Sunday, August 10, 2008

Photo updates

A few shots from the last couple of weeks. First of all I feel I have to post an eclipse-ish photo. As I said a few posts ago, the sky was pretty cloudy where I was, though clearly as you can see from this photo, it wasn't complete cover everywhere. The photos from totality are rather featureless, but this photo was taken perhaps a minute before the lights went out completely, taken in Pingliang, Gansu province:

moments before totality in Pingliang, Gansu
Before the eclipse, as I said, I attracted the attention of some local kids, I gave them my camera to play with and they had a blast snapping everything around them. This was one that I took of them, great expressions, great kids:
Kids in Pingliang
Back in Baoji, before heading back to Beijing I met up with a guy taking birds to market, chatted with him briefly and asked if I could take his photo. There's a compromise to be made between being overly polite, in which case you are likely to get the least natural photos, and being rude, which will probably give you the most spontaneous images. I tend to err on the side of caution a little too much, perhaps.
Birdman of Baoji
Onto Seoul, and just before the fantastic cloud shadows posted yesterday, caused by the layers of haze below the main visible clouds, we had a show of rather fine sun beams over the temple complex:
Chaonggyegung sun beams
and finally, yesterday afternoon, this guy was sat perched in a tree. I waited for around half an hour for him to fly off. Eventually he did but I fluffed up the timing and didn't get a decent photo of the ascent, still, he gave me some time before to watch him stalking the fish:
Stork in Seoul
More photos on my Flickr site and all can be found in larger sizes.

Today I've rested up and spent some time relaxing in a local cafe. Lots of things to get on with tomorrow after some productive conversations on Friday evening.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Biscuit - when you get the chance, would be interesting to see your top 10 pics that you've taken on your travels....
Thanks for the advanced warning on the chinese visa by the way. Business Visas are even more problematic!!! China have pretty much stopped issuing them. I am having some interesting conversations with chinese authorities trying to explain my full name vs given name.

Unknown said...

Yes, I can imagine the name confusion, which causes problems in the simplest of border situations may cause some difficulties with China. Get onto Chinese Visas direct and get them to sort it all out for you.

May try and sort through my photos some time for a top ten. Probably not going to happen this week though. I find it particularly difficult to be objective about my photos unless I've had them around for a long time.

J