Some couples are camera-shy. Some have a hard time being intimate in front of the camera. Not Ming and Hang. By the end of our shoot in Halong Bay, when we would ask them to kiss they were already at it, almost oblivious to the camera. In fact, a few times we had to ask them to stop so we could move ahead with another shot.
The day almost didn’t happen, as it was pouring rain when I awoke at 6am. Aidan called Vinh, our good friend and junkboat captain in Halong Bay, and Vinh advised us to postpone the shoot, as it looked like it would rain all day. Not one to argue with a seasoned mariner’s sense of weather, I suggested to our bride, Hang, that we reschedule. Since she had already been up since 4:30 to prepare for the day, she was understandably reluctant, and after a brief consultation with her family, decided to go for it.
Luckily, Hang’s intuition was spot-on. Our first few hours on the boat were heavily overcast, but the rain had already stopped and we could at least shoot above deck. And by the time we reached the beach, the sun popped out, giving us some beautiful late afternoon light to work with as Ming and Hang stepped into the water. Finally, sailing back to shore we got a brief but beautiful sunset. Everything worked out amazingly well, which leaves us with a few valuable lessons. 1- Never postpone or cancel unless absolutely necessary (ie: maybe shooting in a typhoon will actually produce great, unique images) and 2 – always trust a woman’s intuition.
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