📸 Photo series #15: Sleeplessness as a driving force of creativity
Street photographer: Andrés Ramos Palacios
Hi everyone,
Before exploring Saigon’s notorious night life, we are pleased to share an update following the recent poll in our previous edition. Thanks to your valuable input, we're excited to announce the upcoming launch of Collect&Share 🎉. It's still in its early stages, but we promise to reveal more details soon.
📣 We appreciate your engagement and for that reason, we offer you the chance to be the first one on stage! If you collect street photography in any forms, please send us a message via the StoryDrops instagram account, right here.
For now, let's discover the work of Andrés Ramos Palacios, a talented Spanish photographer who captured a remarkable photo series in Vietnam while battling insomnia. Truly exceptional!
Make yourself comfortable with a good coffee and enjoy the photos! ☕️
Sleepless in Saigon by Andrés Ramos Palacios
⏱️ Reading time: 5 min
This photo series emerged unplanned one night close to Christmas Eve 2023. I made a technical stop in Saigon during my trip and made the mistake of booking a room on one of the noisiest and wild streets in the city: Bui Vien Street. My bed was literally shaking from the nearby speakers and finally, resigned, I went out onto the street with my camera, taking along the flash I had just bought in Calcutta that was still brand new.
I spent a large portion of the sleepless night wandering the main street and adjacent alleys, photographing whoever I came across. At first with some hesitance, and later on, as spirits lifted, flashing right in the partygoers' faces in true Bruce Gilden style.
It took me a few months to return to that vast catalog of photos and, when I did, I found a whole compilation of crazy, strange, tumultuous scenes. These shots make up this series with a tone, theme, and aesthetic that are uncommon in my photography, but they made me glad to have spent that restless night in Saigon.
Written and shot by Andrés Ramos Palacios.
Who’s behind the lens?
Describe yourself as a photographer and where you are based
I was born in Spain and from a very young age I felt the desire to travel the world in the manner of the great African expeditionaries and romantic travel writers. I studied computer engineering and during the first years I combined periods of work in Madrid with long trips, especially in Asia, my favorite continent. Nowadays I am fortunate enough to do both at the same time and I could say that I am a full time traveler.
Although at the beginning I felt the vocation of writing, to which I dedicated quite a few years of my life, in recent years I discovered photography, which made me decide to devote all my creative effort to it, abandoning what I thought was going to be my life project. To this day I do not regret the change.
My first steps were with travel photography. But I soon discovered another type of vision that immediately fascinated me: street photography, where we try to capture candid and extraordinary moments (in a more universal sense than in travel photography). I love the difficulty that this discipline entails and the minuscule success ratio that is achieved, demanding from the photographer an infinite perseverance and a precise and trained eye, and turning each successful shot into a life event.
Your favorite camera and lens
Sony a6300 + 28mm.
Your favorite places to shoot
India, Vietnam, Hong Kong.
According to you, what makes a good picture
The aesthetic (color + light), combined with an interesting or unusual subject, or an scene with an storytelling component.
Your favorite photographers and where you get inspired.
I would name three. The first is Joel Meyerowitz, whose bustling scenes of New York, depicting the day-to-day of hundreds of little stories, still captivate my gaze every time I walk the streets of a big city. Through this photographer, I came to know one of his disciples, Melissa O'Shaughnessy, also focused on New York, and whose incredible aesthetics, capture of meaningful small details, and instinct for light seem unparalleled to me. Lastly, a classic: Alex Webb, whose work I always keep in mind during my trips to faraway countries.
Portfolio and/or social media links
Portfolio : https://thevagabondeye.com/
Instagram : @andresrp81
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I just checked and see that Melissa O'Shaughnessy has a Substack account, but she hasn't posted yet. It would be worth contacting her to see if she is interested in discussing her work.
There are a great many amazing women street photographers, but their work isn't as well known as it deserves to be. Anyone reading this might want to check out her works and other women street photographers at https://www.womenstreetphotographers.com/photographers-v#/melissa-oshaughnessy/
Excellent. I wrote my last Substack post at 4:00 am. Insomniacs unite!
I second Andrés choice of photographers to follow and learn from. Melissa O'Shaughnessy (her book, "Perfect Strangers" is very good) studied under Joel Meyerowitz, who, from all accounts, is a very generous teacher and mentor. He also writes well about street photography (Bystander: A History of Street Photography is elegant and very useful). And, for colour, Alex Webb is hard to beat.