Free Desktop Wallpaper for February from Vietnam

February’s wallpaper comes from Hoi An in Vietnam.

I photographed this lady in 2003 when I first visited the town and immediately recognised her when I was back in Hoi An last year. I can’t say the same was true for her. On the most recent occasion, she was helping her friend sort through a basket of fruit that they were selling to passers-by. She was already seated on the steps so I sat beside her and bought a bag of fruit. I can’t remember exactly what the fruit was but it may have been strawberries. Maybe plums. I showed her some of the photos that I’d taken so far that morning in my camera LCD screen and she nodded approvingly at one or two. People can be so fabulously hospitable and it didn’t seem to phase her at all that I’d decided to sit and eat my strawberries/plums/whatever on the steps beside her.

After fifteen or twenty minutes I’d finished my bag of fruit and the lady and her friend were paying little attention to me. I asked if I could take a photo before I left, knowing that the background would provide lots of colour and interest. I found a position on the opposite side of the narrow lane from where my perspective wouldn’t see the lady’s conical hat (it’s called a “Non”) infringe on the blue window-frame. If you look at the shot and picture how it would look if the hat crossed over the window-frame, you may see that even such a small overlap would make a big difference. It was important to position the lady and her hat inside the space between door and window.

All of which probably sounds a little pedantic but, as friends will tell you, I’ve never been one to shy away from a little pedantry.

Download the Free Desktop Wallpaper for February 2010

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 11:54 am and is filed under Blog, My work and tagged with wallpaper. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.