I went for a walk around a very chilly Chicago with a couple of young photographers today, my niece Taylor and her friend Casey, to capture some street photography. We started in Chinatown, then went to the Water Tower, Lincoln Park, and ended up at Millennium Park. Here are some of the images I made…
And a shot of the young photographers…
[dc]W[/dc]ith clear blue skies and perfect temperatures we lit out of Los Angeles like a couple of rogues after a bender which left a heap of twisted metal and broken hearts in our wake. Well, maybe it wasn’t quite so dramatic, but every once in awhile it’s really nice to just get out of LA in a testosterone fueled way, you know–rattle the bones and shake the cobwebs off, and this weekend my brutha from anutha country, Jakob, was in town from Copenhagen and we got on a couple of Road Kings and headed north on the coast highway, breathing in the salt air, wind on our faces, feeling every bit the Kings of the Road. Continue reading “The Road Kings”
Here is a new image I just finished, though I took the photo almost 2 years ago. Click on the image to blow it up.
Guangzhou is a big city in southern China just a few hours drive north of Hong Kong. Because I had to wait for my Chinese visa to be issued in HK I had a very limited amount of time in Guangzhou, but the thing that is really striking about the city is the way it is lit up, as though the entire city takes part in a celebration of light when the sun goes down.
I’ve been told that Guangzhou is very a-typical for Chinese cities and that it is a very new city, in fact the part I was photographing was less than a decade old and partly still under construction. Perhaps this is a testament to China’s relatively new foray into capitalism and they want to shine a beacon on it.
In the very short time I was in Guangzhou, I learned very little about the city or the Chinese people. But one fact was unmistakeable: the road between Hong Kong and Guangzhou is about 170 km (105 miles) and what I thought might at least partly be a ride through Chinese countryside was one solid mass of humanity. A megalopolis of manufacturing, mid-rise offices and tenements stretching from one huge city to the next.
This is only my second time to Hong Kong but I love this city. It has a heartbeat like no other I’ve been to: it’s an electric, 60 cycle hum. You can feel it through your feet as you walk on the streets or in your hands as you lean on a railing looking out at Victoria Harbor.
The Funicular railroad that takes you to the peak that overlooks the island is an interesting ride, at one point accelerating while climbing at a 45 degree angle, trundling past the buildings alongside the railroad. Being Saturday evening, the cars were packed and standing in the aisle can be challenging at best. Most people in Hong Kong know this so as soon as the doors open, getting into the train is a free-for-all that is mostly elbows and attitude. But once you get to the top you know that whatever it took to get there was worth it.
Handheld, long exposure shot of the concourse between United Airlines terminals B and C at Chicago O’Hare airport.
This week I took a trip out to the Salton Sea to try and find a place I had been to 10 or 12 years ago, where the sea had encroached on a small town and partially gobbled up several of the buildings. I thought this would be a great place to make some more images and practice my new found HDR techniques.
Unfortunately (or fortunately for the folks who live there) the interesting place I was looking for no longer exists. Some years ago they had built a berm around the town to hold the water back and destroyed all the buildings that had been eaten away by the extremely salty water.
Jakob on the berm at Bombay Beach
That’s the thing about adventures, you have to expect them to be disappointing sometimes. But the bright side is that I got some more pretty cool images, like the one above of my friend from Copenhagen, Jakob, standing atop the berm.
As I learn more about HDR I think my images will get better. I knew enough to look for the high contrast scene like the one above which, using typical photography would have been a blue sky with silhouettes of the berm and Jakob.
” alt=”” border=”0″ />Two Harleys on Rt 78
I have some more images from this trip to work on, but I’ve got to get to work, so more later…
