Look at this crazy place I found in Shanghai!

This was inside one of the many government buildings. It was a multi-story complex dedicated to the past, present, and future of Shanghai. It was filled with multimedia presentations on the water systems, photo exhibits of the Bund under British control, and video extrapolations of what the city would become in 2020.

Of all these cool things, the best was this gigantic model of Shanghai. I walked around it about five times, trying to get some kind of sense of how to photograph the dang thing. Then, finally, I decided to grab a shot that included a few tourists to show the scale of this monstrosity.

By the way, thanks so much for all the interest in the Newsletter yesterday! I put a map on that page showing where all the early subscribers are coming from. I was, frankly, surprised how many people signed up! Now the pressure is on to deliver something that is worthwhile!

Imperial Walkers are some of the coolest sci-fi creations ever. I heard Lucas got the idea from looking at those giant seaside cranes in the San Francisco bay. If you ever cross the Oakland Bay Bridge, you can see the huge monstrous ironworks marching into the distance.

I would love to go be on a movie set to take photos. Why hasn’t anyone invited me to do this? I don’t know… But if there is an awesome movie being made somewhere with really interesting visuals, I hope someone enterprising can get me onto the set! I’ll do my best to take some really memorable shots. It’s too late for me to get on the Star Wars set, sadly. Besides, I was only 6 when the first one came out, and I didn’t know that much about cameras… just light sabers.

These old trains in Europe are always cool. I can’t imagine how incredibly heavy they are. All that cast iron just looks like it might create its own gravitational force. I like looking at all the machinery and piping and stuff. I’m the first to admit that I don’t know a dang thing about trains, but I do like looking at them.

I visited a train museum also while I was in Dresden. It was really interesting looking at all the tiny inventions that had been deprecated and forgotten over time. They would have extremely specialized tools that would only do one thing for a technology that only lasted a short time. Some of these things must have weighed several tons, and the only task it could perform is maybe a mounting harness for a cast iron part that only fit one sort of train that was only in service for a few years. It was a cool museum. I guess it is kind of a guy thing… it must have been, since I didn’t even see another woman in the whole place!

These are the kinds of places that are too cool to be true. I think these are called “banyan trees” (no doubt one of my smart readers will correct me if I’m wrong!), and their seeds fell centuries ago on top of these old tombs. Although not part of the main complex, the temple of Ta Prohm is still considered part of Angkor Wat. It’s a distance away, but, in many ways, cooler than the main temple.

Maybe I was lucky, the the days I spent there hardly had any tourists around. There were a few monks, but most of them were not Cambiodian and had traveled there from other monasteries all over the world.

Probably the coolest thing about the place was the ability to go anywhere and do anything. No little chamber, passageway, doorway, or underground mystery was off limits. It was definitely one of the best places for spontaneous adventure that I have ever been.

Note this was made with Lucis Pro 6.0… a few months ago, I did Lucis Tutorial, in case you want to know more.

For those interested, I was recently interviewed by Jim Goldstein about photography, HDR, and the like on “EXIF and Beyond”. You can hear the podcast here.

Whenever I am Europe, I have more snacks than my 3-year-old in the US every day.  I can’t believe how much my daughter eats.  I don’t know where it all goes.  She is like a tardis and has the metabolism of the entire Chinese gymnastics team.

This was shot in the streets of Dresden.  I had just grabbed a snack to carb up before the upcoming sunset.  These sunsets are supposed to be relaxing, but I had to hot-foot it around from location to location to squeeze it all into the hour.

This was always one of my favorite rides from Disney World. It was fun to get a chance to take my son there so he could experience the terror of being on a runaway mine train on his own.

I think my other favorite ride was Space Mountain. There were some really great ideas for shots I had inside there, but it’s kinda tough to jump off the roller coaster to get the perfect vantage. Since I do roam around the various parks with all my equipment, getting my tripod into a roller coaster is always kinda tough. I would leave it there with a 16-year-old who pushes the green flashy button to start the ride, but, most of the time at Disney, the exit is a mile away from entrance. So, I usually collapse the thing and put it under my feet. The negative-G humps always make pinning the tripod to the ground more than a little tough.

You might notice this one has a certain look that is different from my typical shots. It’s using some of the effects from my textures tutorial on that subject. Thanks to those of you that have been sending me your images that use the textures — it’s always cool to see how people have combined their stuff with the textures! Miss Aneila (guest blogger) from a few weeks back, did one as well, which is on that page… it’s the one with the pink dress.

Every time I go to Yellowstone, I see something different. There are hundreds of great locations, each one of which should be visited for at least an hour during three different times of the day.

This is a new area I visited on my most recent trip there. I don’t think it is always this steamy, since the air temp has to be a certain delta to the water. I don’t know why, but it’s always fun to sit there and watch the boiling water. I don’t enjoy watching boiling water in my kitchen, but the sight there is always mesmerizing.. There is also the strong smell of sulfur carried through the area. It wasn’t repulsive at all, but it did give me the just-took-off-my-helmet-on-an-away-mission feeling.

It’s sort of hard to find time to meditate nowadays, eh?  I mean, there is a lot of stuff going on.  I wonder if the old-school Buddhists would be as good at meditating if they had broadband.  It’s quite easy to distract yourself online.  By the way, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for distracting yourself with the blog!  I guess I’m happy to be a source of distraction for you.

And, should you find the inspiration to meditate a little, maybe this shot from Siem Reap, Cambodia will help.

Nothing makes me feel more like being in a foreign place than having the ceiling being entirely composed of cloth fluttering in the breeze.

Well, I am pretty sure that is what the Disney Imagineers intended when they designed this place. This was an Arabian-style restaurant right in the middle of Disney World, which has to be one of the coolest places in the world for photography. One of the problems there, frankly, is that there is so much to see that it is simply overwhelming. I think, now that I have been there multiple times, you just have to force yourself to drink in the details slowly over time. Wouldn’t being a Disney Imagnieer be just about the coolest job in the world?

My other piece of advice for parents (although, may Disney veterans already know this), plan a nap into the day. There is just no other way to do it with kids. Do the morning and lunch in one place… then maybe one ride on the way back to the hotel for nap time. Get a nice 2-hour nap in, then head out to different park for the evening. It will decrease stress levels by a factor of pi, and, besides, we adults are the ones that really like the naps, right? It’s a vacation, after all.

Being a lifeguard in LA must be a great job. Or it might be a boring job. Or it might have occasions of greatness filled with a long periods of boredom.

There was a lifeguard sitting here in the station on Manhattan Beach when I took the shot. I guess I could have asked her while I stood outside her station for 10 minutes with all my glass aimed right at her. I kept giving her a nod of confidence, indicating that everything was okay. I was really just waiting for the colors to get right in the reflection.