I’m going to make the most of our recent trip to Malaysia to write a few posts and, whilst I’m at it, share some of the photos I took whilst I was there. In just over two weeks spent in Asia, I was far more productive than I’d been in several months spent on the streets of Saint-Denis. It’s not a question of comparing what I do in my own town with what I can achieve far from home in exotic places like Malaysia. The term ‘exotic’ carries no negative connotations when I use it. I’m simply talking about things that are out of the ordinary for me. Going to mainland France – to Paris or Marseille – would be just as ‘exotic’ for me!

I uploaded a slideshow to YouTube last night and John Harper had already texted me about it during the night! He’s my biggest fan and, like all fans I suppose, a bit biased when it comes to my work. I’d still like to thank him for his compliments, though! I’d forgotten I had subscribers on YouTube, and anyone who’s subscribed to my channel must have received a notification. I only use YouTube to host my videos, which are quite large files. I’ve stopped tagging or trying to promote my videos – it’s pointless. So I was a bit surprised to receive John’s message before I’d even written this blog post and shared it…

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Having visited Thailand and Vietnam over the last two years, I can say that it’s incredibly easy to do street photography in Asia. And yet, before going to Malaysia, I was a bit apprehensive because I knew what I’d achieved on my previous trips and I had lots of questions about what I might be able to capture this year. I was reassured quite quickly, and those fears faded away. Starting our trip in Kuala Lumpur played a big part in this. We were staying a stone’s throw from several shopping centres teeming with locals and tourists. It was hard to tell them apart, actually, as many tourists come from other parts of Asia and so blend in with the local population!

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Just to let you know, the Malaysian population is made up of several ethnic groups: Malays, Chinese and Indians. I’m sure I took plenty of photos of tourists, but in such a short space of time (three days), it was difficult to do any more substantial street photography. What’s more, I was also exploring the city with my little family, so I had less freedom to do what I wanted, even though I did set aside some time early in the morning and late in the afternoon. It’s worth noting, though, that unlike in Thailand and Vietnam, there’s hardly anything going on in the city before 10 am! It’s dead as a doornail! I found that quite surprising, so I took very few photos in the morning whilst waiting for everyone to wake up…

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We then headed off to Taman Negara (which means ‘National Park’ in Malay), located in the centre of the country. We spent three days in the muggy, stifling heat in the village of Kuala Tahan, just opposite the park, on the other side of the river. Although the place was very small, I managed to do a bit of street photography whilst hanging about in the late afternoon near groups of children who knew how to have fun with next to nothing – and, above all, without mobile phones! I also had a go at night photography during a wet evening and started to get the hang of it.

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I started out shooting in P mode – that is, fully automatic. I let the camera choose the aperture and ISO. I focused solely on the shutter speed. Basically, given the lack of light and my shutter speed, I was practically always at f/2.8: so I switched to A mode (aperture priority), set it to f/2.8 and adjusted my ISO according to the shutter speed. I tried to keep the shutter speed at a minimum of 1/20 s to avoid camera shake. I think my Ricoh GR III had some issues with the image stabiliser, as I couldn’t go any slower, whereas I can do so now with the GR IV… In Taman Negara, I’d already lost autofocus on my camera, so I was focusing manually by estimating the distances.

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We then went to the Perhentian Islands, where I mainly enjoyed the sea with my family. Of course, I did a bit of street photography whilst I was there, but we were mostly in snorkelling and sunbathing mode. I did, however, take one of my favourite photos whilst we were there. It was a shot of our captain’s hand – he’d gone for a dip in the South China Sea whilst we were splashing about watching turtles, sharks, clownfish, titan triggerfish and moray eels… I’d climbed back onto the boat because, believe it or not, swimming and free-diving really takes it out of you. I’d grabbed my Ricoh to take a few photos of my wife and children, and that’s when I saw the captain coming back to the surface and getting ready to climb back on board. I quickly framed the shot and regretted not having autofocus any more, as I really needed it right then and there! Even though I was at f/8 and focused at 2.5 metres, I could tell I was too close and didn’t have time to change the focus distance on my camera. In the end, out of the three photos I took, only this one is acceptable in terms of sharpness.

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It’s not perfect, but considering it was taken without autofocus, I think it’s more than decent. With hindsight, I realise I could have done things differently and simply stopped down the aperture even further to f/11 or f/13 to make it sharper. But when the scene presented itself, I didn’t have the mental capacity to think of anything else. Some might say this isn’t street photography because it’s as if I were photographing a member of my own family. In this case, it was the captain who was accompanying us. This photo is 100 per cent candid and not staged. And I consider it 200 per cent a street shot.

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Our final destination in Malaysia was the island of Penang in northern Malaysia. We stayed in the beautiful city of George Town. We arrived there after a gruelling journey of nearly 8 hours by bus. Joachim, Gwen and I had traveller’s diarrhoea for two days. We were at our wits’ end with vomiting and diarrhoea… Thankfully, there were two toilets in the flat! Only Ronan escaped the bug. So we were confined to our flat for two days. And you know what? We had very few regrets, as it rained for both days… So we weren’t really able to explore the town much. As I recovered a bit quicker than Gwen and Joachim, I went out to take some photos, but I was still a bit weak. It was there that I managed to buy my Ricoh GR IV, which cost me €1,300. I’m left with a slight feeling of unfinished business in George Town. I think this city has great potential for photography, but we were at the end of our trip and everyone was tired. I reckon three weeks in Asia is a bit long. Until now, our trips had never lasted more than 15 days. A lesson to bear in mind for our future trips… Even though I had the Ricoh GR IV with me, I hardly used it at all in Malaysia; I stuck mainly with the GR III.

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All in all, the loss of autofocus on the Ricoh GR III had very little impact on our trip to Malaysia. The main reason I bought the Ricoh GR IV was because I knew that, in the near future, I’d have been wondering whether to upgrade my kit. The GR III works very well in zone focusing mode. The only problem is that when you want to achieve a more precise focus whilst opening the aperture, it’s quite complicated and you have to rely on a bit of guesswork. I did try it, but you’re never quite sure of the result. That’s why I stuck to f/8 practically the whole time! We rounded off our trip with three days in Singapore. I’ll tell you all about that in another post.

Here’s the slideshow from Malaysia. All the photos were taken with the Ricoh GR III, and some with the GR IV. I used the 35 mm crop mode very often, but I also used the 28 mm when I needed to.