Youth, music and open air

Not every portrait needs a costume or a ceremony. This gallery gathers frames that are simply about being young, or feeling young, in the open air.

The first photograph shows a student in a marching band uniform holding a saxophone. School bands are a common sight at parades, sports days and festivals across Asia, and the uniforms, with their braid and bright colours, make for strong portraits. What carries this one is the pause: the instrument held rather than played, a moment of stillness before or after the music.

The second frame is pure play, a child blowing soap bubbles, the kind of picture that depends entirely on timing and on light catching the thin film of each bubble.

The last two move to the landscape of northern and rural Vietnam. A person sits on an overhanging rock above a valley of mountains; a man stands with his arms flung wide in a golden rice field. Both are small in the frame, and both use that smallness to say something about space and freedom.

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Photos: sunniecruz, efraimstochter, tienco85, nohtnongdan on Pixabay, used under the Pixabay Content License. These are not my photographs.