The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep looking.
- Brooks Atkinson, USA
It was a nasty hot day in Hoi An, South Central Coast of Vietnam. Sleepy town by architecture, surprising underlying tone of hard bargaining vendors, lazy tourists, generous fruit sellers, newly weds taking studio shots by the river bank (don't even get me to begin on why but I guess different strokes for different folks, and by the way, they were dressed up to look like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette), hidden gems of a local pho shop, and a really friendly (and happy) old sampan paddler making a fantastic poster boy - all a heady mix by the next few hours.
I was curious about the city's bestowed World Heritage title by UNESCO as a well-preserved example of a Southeast Asian trading port of the 15th-19th Century. It's a tad too sleepy for me but it's also closely similar to Beihai in Beijing, what not with its meandering river, small ancient shops spreading in a massive crossword puzzle layout, and the chirpy ringing of the bypassing cyclist. Just factor in the energy level down by a 10 notch.
What was an enthusiastic photographer carrying a bagful of expectations and gears looking out for her next composition? To be honest, I probably didn't quite live up to what my art expected of me. It was humbling. I arrived at Hoi An's barren communist-styled airport (imagine hangars masquerading as arrival / immigration halls) armed with an overriding confidence that I'll shoot some real National Geographic moments of tribal ladies, long winding stretches of green marshlands, come home with fantastic angles of limestone towers, locking in precious moments of sandy days in between those round half-cut watermelon looking fishing boats.
By noon time I was in a real slum panic cocktail of a mood. The light was too harsh, my throat was aching for some nice cool respite, my tummy was lambasting me for not tucking into that extra tempting bowl of pho. I still hadn't had my shot yet. You know the one that saved your entire day's work. Like all those long minutes sitting in the bus, enduring a really bad karaoke session by the local tour guide of broken English and half-baked attempts at hiding her Vietnamese accent? I wished she would give herself a break and just kept quiet. I did give her some tip because I was a sorry poppy that felt bad for her to have to molest that microphone to make a living... and realised that the one shot made it all worth it - for you.
This old man saw me from afar. I saw him and knew it was that shot. He gently paddled up close and I smiled from above the stone bridge. No words. We understood.
I look back at this shot and it wasn't the temple, it wasn't the kitten hiding inside the gifts' cabinet, it wasn't the extra bowl of pho I didn't have. This was my shot. You just never give up looking.
Because you just don't do it that way. That shot is always there.
