Skywatch Friday: Southern View from Danshui

ABC Wednesday: A is for Amsterdam

 Grace was at Amsterdam for an international conference in early July.  We transited through the city several times before and I have made an extensive visit about 20 years ago.  This was the first time Grace really visited and stayed in Amsterdam.  This is the famous Dam Square.

 The devil was not asking for Grace's soul, he was asking for money, since Grace took a picture of him.

 I am glad that Grace did not go into the building!!  She only took a picture of it.

 A very interesting wall decoration!

 What a contrast between old and new wall decoration!  Can you see the Picasso's influence in these paintings.  Of course, Amsterdam has a world famous Picasso museum.

Beautiful houses, I think these have neck- or bell- gables.   In the old days, the merchants used the lifts on top of the gables to haul merchandise to the storage at the loft.

What a beautiful ornate archway!

 How can a trip to Amsterdam without a boat tour of the city's famous canal.  How I would also like to have a house boat and cruise on the water with a little boat like this.

 Looking at the beautiful houses along the canal, one cannot not admire the once domination of world ocean by the Dutch merchants.

The sun was down and it was time for Grace to go back to the hotel and pack up for home.

To see more entries of ABC Wednesday click here.

ABC Wednesday & Camera Critters #171: Z is for Zoo

I cannot imagine that my English vocabulary is soo poor.  All I can think of for "Z" is zoo or zebra!

 I went to Taipei zoo in mid-March, a perfect Spring day to test my ability of using my 80-400 mm lens on the D300.  Its lower ISO performance and the 1.5x factor made the combination much more difficult to use than with D700.  I have to use a very solid tripod and pull out all my skill and trick to get a very sharp image.

A hood crane (Grus monacha), the avery has been closed for renovation.  I could only walk around for the caged birds.


To see more entries to ABC Wednesday click here.
To see more Camera Critters from around the world click here.

ABC Wednesday: Y is for Yellow

 We have been absent from the blogosphere for several weeks.  Grace has an intensive traveling schedule that took her away from Taiwan for almost a month.  I was in the meantime moving our house.  Now things are bit settled finally.  Last May, I went to a close-by beach intended to photograph a famous scenery of sea weeds on the beach rock.  The weather was not collaborating.  It was cold and windy with big surfs.  I turned my attention to some local colors.  This is a graffiti of tiles on the sea wall.  The Chinese characters on the wall is the name of the village and the literal translation means "Old Plum".  I think you can see some yellow color on the wall.

Near by there is this very colorful pub.  The owner seems very artistic or he knows that many photographers come to this location to photograph the sea weeds on the rock, thus he makes his restaurant as photogenic as possible.

It is really very interesting structure.  Although it was a very overcast day, I had my tripod with me and be able to get some very clear images.

After turning away from the colorful pub, I saw this house by the beach almost completely put together by the clapboards.

I do not think there is a very romantic story behind this buildings as the colorful pub.  I think the house is at the fringe of the village bordering the beach.  The land owner is prohibited from building a permanent structure.  Thus he put up this temporarily looking house using different clapboards.

Do not ask me what is the round things, I have no idea.

To see more entries of ABC Wednesday click here.