In the first days of the New Year 2019, Thuy Lien had a conversation with photographer Luong Nam Nhat Long from Hue, First Prize winner in the category of Young Authors in the 2018 Vietnam Heritage Photo Awards for the photo “ Out of Class”
Hi Long, please talk about why you took part in the 2018 Vietnam Heritage photo contest?
I was wandering randomly on Facebook and stumbled on this photo contest ad of Vietnam Heritage, and the exciting ao dai theme made me register.
I browsed through the pics of ao dai I took that had some element of heritage, and stopped at the one of young female students on Trang Tien Bridge. In this picture, a film crew was re-enacting a scene of students of Dong Khanh School of the old times for a music video background.
How did you feel about winning the first prize in the category of Young Authors in the 2018 Contest of Vietnam Heritage Photography?
I was happily overwhelmed. I knew I won a prize, but not which one. When I came into that room and heard my name, I was dumbstruck. People had to call me again to come up the stage. I was overjoyed.
In Hue, there are so many great masters of photographing ao dai, while I am not even a professional at that. All children of Hue love their native land as much as I do, I guess. But I both do and don’t want Hue to develop, because its quintessence is in peaceful and slow pace of life, not boisterous like other cities.
What is photography in your life?
I took photos all the time to record moments of my life, but with my smartphone only because that was all I had. I liked my pictures and sent them to the contests of photos taken with a smartphone. I got a prize, which was a real photo camera.
Actually, my major is IT, which has very little to do with photography. Programming is mechanical in nature. It is not artistic at all. I currently work as a photographer for a few newspapers in Thua Thien – Hue and freelance in web programming.
How does your family react to your working as a photographer?
This story is from the April - May 2019 edition of Vietnam Heritage.
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This story is from the April - May 2019 edition of Vietnam Heritage.
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