ENTRY DESCRIPTION
An ethnic Ha Nhi women in the market of distant Si Lo Lau town, Phong Tho District, in Vietnam's far North.

AUTHOR
I am a retired builder who now spends his free time visiting and photographing the ethnic people's of Vietnam. I started in October 2010 when I received a bonus from my work after 25 years service and that paid for my Canon 7D and 70-200 f2.8 lens which I put into practise in South Africa that year. But I found I was more interested in photographing the people than the animals.
My wife is Vietnamese and we like to visit Vietnam two times a year and travel mainly to the North to photograph the local ethnic people. I generally only photograph the people and especially the elderly and children as landscapes do not bring the emotion that a face can give. Most of my work is not posed or set up. I prefer to shoot from a distance so the subject is not aware of me until perhaps the second I take the photo. It is always my rule to eventually show the people the photos I took, or at least a flattering one. As my wife is Vietnamese she can also engage them in conversation and that allows me to move around an take photos of them whilst they are some what distracted. It is also my policy to take with me, when returning to the same place a second time, some of the photos of the people I photographed before and give to them as my 'thank you'. Most of these poor people will never see a photo of themselves in their lifetimes.

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