ABC Wednesday: V is for A Beach with A View

 A few weeks ago, I took a day off to drive to central part of Taiwan for a photographic trip.  I have shown my visit to the Camomile Tea Plantation and sunflowers field of a flower show in my two previous blogs.  My final stop of the trip was for a beach near Taichung harbor.  It is a location well known for photographing sunset.  When I was on the highway driving west toward the beach, I saw an amazing colorful sunset. The sun went down earlier than I thought in the winter month.  I was not too worried, photographing sunset does not always mean having the bright red sun in the picture.

As I arrived at the beach, the light in sky and the reflection from the water surface was just perfect.  The beach is a wide open mud plan of a river outlet by the Taichung harbor.  The wind mills built by the Taiwan Electric add interest to the sunset scene.

 The mud is as smooth as silk, many young people walking miles out to the ocean and play the mud with their feet.  As sun was setting, I have to move quickly and have little chance to set my tripod in the mud. The VR on the lens worked reasonably well which allowed me to photograph till really late.  If I used tripod and slower shutter speed, It would not be possible to freeze the blades of the wind mill.

Finally it was really too dark, I walked back to the parking and took this final picture with the light from Taichung harbor as back drop.  I leaned my camera on a lamp post and used slower speed to blur the action of the wind mill.

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ABC Wednesday: U is for Upstairs, Downstairs

Upstairs, downstairs, we are not talking about the British television drama of the 70's.  We are talking about the two restaurants of Musée d'Orsay, of Paris.  Grace was in Paris for several meetings a few weeks ago and went to the museum.  It has been totally renovated (I first saw the museum when it was under construction in the 80's).  She was late for lunch and went upstairs to the Café Campana just by the Impressionist Gallery.  It is a typical Parisisn brasserie and designed by the famous Brazilian designers, Campana brothers.  As you can see it was almost two thirty in the afternoon, the restaurant was packed.  No place for her to sit.

She could not get close to the clock at Campana, instead, she went through the Impressionist Gallery and photographed through the clock at the opposite end facing towards Louvre.

Down stairs, there is Le Restaurant, the former restaurant of the Hôtel d'Orsay.  It was first opened in 1900, when the place was the Gare d'Orsay.  The new construction was by the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte.  It is as magnificent as ever.

Here is a more detail view of the ceiling from the original 1900.  You can imagine where Grace finally ended up having her late lunch.

These photographs were taken using the new Nikon V1, a much smaller mirrorless camera with interchangeable lens.  Consider its size, the results are not too bad.

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