Air Pollution And Travel Photography In Saigon, Vietnam

Travel books already warn you plenty about air pollution and insane traffic conditions namely motorbikes in Saigon, Vietnam. Crossing the street must be done with caution and with confidence.

Step 1 is to master the ability to give up the will to live and walk into life speeding traffic. The rest is easy.
When (if) a reasonable gap occurs in the flow of traffic precede as far as possible, stop if necessary, precede again. In case no gap occurs do the same as above.

Literally walking into fast, noisy, honking traffic goes against basic human survival instinct but it is the only way to cross the road.

The pedestrian’s lack of confidence and indecisiveness will confuse motorbike riders and can cause accidents.
If the above formula is followed they will know how to avoid hitting you by experience.

Masks are pretty much a must but not everyone wears them. One of the most misleading travel stories I ever read was about why only women wear the masks. The writer said it was to prevent suntan due to the status symbol pale skin represents.

He was right about what pale skin represents but plenty of men wear masks and it is against air pollution!

There are just so many air pollution photos one can take and post but the girl in the following photo looks cute under the mask so she made the cut:

It is fun to play with different shutter speeds when photographing traffic sometimes the blur can have an artistic painting like effect.

I had a good time shooting the next two photos but I did it without a mask. After shooting 20-30 minutes in rush hour traffic I could feel my lungs burning even though I lived in Los Angeles, Saigon’s smog is some potent stuff!

To get into this slightly elevated vintage point I climbed up about 5 feet because the photos shot from ground level were not giving back what I was seeing. A still photo cannot really reflect the insane way this intersection was operating.
It was an added distraction to the commuters see me (a foreigner hanging off of a utility pole) photographing them.

There were traffic lights (10 o’clock position on first photo) but they were not working.
This sea of motorbikes and bicycles were one speeding, noisy, suffocating mess. It can be seen best on the 2nd photo how all traffic from all directions enters the intersection at the same time, this goes on all day.

The location or should I say my position on the street for the next four photos is interesting to me.
I have never been to Asia so before I left for this trip I had no frame of reference of how to plan many aspects of my photography.

One exception was that I knew I wanted to take photos looking into traffic head on by finding a medium on the road which would divide the two opposing lanes so I would not be in the traffic.

After arriving to Vietnam I kept looking for the right spot and this one prove to be a perfect find.
From this viewpoint where I could stay as long as I wanted I got a nice perspective of the road behind the traffic and yes the people are coming right at me!

One thing I try to remember is to never stay too long at one place so after leaving my perfect shooting spot I went on the bridge which was right behind me gaining another perspective at the same stretch of road looking down on it this time.
Fortunately the orange cone and orange working outfit added great color to the photo.

For me photos like this are best to take soon after arriving because it is so typical and part of the every day life that even the tourist gets used to it and may not even remember photographing such a subject.

Kids are cute even if they are photographed in horrifically polluted city.
At the time I took the first photo I did not even see the cute bear face drawing on the child’s pollution mask.

The second photo is fantastic … 5 and counting … room for one more kid? There is always room for one more!

Notice the hermetically sealed kid on the third! Hope she can breathe!

I sat on the curb so I could look up on a very typical Saigon architecture, added the once again typical huge bundle of electrical wires, one dose of motorbike traffic and clicked.

The next 4 photos were taken through the window of a taxi. I though might as well make it a productive 20 minutes and it was a good chance to practice fast composition which is still new to me compared to the slower pace of model photography.

These turned out best, on the last photo the lady wearing red with the red container works for a delivery company I was told.

Noticed I did not wish Merry Christmas? Not only that not everyone celebrates Christmas I have an even better all encompassing name for the holidays.

How about Happy Time Of The Year When Some People Spend Enough Money On Stupid Crap To Feed And Clothe A Vietnamese Family For A Decade. ;)