Vietnamese photographers have been boosting their global profile with their works being featured on National Geographic’s Instagram account.
‘Picking tea’ taken by Bui Quoc Ky was featured on National Geographic’s Instagram account earlier this month. The photo shows workers harvesting tea in the northern mountainous province of Son La. Vietnam is the world’s fifth biggest exporter of tea. The country earns nearly $1.5 billion in revenue from tea sales each year.
The photo by Tran Tuan Viet shows fishermen pushing their coracle boats out to sea on a beach in the south central province of Binh Thuan. This shot was praised by photo editors and posted last month on NatGeo’s Instagram account, which has 2.5 million followers.
Lensman Nguyen Phuc Thanh captures the sight of two men drying vermicelli under the scorching sun in Cu Da Village on the outskirts of Hanoi. The village is famous for its handmade vermicelli, a traditional vocation passed down though generations. The photo was chosen by NatGeo’s photo editors last August.
The image taken by Pham Ngoc Thach, showing two women preparing materials to make soy sauce, a specialty of Ban Hamlet, My Hao District, Hung Yen Province, around 30 kilometers from Hanoi, appeared on National Geographic last August. The village is said to have its own traditional way of making the sauce, handed down over generations. The use of rainwater or water from a particular bore-well is said to be part of the “secret” behind this sauce, which is now known widely as tuong Ban (Ban soy sauce) or tuong lang Ban (Ban village soy sauce).
‘Buddhist Prayers’ was taken as thousands of devout Buddhists prayed with flowers and colored lanterns on the Quan Am Bodhisattva Buddha Day at the Dien Quang Pagoda in the northern province of Bac Ninh, around 50 kilometers to northeast of Hanoi. The photo was selected among 70 best shots of the year by National Geographic and appeared on the magazine’s Instagram account last July. Vietnam is a predominantly Buddhist nation. It is estimated that over 70 percent of the Vietnamese population are either Buddhist or follow Buddhist practices.
Tuan Nguyen photographed this woman as she knitted fishing nets by the light of an oil lamp during his trip to the former imperial capital of Hue in central Vietnam. The photo was chosen by NatGeo’s editors last May.
Trang Nguyen shot a family photo of red-shanked douc on Son Tra Peninsula in the central city of Da Nang. This photo was also featured on NatGeo’s Instagram account last May. Vietnam is home to around 1,000 red-shanked doucs, including less than 300 in Son Tra. The monkeys are threatened by poaching, expansion of agriculture land, and construction to serve tourism. In Son Tra, monkeys are crossing roads and risking getting hit as they search for food.
Ha Nguyen took this shot of fishermen preparing their nets early morning in the south central province of Binh Thuan. NatGeo last March highlighted this shot on its Instagram account.
Trung Pham’s picture of pink trumpet flowers blooming all around Nam Phuong Lake in the Central Highlands town of Bao Loc was featured by NatGeo last March.
Trung Pham’s shot of a worker raking piles of salt in spidery shapes at Hon Khoi, the largest salt field in central Vietnam, was featured on the Natgeo Instagram account last January. Around 40 kilometers to the north of Nha Trang, the popular beach town in central Vietnam, Hon Khoi, a sleepy seaside town in Ninh Hoa Commune, is home to people whose entire lives are spent harvesting salt. The salt is produced in fields along Doc Let Beach, an almost entirely isolated and largely undeveloped beach whose white sands and turquoise waters play second fiddle to the salt fields, which have become an Instagram hotspot in recent years.