Bridge View in Haidan District

This photo was taken near the university district of Beijing. The overpass is a couple blocks from Beijing University.

Date: October 12, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: AF-S Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8
Aperture: f/11
Shutter speed: 1/400
ISO: 200
Focal length: 14mm
Format: NEF

The Forbidden City: Eastern Buildings

I have a back log of images taken from the last couple months so I'm trying to dig through them. Here's one of them back when I paid a return visit to the Forbidden City with my visiting friend. This place is so large that I didn't even get to the eastern side of the palace on my first visit. The eastern area is much less crowded than the main parts of the Forbidden City because there is an additional 10 yuan charge. This allows for photos without a ton of people in them which is a nice change of scenery.

Date: October 21, 2008
Camera: D700
Lens: AF-S Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8
Aperture: f/14
Shutter speed: 1/80
ISO: 200
Focal length: 18mm
Format: NEF

Guard Tower Ruins

While a lot of the guard towers we passed were intact, this one was completely in ruins. We even saw some ancient wood poking through the wall used for the frame of the once-upright guard house.

Date: November 23, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: AF-S Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8
Aperture: f/14
Shutter speed: 1/200
ISO: 200
Focal length: 15mm
Format: NEF

Hutong Wheels

A collection of wheels found while wandering around some hutongs in Beijing.

Date: November 29, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
Aperture: f/4.5
Shutter speed: 1/50
ISO: 1400
Focal length: 50mm
Format: NEF

Beijing Airport Terminal Three - Express Train Drop Off

The airport express train stop for Beijing International Airport's new Terminal 3.

Date: November 16, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
Aperture: f/8
Shutter speed: 1/50
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm
Format: NEF

Built on a Knife's Edge

There are sections of the wall that, when viewed from afar, seem like they are literally built on the tip of the mountainside. The ones in this photo are not even the ones to which I am referring. On the other side of the Simatai portion of the Great Wall, there are steps of Great Wall that go up and up, balancing on the lip of the stretch of earth.

Date: November 23, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: AF-S Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8
Aperture: f/14
Shutter speed: 1/80
ISO: 200
Focal length: 22mm
Format: NEF

Endless Wall

Our recent hike that took us over 10km of the Great Wall seemed like a good romp on this vast network of ancient fortifications. Turns out that should we wish to hike the entire wall, we'd still have over 6600km more to go. The scale of the Great Wall continues to boggle my mind.

Date: November 23, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
Aperture: f/14
Shutter speed: 1/60
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm
Format: NEF

The Great Wall at Jinshanling

Finally, here's a shot of the Great Wall in all its glory, seemingly stretching on forever.

Date: November 23, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
Aperture: f/16
Shutter speed: 1/50
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm
Format: NEF

Local Guide

Being first time hikers of the Jinshanling-Simatai trail, we did not know what to do with the pack of local guides that followed us. On hindsight, we should have just turned them away. In the end we bought some overpriced merchandise from them before we could bid them farewell. I actually liked my guide (each of us were assigned our own guide), and would have been happy to provide him a tip. It was just that we didn't need his other four friends! Ah well, chalk it up to the "laowai tax". We'll know better next time.

Here's a portrait of my guide as he watched from one of the 29 guard towers we passed on our four hour hike.

Date: November 23, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
Aperture: f/8
Shutter speed: 1/125
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm
Format: NEF

Jinshanling

It has been a busy month or so for us with a lot of visitors coming into town to stay with us. Not that this is a bad thing, since we love it when people come to visit! All the visitors also means that I've had the chance to go out with our friends to check out some of Beijing's sites, including another trip to the Great Wall. This time, we hired a driver to take us to Jinshanling, where we did a 10km hike to Simatai. This section of the wall is another portion of "wild" wall which has avoided being renovated and beautified. So what you get is a nice long hike that stretches over the Chinese hills, walking on the overgrown and crumbling sections of the Great Wall. Truly spectacular.

This photo is of the hills surrounding the Great Wall. I sure wouldn't have wanted to be an invading army that trekked through all those hills just to find myself face to face with an imposing and seemingly unassailable wall.

Date: November 23, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
Aperture: f/10
Shutter speed: 1/160
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm
Format: NEF

The Great Wall of China, in the wild

Catherine and I had a very relaxing and worthwhile weekend escape to the Great Wall Commune located close to the Badaling section of the Great Wall. The Commune is a type of hotel/resort that features Chinese-designed villas that can be rented out to guests. I don't know what the price of the modern and spacious villas are, and you know what they say about having to ask about prices, but we did stay at the Commune's more modest accomodations. The Commune has its own section of the Great Wall for guests to explore. The section of the wall is a "wild" section, meaning that it has not been restored to a Disneyland-esque condition. It was great to hike on this section of the wall, with almost noone else around. The weather was great - some fluffy snow, then followed by clear blue sky the next day.

Date: November 8, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/13
Shutter speed: 1/40
ISO: 200
Focal length: 18mm
Format: NEF
Shot on tripod

Tram's bend

Date: October 26, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
Aperture: f/8
Shutter speed: 1/250
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm
Format: NEF

Tram Lane Crossing

Date: October 26, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
Aperture: f/8
Shutter speed: 1/320
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm
Format: NEF

Riding the Ding Ding

The antiquated trolleys are a pleasant and charming part of Hong Kong's robust public transportation system. Sitting on the top of one of these with the window pulled down, on a nice day, riding through Central, is a quintissential Hong Kong experience. I hope they never get rid of these. In fact, I have read that some U.S. cities like LA are considering reinstalling trolleys to revitalize certain areas of the city, after having removed them decades ago.

Date: October 26, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
Aperture: f/8
Shutter speed: 1/125
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm
Format: NEF

Goldfish Street

Hong Kong has a street for everything. Runner street (shoes), bird street, flower street, women street (clothes, etc.) and of course, goldfish street. The block or two of Mong Kok is lined with vendors dealing with all things aquatic. Walls of bagged fish are lit by the soft glow from the fish tanks.

Date: October 25, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 50mm f/1.8D
Aperture: f/1.8
Shutter speed: 1/125
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm
Format: NEF

Street Meat Vendors

In Chinese, there is a phrase that literally means to go out and walk the street. This phrase's meaning is to go out and walk around, do some window shopping, etc. Well Hong Kong is one of those places where you can really go out to "han guay". Many of Hong Kong's streets are brimming with people both during the day and night. You can go out and there always appears to be something happening or something to see. No wonder that there are some Hong Kong people that look to Canada as a boring place - everything in Canada is closed by 9 (or 5 if you do not live in the bigger cities) - since everything in Hong Kong only begins to liven up after the sun sets.

Date: October 25, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 50mm AF-D f/1.8
Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter speed: 1/500
ISO: 400
Focal length: 50mm
Format: NEF

Fishmonger

There's something about a Chinese-style grocery store with all the hanging meat, swimming fish and weird animal innards that many Westerners would be loathe to consider food. Well this indooor grocery market I stumbled upon in Kowloon was full of people buying their groceries and the food was most certainly fresh - from live chickens, live frogs and swimming fishes. There was haggling and pointing as people tried to get the best deals and freshest produce/meats. Unlike the very sanitized Western supermarkets like Safeway, this place makes sure you know that you are getting fresh.

For my shooting in the market, I set my D700 to auto ISO with a limit to 800, had my 50mm and just went at it. The one thing I have to keep in mind, which became apparent to me after reviewing my photos on the computer, was that I need to remember the D700 has less depth of field than my previous camera. Gotta get that focus right!

Date: October 25, 2008
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 50mm AF-D f/1.8
Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter speed: 1/160
ISO: 400
Focal length: 50mm
Format: NEF

Lighting the Paralympic Flame

Not sure how, but this photo turned out great - the dim stadium lights as the background, the light falling on Hou Bin properly white balanced, and the fluke of catching that flash in the background. This was a very dramatic finale to the opening ceremonies and had the entire stadium awe struck, emotional and cheering. Hou Bin, China's triple Paralympic high jump champion with only one leg, lit the cauldron for the Games, pulling himself up the height of the stadium with his two hands.

Date: September 6, 2008
Camera: Nikon D70
Lens: 18-200 AF-S DX VR
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 1/20
ISO: 400
Focal length: 1/20
Format: NEF

White Halo 2

This photo was partially post-processed using Nik Software's Color Efex Pro 3.0 which I am demo'ing. This is certainly one of my favourite effects. Sure some may say it is overdone, but I enjoy it a lot and found this effect to be perfect for what I wanted to convey: the beauty of the performance and the performers.

The burst mode and Nikon's vibration reduction (VR) in my lens made sure that I got some keepers in the stadium's dim lighting.

Date: September 6, 2008
Camera: Nikon D70
Lens: 18-200 AF-S DX VR
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 1/15
ISO: 200
Focal length: 200mm (300mm equiv.)
Format: NEF

White Halo 1

Date: September 26, 2008
Camera: Nikon D70
Lens: 18-200 AF-S DX VR
Aperture: f/5
Shutter speed: 1/10
ISO: 200
Focal length: 62mm (93mm equiv.)
Format: NEF