m keen to share the way that we went about it as some of the final concepts were heavily influenced by documentary style images that I shot during scouting and this is different to how I have worked before.
The client came to me through my agency Noi Pictures and after reviewing my portfolio they set up a call with me. During the call they made it clear that they felt that my authentic style aligned perfectly with their branding and a few days later the job was confirmed.
They were looking for lifestyle images that captured real people in the moment, with natural movement and expressions and they wanted to shoot in real locations. It was also important to see the surroundings of the locations that we shot in so that we would get an idea of where the subjects in our images were from.
During our initial conversation a lot of their ideas revolved around locations in Ho Chi Minh City but as I am based in Hanoi we decided it would be more efficient to shoot the project in Hanoi. The concepts revolved around payment solutions, wholesale transactions at a farm or marketplace, meetings between financial professionals in cafes and a scene where a government official was leaving work and I’ll break down each of the 5 scenes below.
Male Financial Professionals | Hanoi Train Street
Scene Description: Two well-dressed but artistic financial entrepreneurs in their 30s-50s enjoy coffee in Hanoi’s Old Quarter Train Street. It is dusk, and the light of an iPad reflects into one of the subject’s faces. We see hints of Vietnam - The low tables and chairs, a motorbike, passersby.
Hanoi’s Train Street came up as a possible location in early conversations and I visited a number of cafes during an initial scout and one cafe stood out to me as it was near a level crossing and both my client and I liked the idea of having passing motorbike traffic in the background.
I passed the cafe again a few days later with Noi Pictures producer Lan and the owners were happy to have us shoot there. As it was getting dark I captured the below shot of the cafe owners and the client loved it so we decided to recreate this shot on the shooting day.
Whilst the scouting shot had a great composition we needed to work out a way to light the hip financial professionals so that they popped from the image. Usually I would use a large grided softbox and place it as close the subject as possible and then take some shots without it in frame so that I can easily remove it in post production but with such a wide shot and with the ambient light changing constantly throughout dusk this seemed too risky so I decided to use a bare head with a 20 degree honeycomb grid on it that reduced the spread of the light so that it only hit the talent. My assistant Phan Anh came also came up with the idea to mount two c-stand arms together so that we could boom the light into shot as much as possible and I used a Godox AD-H600B extension head so as to reduce the weight on the end of the c-stand. I then had a large grided softbox filling in the shadows to the right of frame and both lights had 1/2 CTO gels on them so that they blended in with the cafe lights in the scene. To remove the green cast coming through the window we put a black cutter up so the fluorescent lights inside the cafe didn’t light the corner of the room visible in shot and I bounced a bare head with a full CTO gel on off the roof so as to have a tungsten glow coming through the window instead. We also swapped also swapped out the table and cleared up the clutter in the background.
The client has been keen to have a motorbike in the image so we had parked motorbike out the front of the cafe but I captured a passing motorbike during the shoot so that was dropped in and and the parked motorbike was removed. In the final image I’ve also chosen a slightly different moment for the talent as I preferred the coffee cups that we started with and I thought that the light in the earlier images looked more realistic.
We also did some shots of the financial entrepreneurs walking along the tracks together, a shot of them greeting and some solo shots of them with and without devices.
Payments Solutions | Long Bien Bridge
Scene Description: City girl stops momentarily to buy produce on the Long Bien bridge from farmer. Farmer has an abundance of vegetables and although modestly dressed, she is dignified in her body language.
This scene was to be used to depict payment situations between everyday people and small business owners and my client required me to shoot both cash transactions and phone to phone transactions. The original idea revolved around a market scenario but I visited the bridge to scout locations for another of the initial scene ideas and below are some of the images that captured my clients imagination and helped to build on their idea.
The Long Bien Bridge was opened in 1903 and it has a railway line in the centre and narrow motorbike only strip of tarmac either side of the train tracks. The bridge crosses the Red River and there is an island in the middle of the river which is full of agricultural land. Every afternoon farmers bring vegetables up to the bridge which they sell to passing motorcyclists as they leave the city during peak hour.
After confirming the location I visited again with Lan and she spoke to some of the sellers whom said that there are different sellers there every day but that if we bought all of their vegetables that they would be happy for us to shoot there. As it’s a motorbike only bridge we decided to drive onto the island and park our van under the bridge so that we could get my equipment as close as possible to the location.
We used 2 professional talent for the city girl and the seller in the foreground and on arrival at the location Lan spoke to the sellers on the bridge and negotiated with them to stand in as extras in the background and I think that this made the shot feel more authentic.
We kept the shot list really simple and decided to shoot just the 2 angles with the more complicated wide shot at dusk and a tighter version shot earlier before the light started to fade.
To light the dusk image I used a china ball with a 1/2 CTO gel on it to light the city girl and the farmer and I once again boomed it out using the double c-stand arm and extension head technique that I described earlier. I also had a large soft box filling the shadows to the right of frame. For the extra’s I wanted the light coming from behind so I relied on passing motorbikes and I got lucky when a motorbike pulled up to buy some vegetables and perfectly lit up the three extras towards the back of the image. The lighting for the talent was not ideal for the passing motorbikes as it froze both their motorbikes and their faces and I didn’t want these people to be recognisable so every few minutes I switched the flash off and captured long exposures so as to capture a range of blurred traffic that I would be able to use for this part of the image.
The final image ended up being a composite of 5 frames with one for the city girl, one for the main farmer, an image for the farmer directly behind the main farmer so that she was looking away from camera, an image with the perfectly lit extras in the background and then a slow shutter image without flash for the motorbike on the left of frame. In the final image I turned on the motorbike lights, cleaned a few distracting objects and removed the logos on the scooter and below is a gallery showing the retouching progression as I added each frame and then did the final retouch.
For the afternoon images I used available light and traffic was much lighter making it easier to communicate with the talent and allowing me to capture plenty of frames where there was not any recognisable faces in the background of the image.
Government Official | Hanoi Opera House
Scene Description: Formal Thai mid-40’s female regulatory officer leaves work. She walks briskly, holding and looking at a document, possibly while on talking on her phone, obviously still working on official business. This location should feel situated in SE Asia region and an environment where government officials are seen. Avoid monumental signage, but retain general cultural/aesthetic.
Shooting this scene at a government building would have involved a lot of red tape so I suggested that we shoot it at the Hanoi Opera House which was built by the French colonial administration between 1901 and 1911. The concrete facade is similar to many government buildings in Asia and my client felt that it was perfect as well.
During my first visit to the building it was crowded with tourists but I visited again at dawn and it was deserted so we decided to shoot this concept early in the morning. We worked with one main talent and we had 3 extras that we used in the background. The lighting was fairly simple with a large 120cm Octabox as a main light and then I had a 120cm Photek Softlighter as a hair light and the widest image was done with natural light once the sunlight started to bounce into shot from the opposite buildings.
Female Financial Professionals | Tadioto
Scene Description: Two well-dressed and modern financial professionals in their 30s-50s talk in a cafe. The women have just arrived for lunch and they greet one another before entering for coffee.
After our initial scout we had planned to shoot this scene at a second location at Hanoi Train Street but I didn’t feel that it felt sophisticated enough for modern financial professionals so I suggested to my client that we shoot this scene at Tadioto which is a hip cafe/bar and arts space near the Hanoi Opera House. My client thought it worked well so long as we framed it to make it look like a cafe.
To light the images I had a few large soft boxes in the interior so as to make sure that I had detail inside and I also made sure to light the talent from behind so as to create a hair light and help them to pop from the image. For most of the outside shots I placed a large softbox just outside of frame so as to fill in the shadows.
End User at Marketplace | Dau Moi Phia Nam Market
Scene Description: Restaurant buyer purchases a large quantity of local fruit or vegetables for his restaurant. Farmer weighs the produce and receives the money via cell phone-to-cell phone transaction.
We had originally planned to shoot this scene at a beautiful spice market in Hanoi’s old quarter but Lan’s production assistant turned up to the location the day before the shoot to find that the seller’s who’s shop we had agreed to shoot at had come down with Covid and her stall was closed so we had to postpone the shoot. We delayed the shoot and the next morning Lan and I visited two wholesale markets and for the most part I found them too busy or messy to shoot in but over the road from the second market I spotted a line of stalls selling coconut juice and behind their stalls were huge piles of coconuts that I liked the look of so Lan chatted to them and they agreed to let us shoot there.
On arrival at the location though there was a fraction of the coconuts on display as there had been during our scout and we had to wait around for some time until the store owner was able to build it like it had been on the scouting day.
In northern Vietnam coconuts are usually transported by motorbike in large plastic bags which are not very attractive but I had found some reference images from southern Vietnam where coconuts are tied onto the motorbike so Lan had asked the market stall owners to prepare this for us. By the time everything was ready it was getting extremely hot it was clear that the market stall owners did not want us using their store for too long so I shot everything hand held and I used natural light so as to get through the shot list as quickly as I could.
I had a fantastic time working on this shoot and I really enjoyed the pre production process which involved many zoom conversations with my client as we developed ideas and ironed out the details of the shoot. I couldn’t have done it without the wonderful team at Noi Pictures who did a fantastic job with casting, wardrobe, hair and makeup and securing the locations. I’m also very thankful to my assistants Phan Anh and Khanh who kept my gear secure and helped bring the ideas to life during two long shooting days.
