Photojournalism

Q: Night visitors

Know that this story happened a few times to me. After having some big weight on my Asian's traveling bearings, I started wild camping in my beautiful 100k stars hotel mostly every night. (...) Now, try to picture yourself: you're wild camping, in the middle of nowhere, it's night, and suddenly you see some lights and hear voices coming towards your tent! When all of that arrives at very close to your tent.. you open your tent, first the lights blinds you and you find a group of men wearing military clothes and each guy with a small or big gun on their shoulders or belts... Oulala!! Do these people speak English? Not really! Do you speak the local language? Not really either! Every time, these men were actually the local police, and coming with the duty to take me to a 'safer place'. The first time experiencing such a situation (and kinda the first minute) have been intense to me. However, I bet you that it was also very uncomfortable for the local policemen who never had a clear idea about 'who' to expect coming out of a tent in the really middle of nowhere! Experiencing such a situation can make you feel earning another rank on your traveler shoulder, and soon it became routine to me with visitors and guns at night. What happened after taking off with the police? Well, those are some other stories!

— “That would be very useful to them if they were to travel some day. Sometimes, “he added,” there is no harm in putting off a piece of work until another day.”

—The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Photojournalism is my first passion in photography and when I started this subject, photography wasn’t even an hobby to me, but just to take souvenir photos of my trips and beloved adventures (as we all do).

My great photojournalism journey started in 2010 when I first came to Southeast Asia, and at that time, I had already traveled hard around the world for 10 years in row! Actually, I arrived in Asia as a seasoned traveler.

This new continent has been a revelation to me, and related to off-the-beaten-track travels and adventures I was only looking for. My travels here were all about freedom, to seek for real adventures, being far away from cities, to immerse myself in remote villages, to encounter authentic lifestyles, to visit heritage sites, wild camping and for very long trips.

Experiencing Asia like a backpacker? No thanks, my 10 years background was already nothing about that!

I came a few times to travel (in my own way) in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, and lots of my days turned into great, or truly amazing, or even lifetime traveling experiences.
My photojournalism shots; my humble photo souvenirs, are all about documentary and candid photography, showing slight reflections of some of those great times in the remote areas I steeped in.

Quick heads up: I’ve spent more than 1 year in total wild camping during this amazing journey!!

Freedom

Coming for the first time in Asia and traveling by bus? No way!!

Even though tourist transport could never have dropped me to the remote areas I was looking to go to, freedom and being autonomous were non-negotiable conditions for the seasoned traveler I already was.

Traveling here was all about having: my own transportation, paper maps (no smartphone with GPS), a compass, a tent and my camera.
This independence and lifestyle was, and still is, my passion to travel and adventure.

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Heritage and Culture

The leg of my trips was only focused on discovering historical sites (and encountering local people): to visit world heritage sites, small pagodas found on my travel roads, checking out the “unseen sites” found on my maps. Pretty much anything related to heritage and culture.

Between my point A to B to visit, there might be 90kms, so I was driving these 90kms in a few days or weeks. It only depends whether I decided to turn left or right on a road crossing, if I came to spend a couple of days with people inviting me to their home, if my moto broke down, etc.
Anyway, a traveler supposedly always knows where he/she is going – all roads lead to Rome.

Wild Camping

No tourist accommodation in the countryside? Great, let’s camp!!

For my first trip in these countries, I was camping in pagodas for the nights. I’ve slept in many, many of them.
Then, with more and more travel experiences in these countries, I came to stay more often in people’ houses inviting me for the night, or to camp in the middle of the welcoming hamlets. Then, just wild camping in my 100k stars hotel/tent where ever I felt like it.

Note: photo captions with the 🏕 emoticon, shows the pictures I took during camping! 😉

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Photo Galleries

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Local Life and Children Scenery and Landscape Heritage and Culture Black & White Flashback! All

Photo Exhibitions

During those days of traveling, I never expected some of my photos to turn into great photojournalism photographs.

After finishing some of these trips, I sometimes came back to my home country and started doing my first photo exhibitions with my photo-journalistic / travel photos.

2014 was a great step for me in travel and photography.
At that time I went to participate as a speaker for the biggest traveler festival in France, and I ended up to win first prize their photo competition! Other than this competition was my very first one 🙂, it was very rewarding for me to find that one of my humble souvenir photos made the buzz.

More info about the competition.

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Between Travels and Adventures

I’m really fine to say that I’ve always looked to travel to places where tourists and foreigners don’t go.

During those fantastic trips, my daily concerns had nothing to do with those of a backpacker or an expat living in Asia. Looking for a wild camping spot because night is coming, has nothing to compare with looking for a bar for yourself and friends, or what to do for the weekend, or social network recommendations to “where to eat the best steak in town”, etc.!

The language barrier was also real during my trips and I’ve always enjoyed it. Did I was speaking the local languages? Barely some survival words! Do Asian people living in countryside speak English? Not at all!

In fact, this barrier was making my travel experiences very authentic with the people I was encountering: who’s the first person who comes to meet me, attention to eye contact and facial expressions, who seems to be the chief of the hamlet, who looks curious about me or very scared, etc. All of these aspects and more, were crucial to live the best experiences.
Living such situations for months and months, turned out to be incredibly rich in terms of human experiences for me.

Do the people I’ve encountered and taken photos of, even the kids, had ever encountered a westerner before me? With a little judgement: I’m really not too sure.

So yes, taking photojournalism photos wasn’t the goal of my trips. They were meant to be my souvenir photos, only.

Check out my press and media page, you'll find newspaper and magazine articles, and online posts about my travels and adventures.

Virtual Photo Gallery

As today I’m an expert in 360-degree photography, I made a cool little project that mixes my professional skills and my photojournalism shots!

The virtual gallery was created by me and showcases some of my favorite photojournalism and travel shots in an elegant an immersive way.

Check it out!

Anecdotes

Winter/Storm is coming!

I was in Laos that mid afternoon when I saw some heavy clouds in the sky, indicating that it was probably going to rain. Other than looking for my next camping spot for the night, I made it to a small hamlet and with the sneaky intention to get a roof in case of some rain. Most of the villagers were super happy -as usual- to encounter a crazy guy showing up in the complete middle of the blue! But when night came, everyone with their natural smiles on their faces and beautiful expressions of disbelief, just walked to their homes and had invited me put my tent in the middle of the hamlet. What happened 20minutes after everyone left? Guess what! Heavy rain, a big storm, thunder, lightning and some mad wind against me and my tent!!! After the start of the storm and getting only my head out of my 100k stars hotel that was already starting to flood 😆, none of the villagers had shown up to get me to an house! No-one! It’s under an unleashed sky that I took off with my tent and motorbike and ran under the closest stilted house of a family.. and where I came up to sleep (and also to really disturb) with chicken!

Night visitors

Know that this story happened a few times to me.

After having some big weight on my Asian’s traveling bearings, I started wild camping in my beautiful 100k stars hotel mostly every night.

(…) Now, try to picture yourself: you’re wild camping, in the middle of nowhere, it’s night, and suddenly you see some lights and hear voices coming towards your tent!
When all of that arrives at very close to your tent.. you open your tent, first the lights blinds you and you find a group of men wearing military clothes and each guy with a small or big gun on their shoulders or belts… Oulala!!

Do these people speak English? Not really! Do you speak the local language? Not really either!

Every time, these men were actually the local police, and coming with the duty to take me to a ‘safer place’.

The first time experiencing such a situation (and kinda the first minute) have been intense to me.
However, I bet you that it was also very uncomfortable for the local policemen who never had a clear idea about ‘who’ to expect coming out of a tent in the really middle of nowhere!

Experiencing such a situation can make you feel earning another rank on your traveler shoulder, and soon it became routine to me with visitors and guns at night.

What happened after taking off with the police? Well, those are some other stories!

100k stars hotel

Sure thing!

How amazing the sky is when camping far away from towns.
Me, I was wild camping for months and months in a row. So yes, I can definitely call my tent a “100k stars hotel”. Moreover, I had customized my tent to be able to look at the stars all night long – especially to fall asleep! 🌟

Life was beautiful.

High on music

Apart of jumping into some ‘silly’ journeys and projects, I can say that listening to music always helped me to accomplished everything I’ve done. Music always been my traveling buddy for many years.

It’s also true that I have always been better on wearing a headset than a motorbike helmet, no doubt on that.
You may do what I say, but don’t do what I do…

How fantastic this was to me when I’m already full-on in a long trip, and driving / flying downhill with my moto freewheeling and me standing on the moto’s foot pedals, listening to music and singing loud, looking super happy, overtaking people and vehicles (still standing on the moto’s foot pedals) and waving around! Similar attitude on dirt roads!
Anyway.. this is also how I found the name of my first website – Bluesky Travel.

A waterproof bullet...

An old man, someone very special to me (RIP my dear friend “Mr. Ken” ❤️), someone I met during all my adventurous trips and journeys in Southeast Asia, someone with such ground experiences he had.. came to give me the nickname of a “waterproof bullet”.

What an impression when someone starts calling you with such kind of a grateful meaning!

Indeed, it was always taking me a couple of weeks from the start of a trip before I was starting to feel more than great, completely autonomous and unstoppable into what I was doing.

Some of us (thanks life!) knows what I’ve just mentioned. Usually we can feel that with work, or when doing a project, or being in a relationship, etc., when…. the sky turns blue on everything we are doing. Yeh?

Same shit here! 🙂