Pool in Vietnam after the storm Haiyan

Infinite pool with palmtree

This picture was shot in Vietnam on a holiday during Christmas and NewYear 2013/2014. On Christmas day, we arrived at the Sun Spa Resort in Đồng Hới. Just before we went on that trip, the Tropical Typhoon Haiyan hit Vietnam. It was a direct hit on The Philipines, however Vietnam also got the tail of the storm. And that was visible!
Some of the rooms were not accesible due to water damage and some of the people we spoke there, lost their complete houses! Horrible to think about that, however the people were still so friendly! Incredible!

When we arrived, we went on a walk over the premises to see the damage. The swimming pool was still a little murky and the palm trees at the end of the pool were broken, had fallen over or were not in the best shape. The one on the photo was still a little bit ok. Due to the cloudy weather, the sky behind the pool was all greyed out.
What struck me in this photo was the realisation of this fine line of paradise (the pool) and the relentless force of nature (the storm of Haiyan still in the sky). Seeing this photo back, I would have rather framed the fallen palmtree, but this standing palmtree is visualising the resilliance of the nature after the storm of Haiyan. However, I grew quite fond of this photo after looking at it some more!

The camera setting was on Aperture Priority. With an ISO set on 100 and the aperture set on 1.4 (the lowest on the camera… that was kind of my thing back then :-)), the camera only needed a shutterspeed of 1/4000th of a second.
In post I did a bit of cropping and levelling the fine line between the sky and the pool. No other filters or anything. The picture was made on the spot, without any fancy settings, any gear nor any post production. That made this shot a great impulsive photo!

Camera settings:

Location