Solo Traveler

Have you heard of the Solo Traveler website? They’re having a photo contest… I think there are some good prizes! I did not enter… not even sure if they are taking more entries this year. But keep it on your calendar for next year. One of my friends, Griffin Stewart, told me about it… showed me his Rice Farmer Photo on Solo Traveler. Go in there and give him a good vote!

Daily Photo – Inside The Egg

This is sort of the opposite of rice-farming in China.

This building, lovingly called “The Egg” by locals, is the National Centre for the Performing Arts. It’s a gigantic and wonderful opera house that you have to see to believe.

Thanks to my contacts there, I had full access to go anywhere and shoot everything. There was a big entourage with me this day. I had my assistant (The great Jacky Woo) and translator. Also following me was a reporter from Reuters, someone from the “People’s Daily”, which is their local paper. There was as a delightful gentleman from the Office of Official Communication or something like this. I forget all the names… but he was a really cool guy. I never know if I am supposed to say people’s names or not…

This place was designed by French architect Paul Andreu. It’s one of a variety of internationally-designed structures in Beijing. Being a lover of wild architecture, I’m glad China has brought in so many different creative forces to work on these things… It’s always a joy to capture them the in a way that would make the architect proud.

You can probably get a sense of the sheer size of this thing by looking off into the distance on the right. It’s big enough inside to have it’s own weather system! You can kind of see some clouds and water vapor forming there in the upper reaches…