This year I am going to do a photography book. It will be “52 Weeks, 52 Streets.” (or something similar.) Each week, I’m going to take photos of a small street in Shanghai. I just went out and did Anhua Lu. Next will be Anfu Lu or Anren Lu. I’ll go down the alphabet and concentrate on streets in the Jing’An, Old Town and French Concession areas. At the end of the year I should have a nice coffee-table book!
The day Dan left for Australia, we agreed to meet for a burger and milkshake. I figured he wouldn’t be done packing, so I headed to his place. He thought we were meeting at Johnny Moo’s… so I waited for a while until he came back to his apartment. I amused myself by taking some photos. The “quality” of jobs here is just amazing. They just slop the paint everywhere (like on the electric boxes and window sills) and just left a paint brush in a bucket of paint (now dried.) My dad would have been very upset at me if I’d done that….
I did take one semi-creative self-portrait though!
I thought it was special to get lightning shots before, but it’s actually not that hard. Basically, you keep the shutter open and hope a bolt appears in at least a few photos.
This one hit really close. This photo is not Photoshopped (well, basic levels and cloning out some dust.)
Close up, lightning looks just awesome! You can see little white particles of energy all around in the air.
Last week it poured rain every afternoon. Along with the rain came a few huge lightning storms! I took a couple hundred photos, and captured about eight different strikes.
Who said lightning never strikes in the same place twice? I have two photos of it hitting the Pearl TV Tower now, and saw it happen close-up another time.
I’ve moved my blog to WordPress. It is supposed to be a much more robust program. I think I’ll like it!
Please check back in a couple days. I don’t have everything moved over and linked correctly and formatted how I want it just yet. Do let me know if you like the new look though!
Jon is a pretty good photographer too! He has learned a lot about composition and tricks to get good photos with his point and shoot. All of these photos are his.
One rainy day we went to Örebro. We walked through Wadköping, which is an open-air museum. They moved in old buildings to create Wadköping, which was a fictional place created by an author.
I decided to enter this at the last moment… at least it will be a lot different than all of the cute kids at the beach! This is in Thailand – a local is pulling up the anchor from a boat full of tourists.
Last night, lighting was flashing outside. I have been trying to get a good lightning photo for a very long time! I set my camera to take a 13 second exposure with an aperture of 22, and just kept releasing the shutter. (The shutter just needs to stay open and you hope to catch something!)
What is really crazy is that you can see it HITTING the Pearl TV tower!
It was called “Between Fences” and it went along with a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition that was at the Miner County Rural Life Museum in Howard (my hometown in South Dakota.) Above is the news article about the contest.
I won the adult category with this photo I’d taken when I was back home and fixed fence with Dad. Someone involved in the contest told mom that the judge picked my photo as 1st right away, then had a harder time picking out the 2nd and 3rd places. It’s not a huge prize or lots of fame, but I’m happy!
My mom and I went to her quilting group on Tuesday, but I taught her a little in Photoshop instead of quilting. I learned from my HS art teacher how to use a clipping mask in PS. The high school kids get to take Photoshop classes now. How cool is that!
The address of the 6-story photo mall that I always go to is:
Shanghai Xingguang Photo Gear Mall, No. 288, Luban Road, at the corner of LuBan Lu and XieTu Lu 上海市泸湾区鲁班路288号上海星光摄影器材城
You can take the metro Line 4 to LuBan Station. It is then 2 blocks away on the corner of Lu Ban Lu and Xie Tu Lu.
Jon’s old camera had a sensor that went bad. Almost every other line of pixels was white.
150 RMB and an hour and a half later, everything worked perfectly again! We are amazed at what people can fix over here. In the US no one would have suggested to attempt to fix it; just throw it out.
Today we went to the photo mall with William. He picked up a nice lens, I picked up a Canon 5D Mark II, we got Jon’s old camera fixed, and I got my Rebel XT sensor cleaned. That’s supposed to be pretty dangerous to do, but the guy there did it in about 3 minutes for 100 RMB. No problems at all.
Before – the black dots are where all of the dust was.
I read a lot of photography blogs, and recently discovered one called”I Heart Faces.” It seems to be a lot of blogging moms with photos of their kids – not me, but I like faces and contests so I think I will attempt to enter some. They have two photo contests each week. This week is “Pout” and “Pets.”
This is probably the best pout I have.
Click on the button below to check out their blog.
My friend Bonnie started her own business here, doing custom baking for other expats. I volunteered to shoot her goodies for her brochure. I got to take home samples of each of her offerings… YUMMY!
Last week at the photo mall, we printed a couple photos on canvas. It cost 120 RMB ($17) for a 30 x 40 inch print. It actually cost more to get it stretched across a custom-made frame.
I took this photo near the Minor farm outside of Nisland.
I think in Shanghai you could do it all 24 hours – something is always happening. It would make a good coffee table book. Any other photographers willing to try this sometime? WoAi, Swiss James, Dingle…. I think all of you are photographers!
I should really find something else to do time lapses of. Traffic is pretty much the same all of the time. Unfortunately due to all of the pollution I don’t see any cool clouds. Maybe I’ll try to do 24 hours this weekend, on Sunday, when the pollution usually is at the lowest level of the week.