I’ve been commissioned — I suppose that’s the right word — to shoot some photos of Seattle’s Little Saigon area in the next few days. It’s a project I approach with equal parts excitement and dread. Excitement, because if you look around on Flickr, you’ll see an area all dressed up and waiting for her ride to the prom — by which I mean most of the pictures are tragically dull with a capital Suck. And dread, because the tight deadline means I’ll have to behave in ways outside my comfort zone. I expect a certain amount of slack to be afforded the fish-belly in the funny hat, though; also, I’ve been doing some recon since just before Thanksgiving in order to mitigate the dread somewhat.
My patron for all this is the non-profit Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority (SCIDPDA) and their Idea Center, opening early next year in the Bush Hotel, just off Hing Hay Park. The idea behind the Idea Center is to establish a place where residents, businesses and other stakeholders can find the means to make real their neighborhood improvement projects. In addition to sponsoring a real-time photo shoot, they’re also interested in some of my shots from the west-of-5 part of the ID, which I’ve been shooting ever since I went rogue digital in 2002.
Landscapes and landmarks are all well and good. Nor is there a shortage of food porn from the area, some of it quite good, so even if I were interested I don’t think that’s particularly necessary. Food is certainly a big part of the soul of the place, but I want faces. Young, old, posed, candid, working, shopping, studying or hanging out. And with my camera, you really have to get right up their noses for a good shot. So, good luck, me, and pre-apologies to the shoppers at Hop Thanh and Lam’s Seafoods tomorrow.
Phuong Dung: Trang The (I Love You in the Moonlight)
Tags: Jackson Street · Little Saigon · SCIDPDA2 Comments
2 responses so far ↓
The TALL fishbelly in the funny hat, if you please. My friend Steve is even taller than you, and he spent many years in Korea, and he tells me that the height thing was more of a shock for most people than the white thing.
So now I know what camera you use. You’ve given away a bit of your power, boy. Although I really like the camera in my new phone. Nothing fancy, but it gets the jorb done.
The best thing about that camera in situations like this is that it’s not intimidating. People think it’s just a little P&S. Of course I want to accessorize up the yinyang, but until then it tends to put people at ease the way a big SLR couldn’t. It’s a great camera for that and many other reasons.