strolling at night, in the rain and without tripod usually is not a standard situation for good shots, but having only 8 days in china i wanted to get out the maximum of it. and this construction site offered some dramatic light effects, especially when the welding startet. street photography in the true sense of…
backyards in nanjing are not meant for foreigners. just 150m away from the main road i found this parking lot, chinese style. trying to work out the best way of visualising the sheer abundance of bicycles, after 5 minutes i heard somebody speaking in my back. lucky enough i did not turn around immediately but…
taking a break from the roster-determined duty hours in our booth, i used my time to closely watch some artist in an exhibition hall creating their pieces. light was low and of mixed quality, so again high iso had to come to the rescue. checking again bibblepro for linux, i found its built-in noise ninja…
the world urban forum of the united nations in nanjing was also used by the chinese government as a platform for showcasing achievements in tourism and real estate development. one of the booths sported this forest of tree silhouettes which was consequentially used as a picnic arena for the local visitors. the middle of the…
participating in a trade fair late in the year, the scenery above is what you usally get at the end of the day. no daylight, little photography – not only because of the light but the feet and the eyes are sore and the nee for a shower and some food is just overwhelming. chinese…
nanjing is an extremely busy city – 8 lanes roads, skyscrapers, noise and smog. but when you enter one of the parks, by miracle all that negative aspects of city life stay behind and you are in a different world. chinese garden design is not that renowned here in europe, we usually take japanese, zen…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…