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August 2020 : Thursday
Aug 2020 : Thursday
Best of… Shanghai!
Continuing our “Covid-fun” to get people excited to travel again… well, even though China may NOT be the first on your list, here are some favorites from Shanghai!
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July 2020 : Thursday
Jul 2020 : Thursday
Starting Point for the Shanghai Photo Walk
Updated my /Now page
It’s been a while, but I finally updated my Now page!
Daily Photo – Starting Point for the Shanghai Photo Walk
See that obelisk thing there in the lower left? That was the gathering spot for our big Shanghai photo walk! That was a particularly fun one! I saw an old friend from Jesuit High School, Liam Gowing. I was completely surprised that he randomly happened to be there in the middle of Shanghai! I had not seen him in about 20 years and it was really fun to catch up. Thanks again to everyone that came out for that event!
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June 2020 : Tuesday
Jun 2020 : Tuesday
Old Woman at the Summer Palace
Daily Photo – Old Woman at the Summer Palace
When I went on the “around the world” trip with my family a few years ago, our first stop was in Beijing. Besides the Great Wall, we also visited the Summer Palace. It’s a sprawling layout that is serene and beautiful, as opposed to the rest of a rather dreary Beijing. A lot of old people come here to walk around and get their exercise. This gal was not really doing a lot of that…
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June 2020 : Sunday
Jun 2020 : Sunday
Shanghai at Dusk from over the Bund
If you’re a Passport Member then today you get to see the creation of this fun panorama from Shanghai. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise!
Shanghai Surprise
This is made out of 9 different photos that I stitched together in Photoshop. I was trying to get an “angle” on Shanghai that no one has ever seen before, so I flew it out over the Bund to get this angle.
Exclusive content for Passport members
Daily Photo – Shanghai at Dusk from over the Bund
I’m pretty sure flying a drone in China is illegal. I mostly think this because I was arrested a few years earlier for doing it. But I figured, hey, if I can talk myself out of Chinese prison once, I can do it twice, right? This is how I think… anyway, when I went to launch this down by the coast, I saw about three other Chinese dudes launching their own quadcopters. This only emboldened me!
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June 2020 : Saturday
Jun 2020 : Saturday
Happy Cowboy in Beijing
Daily Photo – Happy Cowboy in Beijing
When I took the family to see the Summer Palace, we saw all sorts of characters. But this was my first time ever see some dude wearing a cowboy hat and a poncho. I don’t even know where you could buy these things in the city. I wish I spoke Mandarin to find out where he got this getup! 🙂
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June 2020 : Tuesday
Jun 2020 : Tuesday
Wet Pudong at Night
Beard on Beard
That recent Elon Musk video reminded me of this classic one.
Daily Photo – Wet Pudong at Night
Wet Pudong sounds kind of naughty, eh? This is the “business” area of Shanghai where nobody really lives. So, at night, it’s pretty much empty! That makes it great for nightcrawlers like me that enjoy taking nighttime cityscapes without a bunch of people getting in the way.
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May 2020 : Saturday
May 2020 : Saturday
Curious Lady at the Library
Daily Photo – Curious Lady at the Library
I don’t often do staged shots, but I did this time! I was at this amazing library in Tianjin with Curtis and one of the ladies from the Ritz-Carlton. I thought the photo would look better with a person in there pretending to read a book, and it does! It was pretty funny because in the first take we realized the book was upside down.
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April 2020 : Wednesday
Apr 2020 : Wednesday
The Old Trams of Hong Kong
Machine Elf 26 – Devs Cube | Menger Sponge
When I was watching Devs (which I highly recommend, especially if you like films like Ex Machina from Alex Garland), I recognized the computer lab was in the shape of a cool mathematical fractal called a Menger Sponge. This is a fractal curve, a three-dimensional generalization of the one-dimensional Cantor set and two-dimensional Sierpinski carpet. It was formalized by Karl Menger in 1926. I’ve been working on lots of fractals lately at night in my lonely isolation and thought this was bizarrely mindbending. And, yes, I’m a math nerd.
The music is also from Devs, specifically the opening of Episode 4 of Season 1. The composers for the show at Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury, and, if you’ve seen the show, then you know what a unique soundscape it has. Well done guys! 🙂
It took about 48 hours to render at 1080p on a rather beefy Xeon and high-end GeForce based Origin PC… just to give you an idea of the complexity of the math.
Daily Photo – The Old Trams of Hong Kong
Here’s something most people don’t get to experience because it’s not really high on the touristy list of Hong Kong. If you head over to where the fish markets are, you can see these old-timey tram cars. They cost almost nothing to ride in, and you can just jump in and ride around all day! Those windows on the 2nd floor up top are particularly cool.
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April 2020 : Tuesday
Apr 2020 : Tuesday
The Lines of Hong Kong
Daily Photo – The Lines of Hong Kong
Here’s one of my favorite new techniques I’ve been employing quite a bit when I am working on these super-techy looking cities. It’s a fairly simple technique where I duplicate the layer and then give it a vertical blur. You have to use a pretty high number where the buildings are almost unrecognizable. Then, you can change the blending mode to overlay and then just mask out the bits you don’t like.
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April 2020 : Monday
Apr 2020 : Monday
Abandoned Ship in a Chinese Harbor
Kevin Rose UFO Episode
I am just as fascinated by UFOs as Kevin Rose is! This is a fun podcast episode where he talks to Navy Fighter Pilot Ryan Graves. Enjoy!
Daily Photo – Abandoned Ship in a Chinese Harbor
One day on the beach in Sanya, I took the drone out over some ships that were anchored about a mile off shore. It was about the limit for my drone, but it was really cool to explore these abandoned ships. I could have done it all day! Here’s one of the many shots my fun little drone friend brought back to me.
