I haven’t been back since the protests, but I know Hong Kong was a very safe place to take photos at night. There are so many cool lights and the city really comes alive at night. I just sort of wander around randomly to find cool scenes like this. Often times, I’ve got my earphones on and listening to cool music to inspire me even more.
These hotels are always nice, and the Chinese sometimes take them to the next level of palatial. This is not even a ballroom or anything. It’s just one of a ton of different hallways… I’m amazed at the level of decor and quality in these places. It reminds me a bit of Versailles in a way. I got one of the ladies from the hotel to walk down the shiny floor to give it a little more personality.
Here’s a rarely visited area of Shanghai where this old factory has been converted into an art space. Unfortunately, we got there too late and we could only kinda look through the window. There was a lot of contemporary art in there that looked completely confusing, so it’s probably just as well that I didn’t go in… I could be confused from the outside rather than be confused from the inside.
As part of my “thing” with the Ritz-Carlton, they let me take whatever photos I want to take, which is great! They usually have a few suggestions here and there that might be photogenic. Some are good ideas, and some kind of come out to be duds. Anyway, at this hotel in Shanghai they have a nightly ritual where they light lanterns to illuminate the main hallway that leads to the lobby. The women dress up in traditional garb, so I thought it would a fun shooting opportunity, and it was!
This monolith along the Bund, Shanghai is where the whole group met for the photo walk while on the Asia tour. Besides all the great people I met there, it was also amazing to run into Liam Gowing, who was a guy I went to Jesuit High School with! He was like the “cool” guy that was the lead singer of the band… I was not cool in high school, believe me. But now, we were both kinda cool, I guess. Hey, cool is a state of mind, right?
When I got to Beijing a day early, I decided just to get lost and walk around randomly. It’s incredibly safe there, so there was no danger except for a few crazy drivers and wild people on bicycles. It’s one of my favorite places to take street photos, so that’s what I got up to most of the time. Here’s one of the first ones I found… it was a great idea to get lost, but then I actually DID get lost and I could not find my back to the hotel… that made for quite a bit of confusion.
If you’re a Passport Member then you’ll know today is Sunday and it’s time for a new video! We have about 200 in here now and you can see all kinds of goodies in there. Enjoy!
Let’s give this shot some HDR love…
More and more, I like to take photos of cities where you can’t quite tell exactly which city it is. If you’re a Passport Member, then you’ll get to unlock the making-of where you can see how I processed cropped it using Aurora HDR. Enjoy!
While in Chengdu, China, we visited this really old tea house. I thought it was pretty incredible watching these guys make tea in the old way like they have for thousands of years. These places are become and rarer… the only people inside that seemed to be enjoying the tea were people that seemed to be at least 100 years old, so I don’t see their target market hanging around a lot longer…
I’ve never actually been up inside this thing, but maybe I should go sometime. Well, I don’t have any plans to go to China soon… at least in the next five years or so. I kind of had my “fill” of China after being there about 10 times. Maybe that sounds a bit snobby or something… I don’t really mean it to sound like that. But the pollution and the not-living-in-balance-with-Earth stuff kind of grates on me after a while, you know? But they do have some cool cities, on the other hand!
Going through my favorite photos of each location has been great fun! Here are some favorites from Hong Kong. Well, the first one is not really from Hong Kong… it’s from the Chicago airport during my first journey there.
