Michael S. Liberman

Southeast Asia Day 3: Ho Chi Minh City

At the Liberty Hotel Saigon Parkview …

After a day and a half of flying and a day to recuperate, we’re jet lag free and on our first day of seeing the sights around Ho Chi Minh City.

On the two hour bus ride to the Cu Chi Tunnels, tour guide Khoi shares the moving about a US vet who came back to visit Vietnam last year. They journeyed together through the country so the former soldier could find the village where he served and greeted a former North Vietnamese soldier who fought against him in the same area.

The Cu Chi Tunnels were used by the North Vietnamese to become a shadow army living almost right underneath US and South Vietnamese forces. We were able to crawl through the same tunnels to see how they lived and fought using the hundreds of kilometers long tunnel system.

Next a visit to the War Remnants Museum to learn about the Vietnam perspective of what is known to the Vietnamese people as the “American War.” The exhibits within the museum capture the atrocities of the war and the use of Agent Orange.

Then we visited the opulent grounds and meeting rooms of Independence Palace, the office and home South Vietnam’s President during the Vietnam War.

After visiting the Ming Phuong Lacquer Workshop and the Post Office, Mickey, Donna, Shannon, and I stopped at a place near our hotel to get foot massages.

The amazing food continues in Vietnam. Dinner at Viet Heritage was great. Beef, pork, and seafood – some of the best food we have had while traveling.

After dinner we sample the Ho Chi Minh City night life at the Bui Vien Walking Street. It’s lined with clubs and full of people, street vendors, and fire eaters.

Tomorrow we visit the Mekong Delta.

 

 

Southeast Asia Day 2: Ho Chi Minh City Arrival

Enjoying a beer at the Huong Vy street cafe …

Sin Ciao from Ho Chi Minh City!

Our flight into Hong Kong was delayed by snow as we left Boston, so we arrived in Hong Kong an hour late. But just enough time to board Cathay Pacific flight 767 from Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City. We get through immigrations then meet up with Mickey and Donna at baggage claim. Outside of the airport we are greeted by our Vietnamese tour guide – Khoi.

Khoi tells us what the next few days will be like and give us some tips for getting around the city. Most important – how to cross the street. There is very limited traffic control, so pedestrians have to move across the street purposefully, and never backup!

Next we check in at Liberty Hotel Saigon Parkview, have lunch at Ben Thanh market, high octane Vietnamese coffee at Trung Nguyen Legend, afternoon cocktails at the Rex Hotel roof top Saloon, and happy hour at Huong Vy. The best way to beat jet lag is to hang out with your fellow travelers and share travel stories.

Tonight we head out to dinner and tomorrow we see the Ho Chi Minh City landmarks.

Southeast Asia Day 1: Boston to Hong Kong

Onboard Cathay Pacific flight 811 from Boston to Hong Kong somewhere over the Arctic Circle…

First Greg showed up at Logan. Then Peter and Shannon came after Shannon’s birthday dinner. Soon all 18 members of the group traveling from Boston were ready to go with Mickey and Donna departing from LAX and meeting us in Ho Chi Minh City after a layover in Taiwan. After traveling on my own for the previous 24 hours it’s good to see everyone and reconnect.

At about 1a boarding started for our flight. A soon as we sat down in our seats the captain announced that the light snow that had been falling all evening was now too heavy for take off. A 30 minute delay. Eventually the snowfall eased up, but by the time the de-icing process was completed we didn’t take off until 3a. Not the way you want to start a 15 hour fight.

Now you would think that the plan for this long overnight flight departing at 3a would be to get some sleep, but instead the cabin crew served dinner … at 4a in the morning. Truth be told, I was kind of hungry and really enjoyed the chicken with jasmine rice. After dinner – and a glass of wine – I did manage to get some sleep.

No WiFi on this fight. My plan was to post this update when we got to Hong Kong … but with the really quick layover I’m posting this from baggage claim at the Ho Chi Minh City airport.

Southeast Asia: DC to Boston

At Logan Airport …

A serious winter storm threatened to delay my Wednesday travel plans from Dulles to Logan, so I made a last minute flight change and flew to Boston late Tuesday night.

With a lift to Dulles from Sonia and Rebecca covering our Tuesday night work commitment, I made it to Boston at 11:30p last night and was sound asleep at the nearby Courtyard Marriott by 1a.

It’s really cold in Boston and I didn’t bring clothes suitable for outside cold-weather adventures, so I hung out at the hotel and rested up for the trip ahead. And also watched a couple of Game of Thrones episodes as I work through rewatching the entire series in advance of the final season premiere in April.

Our departure isn’t until 1:30a tonight, so for dinner I grab an Old Fashioned and Cobb Salad at Dine Boston Bar and Grill. Soon my fellow travelers will arrive at Logan. There will be lots of friendly faces. I’ve traveled with each of the 20 people in our group on previous trips.

More tomorrow as we head to Vietnam. But first a 15+ hour flight to Hong Kong!

India Gear and Workflow Overview

Workflow is back!

Every trip requires a carefully considered pack list that aligns the demands of international shooting locations with the willingness to carry a certain amount of equipment.  And every trip generates a good deal of data from a variety of sources.  Packing and carrying the right gear requires careful planning and tracking, backing up, and using the resulting assets requires a solid workflow.  So, as I did for Cuba, Peru, Galapagos, and South Africa, here is an overview of the gear I carried to India and the photo and video workflow I used to handle the assets when I returned.

Travel Gear

I brought along mostly the same gear for India that I’ve used on recent trips:

• Nikon D750 24 MP FX DSLR: The D750 is a great travel camera!  Although it’s tempting to upgrade to the D850 – 4K video would be useful and that touchscreen display looks pretty cool – I’m not really ready to deal with the file size generated by a 45 megapixel camera.  And while the compact size of mirrorless cameras is tempting for travel, I think the autofocus systems of the smaller cameras isn’t quite advanced as the autofocus systems offered by full-size DSLRs – so I’m sticking with the D750 for now.
• NIKKOR 28-300mm AF-S f/3.5-5.6G ED VR Travel Zoom: I really enjoying traveling with this lens.  Great image quality and range from a single lens in a size that’s easy to carry on planes, trains, ships, buses, and just walking down the street.  So good, this was the only lens I brought to India.  On previous trips I carried either the 24mm f1.4 or the 16-35mm f/4.  But in India I knew that we would be in a very dusty environment.  In fact, we arrived in Delhi in the middle of a dust storm and the Ranthambore National Park tiger reserve is notoriously dusty.  For this reason I opted to bring a single lens and avoid the temptation of any lens changes in poor conditions.  I did consider bringing the 200-500mm f/5.6E.  It would have been perfect to capture the tigers in Ranthambore.  But I wasn’t sure we would actually see tigers (wrong), and I was concerned about lugging a 5+ pound lens around the subcontinent for two weeks – only to use it for a few hours on safari.  And bringing the 200-500mm f/5.6E would have also meant bringing a different camera bag.
• DJI OSMO Mobile 2: A new addition for travel, this gimbal/stabilizer provides a great platform for silky smooth video, timelapse, and hyperlapse sequences.  And the DJI OSMO Mobile 2 internal battery can be used as a smartphone charger.  Always handy on travel to carry a device that can serve two purposes!
• Apple iPhone 8:  For using the WordPress app to write and post blog updates while on the road and as the camera/viewfinder for the DJI OSMO Mobile 2.  I held off buying a replacement for my iPhone 6S for as long as I could.  The iPhone 6S battery went bad last June.  While I was usually ending the day with about 40% left on the battery, after the battery went bad I was recharging in the middle of the day.  Not good.  Apple had previously replaced the 6S following a prior battery failure, but was a little more stingy this time around.  And I wasn’t interested in buying another iPhone 6S with a suspect battery, so it was on to the iPhone 8.
• Vanguard Kinray Lite 45 backpack: Holds a full frame camera and a couple of lenses with ease and enough room leftover for a creatively-packed change of clothes.  Works for carrying photo gear on a plane and as a daypack moving through the daily itinerary.  A great travel bag, but unfortunately no longer made by Vanguard.
• Newtrent Travelpak+ travel battery and USB charger: I keep this in the bag during the day to charge the iPhone.  At night it’s an iPhone charger.  Great travel accessory, but no longer made by Newtrent.  I’m looking for a replacement because I know this won’t last forever.  I’ll let you know if I find anything.
• Monster Power Outlets To Go travel extension cord: This short cord extension is all that’s needed.  Includes three outlets to plugin a couple of camera battery chargers and the Newtrent Travelpak+ for overnight camera battery charging.  And a USB port to charge the iPhone 8 and the DJI OSMO Mobile 2.
• Nikon ME-1 microphone: I don’t use this as often as I should.  The Aokatec AK-G750 GPS receiver must be removed from the D750 accessory terminal in order the plug in the ME-1.  But much better than the D750 internal mic and great for windy conditions.
• Batteries and chargers

Memory Card and File Management

For the India trip I brought along two 64GB 1000x Lexar Professional SDXC Class 10 cards and two 64GB 600x Lexar Professional SDHC Class 10 cards – the same cards and configuration I used in Cuba.

Nikon D750 DSLR with Lexar 64GB SDXC Cards

Each 64GB card holds about 1,500 12-bit NEF files. (See 14-bit vs 12-bit RAW – Can You Tell The Difference at Photography Life.) I used a 64GB card in slot 1 of the D750 to store NEF raw photo files. In slot 2 I used a 64GB card with the D750 set to store large size JPEG normal quality backups at about 10.2MB per image.

About halfway through the trip, I swapped out the initial set of SD cards for the second set. At the end of the trip, between the D750 and the iPhone 8, I ended up with 1,476 picture files totaling 27.96GB. That’s a shooting rate of about 134 per day – higher than my average of 100 photos per day on international trips – but not unexpected with two safari days on this trip.

In addition to JPEG backups, I used the slot 2 card for movie files and ended up with 399 movie files totaling 29.69GB. The movie file count includes DJI OSMO Mobile 2 and iPhone 8 movie files for some additional video, hyperlapse, and timelapse sequences.

WordPress Blog Updates

For the daily trip blog updates I used the D750’s built-in Wi-Fi to connect via the Nikon Wireless Mobile Utility installed on my phone.  Once connected it was easy to select pictures to transfer to the phone, and then incorporate those photos in the daily trip blog updates using the WordPress Mobile App.  Internet access in India was actually pretty good.  Fairly consistent LTE coverage or Wi-Fi access.  Much better than the frequent Wi-Fi disconnects experienced in hotel lobbies in Cuba last year.  Between uploading photos, drafting the content, and finding someone to proof (thanks Mickey and Donna!), the daily blog updates still take about an hour each day to complete.  But on travel with long bus or train rides between cities – like this trip to India – it’s great to sit back, watch the countryside go by your window, and spend some time working on the day’s blog post!

Photo Workflow

My stan­dard work­flow for pho­tos and video remains the same. I’m working with what is now known as Adobe Light­room Classic CC for photo man­age­ment and editing – using the Creative Cloud Photography plan.

India Photos in Adobe Lightroom Classic CC

The simplified version of the workflow is:

• Import as DNG (to fold­ers named by date and loca­tion)
• Delete (dupli­cates and rejects)
• Rename (by loca­tion or event with sequen­tial num­bers)
• Key­word
• Geoen­code
• Cap­tion
• Post-process

Video Workflow

Video files are dig­i­tized using Apple Final Cut Pro X to events named by date and loca­tion.  After import files are renamed by date and time. All movie clips on this trip were shot at 1080p and 60fps.

India Video Clips in Final Cut Pro X

With all trip photo and video files transferred I con­firm onsite and off­site back­ups are com­plete (using CrashPlan for Small Business to manage both backups) and then refor­mat the SDXC and SDHC cards for use on the next project.  Now it’s time to get to work on the photo gallery, book, and the trip video!