I’ve spent most of the day messing around with photos in Lightroom. I’ve uploaded all of the shots I’ve done today. I’m pretty happy with most of them, although one or two do still need a little more work.
Please visit the gallery at www.fajita.org/china2007/ to have a look. Sometime soon I’ll finish off the work I started on the Angkor gallery and make that public too.
Here’s one of my favourite shots from the China 2007 gallery:
Wear fabric-type shoes, for example Gore-Tex Merrells.
If you do this you’ll save yourself all sorts of aggravation from shoe cleaners while wandering the streets.
These days a lot of the shots I take get converted to B&W more or less straight away. Looking through the contents of my photoblog (www.lewiz.org/plog) I spotted just how many of the recent shots have been B&W.
I guess there area couple of reasons for this… many of them were taken with a film body loaded with 400ASA B&W film, and some shots just work better without the colour to distract you. But to be honest, I think the number one reason I shoot B&W so much is because it has a ‘feeling’ I don’t think I can capture with colour.
Anyway, I just uploaded another shot to my photoblog, please check it out at www.lewiz.org/plog (leave a comment if you wish :).
In addition, here’s a shot that I will probably upload to my photoblog sometime soon. It was taken by my Mum earlier this year while we were visiting a temple in China. I believe it is somewhere in Hangzhou, but I’d have to check to be sure…
Just recently we’ve had the 18th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and since then a few interesting tidbits have popped up. Most interesting was the report that a newspaper editor is get the sack after printing a short advert in the newspaper.
The advert read: “Paying tribute to the strong mothers of June 4th victims.” According to the BBC News article at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6733611.stm the editor called the person who placed the ad, asking about the significance of the June 4th reference, such is the way the incident has been suppressed in the media.
Every year around the anniversary police and army presence is increased. This is made easy by the fact that Tiananmen Square itself is like an island: there is no official road access, pedestrians must instead walk through subterranean walkways. On June 4th policy and army men were checking the bags of people entering the square before letting them in.
Interestingly I dug out a photo of a police riot van I took earlier on this year. This is a van that means business and I doubt that the presence of small round openings in all of the reinforced windows escaped the attention of any would-be protestors.
This photo was actually something I was messing around with before I decided to write the post. You’ll see a rare guest apperance in the corner, and the funny colours are due to a cross-processing plug-in for Photoshop CS3 I was messing around with.
Just uploaded the first photo to my photoblog in ages…
It’s a quick shot from Tiananmen Square in Beijing. I’ve included it here for fun :)
I was just browsing through some of my exported photos (i.e. the full-res images before I resize, tweak and sharpen for web) and spotted these. I’ve no idea if I’ve posted them before, but it’s clearly not a bad idea to post them again.
12-year-old English learners
9-year-old English learners (from some other random school)
Me… with a very 70s haircut… weird stuff happens when you don’t cut your hair!
Seriously… what happened to all of the sanely priced flights to China?
Back in the day a flight cost £350 direct. These days you get to pay about £600 for a return flight that changes somewhere random like Dubai or Moscow.
It’s pretty crazy stuff.
Upon arriving at Siem Reap international airport on Sunday February 25th we sorted out a taxi, loaded our bags and set off for our hotel.
On my seat was a roll of exposed Kodak colour film. For whatever reason I decided that I’d pick it up.
Three weeks ago I got the roll developed and a handful of photos came out. There was nothing really interesting (no child pornography either, thankfully), but as the good stalker I am… here are three shots that more or less came out.
On Saturday Vlad and I made good use of the bank holiday weekend by driving out to Ladybower reservoir somewhere near Sheffield.
On arrival we needed three return trips to my car for various different bits and pieces (my wallet, my walking shoes, etc.). On the final attempt at a little walking I was feeling thoroughly apprehensive, expecting something to go quite badly wrong.
First stop was a Cider Refresher ice lolly from the visitors’ centre, before we wandered along the west bank of the Derwent reservoir, aiming to make it to the first or second dam before catching the shuttle bus back.
Upon arrival at the second dam, we quickly made the decision to take it a bit further and walk full circuit.
The route is (as Vlad pointed out) quite deceptive, in that you think you’re making lots of progress towards a dam, only to find out that there is a branch in the reservoir that takes you on a three mile detour!
Four hours after we set off we arrived back at the visitors’ centre. The whole route was probably around 12 miles, which suggests we managed to keep a pace of around 3mph. This isn’t too bad, especially considering I’ve not walked for a long time, and Vlad has recently recovered from a wonky knee.
Much more practise is required to maintain a solid 3mph with 30kg packs for an estimated 20-25 miles per day!
If you’re ever feeling flush and fancy buying me something awesome I have just the thing…
