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

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

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

Paralympics Opening - Wide Shot

One of a number of amazing performances from the Paralympic Opening ceremony. Catherine and I were lucky enough to procure some tickets and had an absolute blast at the wonderfully done, thoughtful and moving opening.

Date: September 6, 2008
Camera: Nikon D70
Lens: 18-200 AF-S DX VR
Aperture: f/4
Shutter speed: 1/13
ISO: 1600
Focal length: 24mm (36mm equiv.)
Format: NEF

Chinese Female

I guess this person noticed that I snapped a photo of her, but she didn't seem to mind. I desaturated the photo, blurred the background and then used the history brush to bring back the colour in her sunglasses which are being lit by the warm sunset atop of Jinshan Park, just north of the Forbidden City.

Date: August 31, 2008
Camera: Nikon D70
Lens: 18-200 AF-S DX VR
Aperture: f/5.0
Shutter speed: 1/400
ISO: 200
Focal length: 65mm (98mm equiv.)
Format: NEF

Temple of Heaven

The Temple of Heaven is a great place that shows off traditional Chinese architecture. Sure enough, plenty of tour buses are unloaded here daily, and doubly so on the weekends. But I've discovered that the best time to go is early in the morning, say on a weekend, at around dawn, and you will be able to see all the locals come to the park surrounding the Temple of Heaven come and do their various exercises and warm-ups. You see people dancing, singing, jogging, stretching, playing various sports, etc. It really makes for a real Chinese experience.

Date: August 31, 2008
Camera: Nikon D70
Lens: 18-200 AF-S DX VR
Aperture: f/8
Shutter speed: 1/640
ISO: 200
Focal length: 20mm (30mm equiv.)
Format: NEF

Chinese Flag with Beijing Volunteers

I think one of the neatest things about the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics was the endless number of Chinese volunteers that were everywhere. There were information stations set up across Beijing and streets would be lined with these blue and white t-shirt wearing folks, always willing to help out. There were times that Catherine and I would use a volunteer booth just to make sure they felt they were being useful! The volunteers really were the front line and the backbone of Beijing's successful games.
Here they are carrying China's flag for the Paralympic torch lighting rehersal at the Temple of Heaven.

Date: August 25, 2008
Camera: Nikon D70
Lens: 18-200 AF-S DX VR
Aperture: f/5
Shutter speed: 1/640
ISO: 200
Focal length: 20mm (30mm equiv.)
Format: NEF

Red and White

Taken at the Paralympic torch lighting rehearsal at the Temple of Heaven, these performers were getting their costumes ready while taking their places.

Date: August 25, 2008
Camera: Nikon D70
Lens: 18-200 AF-S DX VR
Aperture: f/8
Shutter speed: 1/320
ISO: 200
Focal length: 130mm (195mm equiv.)
Format: NEF

Contemplation

Date: August 25, 2008
Camera: Nikon D70
Lens: 18-200 AF-S DX VR
Aperture: f/8
Shutter speed: 1/125
ISO: 200
Focal length: 75mm (113mm equiv.)
Format: NEF

Mushu

Those of you who have seen Disney's Mulan will get the title of this photo. I took this photo at the Source of Law temple here in Beijing. It is a working temple that is a bit of a ways off from the usual beaten tourism path here in Beijing. Tranquil and quaint.

Date: Date: August 25, 2008
Camera: Nikon D70
Lens: 18-200 AF-S DX VR
Aperture: f/7.1
Shutter speed: 1/50
ISO: 200
Focal length: 60mm (90mm equiv.)
Format: NEF