We are pleased to reveal Nguyen Phuc Thanh as our new monthly winner of the 2019 Sony World Photography Awards. He has won the November prize with his image, “LongCoc”, a breathtaking landscape in Vietnam.
"I collected coins and played guitar before, but photography is not like that. It brought me peace and happiness, I can stand waiting a whole day to capture a moment, especially a landscape. This always pushes me and inspires me to go further," says Nguyen Phuc Thanh
For your chance to become the next monthly winner, make sure you enter the Open competition of the 2019 Sony World Photography Awards. Submission is free for everyone!
Please introduce yourself and your work to our audience
My name is Thành in Vietnamese. I work as IT administrator for an insurance company and I take photos in my free time. The first time I had a camera I thought it was to capture different moments while travelling. Three years ago, my mindset changed and it expanded to include daily life shots of where I am living, Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, which hasmany new buildings.
Please tell us a bit more about the image was chosen as November Monthly Winner
“LongCoc” is the name of the location. I know it because my friend lives there and I visited it a few times. Topographically “LongCoc” is not very high. It has the shape of an upside down bowl, suitable for farmers to grow tea and become one of the biggest locations for exporting Vietnamese tea. It has also very special weather compared to where most people live there. A few times I got up in the early morning, at 3am, to climb to the highest mountain and wait for the best moment. Luckily this time the sunrise with the fog blew up from the ground. The dawn filled the sky with a red colour, and little clouds clustered around the green of the tea mountain... My companions were heading home but I still stood there to find something better. I took this photo when the sunrise was very high over the mountain. It was a moment where I could see the true color of the green tea, with the shadows of the small trees in bloom.
Why did you become a photographer?
I like to travel and I wanted to save some pictures to share them with my friends. Photography is so interesting that I liked it a lot and I found that it brought me peace and happiness.
What do you enjoy photographing?
Vietnam is a developing country now and there is always something new but equally, there is a huge culture from thousands of years still remaining. My mind is always thinking about culture and daily life. The city is changing rapidly and what I see today is not always there the next day. I enjoying capturing a moment, saving the beauty of today and sharing it with someone else. If this makes someone in the world know and understand more about Vietnam, then this is a good thing.
What inspires you for each photo shoot?
For me, it’s all about discovering new things, outside of myself.
