Ban Mi sandwich is a must try in Vietnam. They are truly delicious. 'Tis proper bread how the French showed them. Plus Vietnamese sausage is very filling and more appetizing than you can imagine. Close up of my half-eaten sandwich 'Ban Mii' or however it is spelt ... there could be a few variations. Next, tiny shots of blow-your-head-clean-off espresso are all the rage in Vietnam. Boy, do they like it to have a kick. A bridge, with the city spreading out before us. In the city area of Da Nang, there isn't much to see apart from the river and bridge as far as I could tell on this visit anyway. The Dragon Bridge is a bit of a tourist attraction here, and has light shows and fire breathing coming out the heads at night time. Here I turned it into my own day time alien city ... just going crazy with photo editing tools. But is it art? A quiet leafy street presents this muted yet colorful city dwellings. It has a very cosmopolitan feel to it all. Street scences. A neat little Honda Supercub. Troops land in Danang during the Vietnam war. Exact hill backdrop in the next photo ... so we know the location is accurate. Room with a view can be had here for a very low price. Hills in the background - see previous image! That's some extreme flipping of settings. I do like how it came out, perhaps it would be interesting to turn this into a large print or t-shirt, I'm quite tempted to try ...
Post Processing
That is, to take a digital photo and then add to it in 'post' - after the fact. In other words, loading it up in an editor and going wild with the pots. Turning brilliance, saturation, exposure this way and that into strange new combinations. In some cases, gentle tweaks bring the image defination and atmosphere. In extreme cases, we're presented with a totally 'broken' image. However it's also the latter which can produce some digital art level results. I never considered myself an artist, although definitetly creative. Would others maybe pass off these images as art? Am I doing myself an injustice?
Coming up with a new tagline
'Amateur photographer and post-dials twiddler' seems to be descriptive enough from looking at these images. One of them is a historical image, so no I did not travel back in time nor am I so old that I was there when US troops landed in DaNang bay. I was looking up the history when I found the B&W image here. Then studied it whilst looking out my hotel window, I can see the exact same line of the mountains in the background. This inspired me to appreciate how much different this beach town/small city must have been back then.
If You Only Have 30 Minutes in Vietnam
Just get hold of a Bahn My sandwich and some vietnamese coffee. You can check the box and grab a t-shirt on the way out.
