the mixture between old and new drew my attention. deducing from publications, reports of friends, as well as own short time experience in one chinese city, development in china happens at blazing speed – that is, in the cities. a lot of young, western style well dressed people in remnants of old architecture and traditional…
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chairman mao
found in a gift shop next to the fu-zi temple in nanjing. in china there seems to be a still unbroken reverence for the former chairman. from a westerner’s point of view this seems a bit bewildering, just having read wikipedia’s entry about this leader of his people: the number of victims of the chinese…
more roofs
in case you don’t know: munich, capitol of bavaria and the city were i work, has a chinese tower. built 1789, it nowadays is the center of a beer garden. absence of abstinence in my case not only leads to a certain inclination towards beer, but also to chinese roof constructions. the fu-zi temple area…
dragons on the roof
this is a roof detail from the fu-zi temple in nanjing. at this first encounter, i was overwhelmed with the fine details and the expressiveness of the sculptures. and despite of the many (chinese) tourists, the place had kept the feeling of a religious area, whereas not so intensive as the temples i have seen…
smoke and konfuzius
i am a fan of these temple sceneries (just see incense in the chinese temple), but nanjing offered nothing such. an official mission of course is not the ideal setting for pursuing private photographic interests, so i took what was offered. the scenery to the right unfolded itself just outside of the temple, quietly and…
lucky charm tree, nanjing
the trip to china brought +20gb raw files. going through the directories (when shooting in big numbers, i organize my files one folder per day) i still am in day 2 and try to discover the keepers or at least the not so-so ones. the shot above i like – otherwise i wouldn’t show it,…
cook and konfuzius, nanjing
in the big crowd gathering on the rare banches in front of the food stalls in the fu-zi temple area in nanjing, this cook sat self-forlorn (or maybe just tired), closely watched by a statue of konfuzius.
street sweets, nanjing
the already mentioned ‘re nao’ holds true for street vendor businesses also. even late at night, the crowds at the food stalls are loud and busy, queues tightly packed. europeans with a certain affinity for less body contact when waiting immediately find themselves at the end of the queue for quite a while. at the…
shao mai shop, nanjing
back home again, there is still a stack of photos from china i would like to share with you. these are from nanjing again, showing a food stall selling shao mai, the typical chinese dumplings. when you are not too picky about the settings, those small shops can offer excellent food and a pleasure for…
waiting for customers
nanjing is not at all accustomed to foreigners traveling without a guide or translators. the overwhelming friendliness however made up for most of the difficulties, also in the restaurants. not beeing able to use chopsticks is a major drawback here, as one restaurant we visited had only 2 forks and two knives for those westerners…
chinese garden, nanjing
taking a rest from ‘re nao’, the chinese expression for ‘hot and loud’. for me, who is coming from a small town in the bavarian mountains, a city like nanjing with 7.5 million inhabitants is really stressful. so i did enjoy this quiet garden with the harmonious forms of the roofs, the ponds and the…
wave of bikers
even with all those 8-lane roads in nanjing, very often nicely framed by newly planted sycamore trees, the bicycle remains the major means of individual transport. bike lanes are broad here, adapted to the masses that use them. astonishing for me is the number of electric bicycles which are a good example of eco-friendly and…
ballet
usually i don’t show photographs of public viewing events – quality is bad and it’s in a way only a third hand experience. but this was so touching i almost cried, a fact that should happen only once every 5 years. this couple, lacking one arm and one leg, moved so harmoniously, alone and together,…
street portrait
coming from a city where the average age is almost 50 years, china at first sight is a country of young people. but in the quieter places you can see the interesting faces of the elderly, taking a walk, doing tai-chi in the parks or simply walking backwards for training purposes. the latter is not…
little tiger
my thanks go to athine. of course you don’t know who athine is, so i will tell you. for the current world urban forum in nanjing, the chinese organizers recruited more than 2000 volunteers, mainly students with a major in english. athine is one of them, and she accompagnied our bus from the airport to…
nanjing shopping street
i came to china open eyed – ok only partly after that long trip – and open minded, and up to now my astonishment is a positive one, in all respect except the fog. i do hope it’s just natural fog and not heavy air pollution, because if so, it must have killer qualities. the…
traveling…
i had planned to post this before leaving to nanjing, china, for the world urban forum. but as quite so often the workload plus time for the kids and my wife consumed all reserves i had calculated and now i am in nanjing, after 28 hours traveling. so for today be it this shot, it…
kalmunai students iv
before you are afraid that this turns into a monothematic blog of kid pics – these are the last ones i’d like to show from kalmunai. sri lanka again experiences a wave of violence, and the east coast i visited 3 weeks ago is now more or less a no-go-area for foreigners. those kids have…
kalmunai transport unit
whilst i am from a technical point of view not fully content with the picture above – the aspired sharpness is missing, probable due to improper focusing – the scenery is still captivating even in the review. doing it again however i would take care to include all the foreleg of the brown ox. i…
kalmunai students
early morning hours are my most prolific time of the day. the fishermen, the outrigger boat, all these picture were created from 6 to 8 am. the light is soft at that time but does not have that orange cast of the sunset hours. and the public is definitely different – only at that time…
bawa singers, kalmunai
those singers traditionally woke up the people during ramadam, early in the morning to allow a good breakfast as the basis for a whole day of fasting. now this custom is forgotten in most places, but still the singers are invited for some festivities. the high iso possibilities of my sony a700 are always reason…
kalmunai catch
for me as living in the european alps, beeing at the seaside and watching the fishermen means alway a bounty of photographic opportunities. golden early morning light made those fishes an interesting pattern of metallic glistening hydrodynamically highly efficients bodies the outrigger boats are a fascinosum by themselves. while the shape is a classical dugout…
landing the leviathan
the recitations of the muezzin woke me up after a short night, but i was grateful for this invitation to start the new day early. my hotel was next to the beach – the tsunami at that time had not done much damage as the structure was new and sturdy concrete – so after 10…
yellow fin thuna, batticaloa
before the winter monsoon rains start, the usual catch for the outrigger boats is small. bigger boats with outboard motors then are the only ones that bring home what they catch by long lines. even then the catch is small. only 5 small thunas for one early morning of fishing is barely sufficient, given that…
batticaloa fishermen or the rewards of procrastination
finding a time to go for a photowalk to the beach at sunrise was difficult during the last mission – jet lag, early appointments, changes of the venue and so on. in the end, i had to take the last morning – and ended up without visible sunrise due to the clouds. not wanting to…