In 2009 Piet Van den Eynde set off on a year long 6500 kilometer bicycle trip through Asia with his girlfriend. Piet is known to Craft & Vision readers as the author of Making Light and The Power of Black & White. If you’ve read the ebooks, you’ll recognise some of the photos in this article as Piet used them in his ebooks. For me, Piet’s journey shows the value of doing something for yourself, of taking time out from the day to day business of earning a living and doing something that you really want to do in another part of the world. He’s built up a body of work that can be used in future projects and on top of that had an interesting, potentially life-changing experience.

Making Light

Making Light was released a couple of days ago at Craft & Vision and you still have time to grab the special offer on the PDF version. Just follow the link and use the promotional code LIGHT4 when you checkout to grab it for only $US4 OR use the code LIGHT20 to get 20% off when you buy five or more PDF ebooks. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST August 21st, 2011.

Interview

Which countries did you visit on your trip?

We cycled through parts of Turkey, Iran, India and Indonesia.

What was the motivation behind the trip? Why did you choose these countries?

For a long time, we my girlfriend and I had been wanting to do this kind of trip, but it had always been postponed for some reason. When I lost my day job in the finance sector in 2009, instead of whining about it, I saw it as an opportunity to finally grease the bike chains and set off. We had already been to shorter bicycle trips in South-East Asia and had appreciated those tremendously. Since Istanbul is considered the historical gateway between the West and the East, we decided to start there.

How did you cope with the cultural differences? Did you encounter any hostility or security issues along the way?

We did have a couple of culture shocks: Iran was the most important one. After cycling a couple of months in Turkey, we took the Trans Asya Ekspresi train to the border of Iran. Suddenly, we were in this mythical land were we couldn’t read anything, make ourselves understood or understand others. There were no tourists whatsoever, where we were, so that was a real culture shock.

However, after a while, we felt right at home. It’s hard not to because the Iranian people are amongst the friendliest and helpful we’ve ever met: we’ve been invited into people’s houses on a daily basis, been offered food and lodging at a rate that we often thought ‘If ever an Iranian traveller would come to Europe, he would never experience the same hospitality’.

People ask the security question a lot. But the truth is the main security issue was the sometimes hectic traffic. Other than that, although I was traveling with some quite expensive photo equipment, the only thing that was stolen during this one year trip was a bicycle pump.

What photo equipment did you take?

When we set off in Istanbul, I had taken way too much gear with me: a Nikon D700, plus 24-70mm f2.8, 14-24mm f2.8, 50mm f1.4 lenses and a 70-300mm VR lens that Nikon lent me, so I would not have to lug my 70-200mm f2.8 lens around. Add to that two Nikon flashes and I even brought PocketWizards.

I also had a small Westcott Flash Umbrella with me that was strapped to my bike. I must have been the only cyclist cycling around with a flash umbrella in his luggage but it’s such a great and light-weight light modifier, as I explain in the ebook.

Pretty soon it became obvious that I had taken way too much gear with me. I sent home one flash and the PocketWizards after one week. Halfway the trip, I had to go back to Belgium for a couple of weeks to take care of some business and I exchanged my D700 and assorted lenses for a much lighter D90 with a 16-85mm zoom (a fantastic lens, by the way), a wide-angle 10-24mm zoom and the lightweight but beautiful 85mm f1.8 lens.

Now, if I were to do it over again, I’d take yet another set of camera and lenses with me: now, I’d go for the Nikon D700 and the 16-35mm f4, 50mm f1.4 and 85mm f1.4 lenses. These lenses are all I need, really. I’m a fan of environmental portraiture, showing people in their surroundings and you don’t need a 70-200mm lens for that.

You took a lot of photos of the people that you encountered along the way. How did you approach them to ask if you could take their photo? How did they react?

The whole aim of our ‘Portraits Of Asia’ project was to portray Asia and the Asians we met during our trip, both in pictures (mostly mine) and in words (mostly my girlfriend’s). I find that you can go a long way by just asking people in a friendly way if you can take their picture. Very few declined. I sometimes make candids, too, if I feel that my asking would destroy the scene I wanted to photograph in the first place.

But we also wanted to give people something in return for their being a ‘model-for-a-minute’. And instead of just promising to send back pictures or email them – not as quintessential in some parts we travelled – we had a secret weapon for that: it’s called a Polaroid Pogo.

It’s a portable, battery operated printer that prints business-card size instant photos. We immediately gave the people we photographed a small print. The results were amazing: by printing prints as a means of saying thank you, I actually got people asking me to photograph them. It was almost the proverbial agony of choice.

Now, this printer has really become a part of my travel set. I would rather leave a lens at home than the printer. They’ve got a new one now that makes prints that are twice as big. I’m eager to test it out.

When I met David duChemin and Matt Brandon at a Lumen Dei trip last year, I saw I was not the only one who liked the Pogo: they each had one too. Made me feel in good company!

I like your photo essay ‘Portraits of a sea voyage‘. What’s the story behind the photos? Was it difficult to get permission to take photos while you were onboard?

Actually, the credit for that goes to my girlfriend Ruth: it’s her story and her pictures, so you’d really have to interview her!

But I’ll give it a try: being away for a year, in the East, on a bicycle, really slows you down. So, when we were at the last stage of our trip in India, and we were planning our return, Ruth did not want to fly back by plane. The ‘reverse’ culture shock would be too big.

Me, on the other hand, after being one year on the road, I needed to go back to my self-employed job as a Lightroom teacher and author that I had taken up just before we left. So I flew back to Belgium whereas Ruth took a container ship back: it took her three weeks so she could gradually prepare herself for the return to the hectic Western life.

She was the only passenger aboard this gigantic cargo ship. There was even quite a cliffhanger because the cargo ship took the Gulf of Aden route, straight through the danger zone of the Somalian pirates.

What did you learn from the trip? About yourself, the places you visited and the people that live there? 

It may be a cliché, but I learned that we’re way too preoccupied with ourselves here in the West, that we tend to see problems where there aren’t any whereas in the countries that we visited, many people live in much more dire conditions and yet seem much more satisfied.

It also taught me that you really have to do what you want in life, whether that’s going on a one year trip with a bike, or completely changing careers like I did. It also taught me that as a photographer, if you treat the people you portray respectfully, you have a way of communicating beyond the borders of language.

Who are your three favourite photographers and why do you like them?

Now, obviously, I like Matt Brandon’s and David duChemin’s work, or I wouldn’t have signed on their Lumen Dei Ladakh workshop last year. But because I don’t want to sound like I’m sucking up to them, I’ll take three others.

I’m a big fan of Steve McCurry’s work: the colour, the gestures, the moments he captures, the use of light. Going through one of his albums is a motivating, humbling and sometimes downright depressing (because you know how tough it is to even try to come close to that level of craftsmanship) experience all at once.

Then, there’s James Nachtwey of the VII photo agency: his images of war and conflict struck areas are as beautiful in their execution and framing as they are horrifying in their content. There’s an excellent documentary called ‘War Photographer’ about him that I’d advise anyone even remotely interested in this genre of photography to watch.

Lastly, closer to home, I really love the work of Stephan Vanfleteren. He’s one of Belgium’s best-known portrait photographers. He has a signature style that involves using black & white, very shallow depth of field and is a master analogue printer.

Making Light ebook

Making Light – Where did the idea for the eBook come from?

As I write in the introduction of the book, I’ve been afraid of using flash for a long time. And I know a lot of others are too, judging by the success the workshops I’m teaching with my colleague Jürgen Doom on the subject have.

But with the advent of digital and its much shorter learning curve, and enthused by people like David Hobby and Joe McNally, respectively the ‘godfathers’ of manual and TTL off-camera flash, I started to experiment with it and found that you can really do great things with it. Nowadays, I carry a flash and at least one modifier with me, almost religiously. I just got back from teaching at a nature photography workshop in Sweden, and in no time, the participants and me were using off camera flash to photograph a fish grate!

What are the key lessons you learnt from the process of writing the ebook?

I need a computer to write. I cannot write with paper and pen. I start off by making a rough structure of what I want to cover, and once I have that, it’s really just a matter of getting into more detail and writing that down.

I’ve also noticed I write visually: I actually make my own little layout in InDesign, put the images of that specific chapter on the layout and then start to write about and literally around them. Then, when I’m all done, I copy everything to a Word file and give that to Craft & Vision, where Luke then again turns it into a layout that’s much better than anything I can make. I could save myself a lot of trouble by simply doing everything in Word, but it just doesn’t work that way.

Any more ebooks planned for the future?

Oh yes, in fact I hint at it quite obviously in the ebook, so I might as well do so here: there’ll be a follow-up to the Making Light ebook, that takes the concepts of the first a little further: some more advanced techniques and some more advanced gear. There will also be case-studies which I always find the most interesting myself and an interview with four Belgian photographers who are really into off-camera flash. They’ll share some techniques that in my opinion will be worth the price of admission in itself.

Links

Portraits of Asia website – it’s in Dutch, but you can look at the photos!
Piet’s website: More than Words
Piet on Twitter: @mtwpiet
Piet on Facebook
Making Light ebook
The Power of Black & White ebook

Photo gallery

Here are some of Piet’s ‘Portraits of Asia’:

All photos copyright Piet Van den Eynde. Please contact the photographer for permission to use in any way.