Saigon at 1/10th of a second

Capturing motion and emotion

For years, I’ve wandered the streets of Saigon with my camera, capturing its vibrant energy, fleeting moments, and the unique characters that make the city come alive. But recently, I wanted to see Saigon a bit differently - not as a series of frozen moments but as a dynamic, living entity. So, I set out on a new challenge: photographing the city with a slow shutter speed of 1/10th of a second.

Why slow shutter speed?

Most street photography thrives on sharp, well-defined subjects - faces frozen in time, gestures caught at just the right second. But slowing the shutter introduces something different: motion blur, an impressionistic quality that blends movement and stillness in a single frame. With this approach, I aimed to capture not just the people and places of Saigon, but the feeling of being in the middle of it all - the rush, the chaos, the poetry of everyday life.

A different way of seeing

This style of photography is unpredictable - most shots don’t work. Unlike traditional street photography, where sharpness and timing are paramount, this technique is about embracing imperfection. Some images came out too blurry, some lost their intended subject, and sometimes the autofocus simply couldn’t keep up. Only a handful of shots captured what I envisioned, but this is also the beauty of this approach.

The emotion in motion

There’s something deeply expressive about the controlled blur of slow shutter speed. It transforms an ordinary street scene into something cinematic, something closer to memory than to reality.

This is just the beginning of my exploration into this technique. There’s so much more to experiment with and seeing Saigon at 1/10th of a second is quite refreshing and exciting to me. I’ll be sharing more of these images on my Instagram, and I’d love to hear what you think. Have you ever experimented with slow shutter speed in street photography?