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.

ABC Wednesday: U is for a Usual Trip to Paris

Several weeks ago, Grace made another of her Usual trip to Paris.  She did her Usual things of seeing her scientific and business advisors.  She went to her Usual restaurants and clothing stores.  One thing a bit Unusual was she took a lot of bracketed shots, which means the same images photographed at different exposures.  I was then given the task of doing the HDR images for these bracketed shots.

She took quite a few pictures from this window.  I tried all kinds of combination using my limited HDR skill.  None of them came out good till I had this one into black and white.  It is so Unusually good, so Parisian.

To see more entries of ABC Wednesday click here.

ABC Wednesday: T is for Taroko Gorge

Taoroko Gorge is part of the Central Cross-island Highway and belong to the Taroko National Park.  It is the most scenic place in Taiwan.  On impulse, I made a day trip from Taipei to the park two weeks ago when Grace was on a trip to Paris.  The meaning of the Taroko is "magnificent and beautiful" in local tribal language.  Central Cross-island Highway was built in between 1956 to 1960 by the veterans of Communist-National conflict of China .  The 20 km of highway that goes through Taroko Gorage was the most difficult part of the whole construction project.  The road had to be carved into the marble cliff.  It was purely built by hands and dynamites with the lost of 212 life.  

The above picture was taken at Swallow Grotto.  The legend has when the road was built, there were a lot of swallow living on the cliff.  Most of them probably scared away by the dynamite.  From the picture you can see how tall is the gorge.  The black hole in middle on the left is the road.  Today most of the original roads are footpaths for the tourists, the major road is further inside in the mountain as tunnels of two-lane highway.

This is the Bridge of Kind Mother.  It is located at the junction of two rivers.  The legend has that a local tribesman was lost in the river during the road construction.  The mother who brought lunch for him everyday came to the same spot each day hoping for his return.  The little gazebo on top of rock, which is called Frog Rock, was built by Jiang-Kai Shek's son to remember his mother.  There is another gazebo built by Jiang-Kai Shek to remember his mother at the other side of the bridge.  This is not the original bridge, like most of the original bridges along the gorge, they have been often destroyed by flood water.

This is the most impressive part of the Taroko Gorge, Tunnel of Nine Turns.  During my trip to the gorge two weeks ago, I found that this area is no longer open to the public.  The entrance to the tunnel was littered with broken rocks.  A few years ago, a Chinese tourist was killed by the fallen rock.  I have to take out this photo from my previous travel to show you how impressive the gorge is.  The rock below the road was pure white as original color of the marble.  It has been washed by the flood water.  I surly do not want to be at that road spot when Typhoon hits Taiwan and the flood water in the mountain explodes.

At the narrowest part of the "Tunnel of Nine Turns", when we look up, we can see the sky through a space formed by the cliffs at the two sides of the gorge.  It is in a perfect shape of Taiwan.  It illustrates how narrow the gorge is at this area.

This is Eternal Spring Shrine located near the end of the gorge where it joins the Pacific ocean.  It was built in memory of the life lost during the construction of the highway.  The shrine looks different from what I remember when I visited the area as a college student.  Do not take lightly of the gentle spring water that coms out from the mountain.  The shrine has been destroyed many times and rebuilt many times due to the flood water.

To see more entries of ABC Wednesday clcik here.

ABC Wednesday: S is for Strange Lights over Su-ao Harbor

 

I was making a day trip to Taroko National Park yesterday.  On the way back, arriving at the port city of Su-ao, it was almost dark.  Su-ao is at northeast side of Taiwan facing Pacific Ocean.  It is both a fishing harbor and a navy base.  I stopped by a scenic point by the highway to take a few pictures of the beautiful harbor at night.  Can you see the strange lights over the ocean at the right hand side of the picture.

Here is a better view.  Are they UFOs?

Well, they are not!  They are squid boats out doing squid fishing at night.  They use very strong light to attract squid to the fishing vessels.

Here is some detail for those of you into technical aspect of photography.  With my D700 and the 28-300 VR lens, I could photographed all these images hand-held.  However, ISO would be high and the images may not be as sharp as they could be.  I dutifully set up the tripod, set exposure compensation at -2, aperture at 8, ISO200, turned off the VR and used mirror-up with a remote trigger.  Since Nikon 28-300 VR lens has 9 round blades for the diaphragm, Ken Rockwell claimed that he could not get sunstars out of the Nikon 28-300 VR lens.  If you click on the last images, you can see, even at aperture 8, the perfect sunstars of each light, everyone has 18 rays, a classic for Nikon lens (Canon only has 6 or 8).  May be the lights were just so strong and so concentrated.  

To see more entries of ABC Wednesday click here.

Today's Flower #144: Our Home

No, this is not our home, it is a 民宿, Bed and Breakfast at Jinguashi northeast of Taipei named "Our Home".  It is up in the mountain facing Pacific Ocean.  Two weeks ago, we made a reservation beforehand for dinner.  It is a Greek-styled building with beautiful garden.  We arrived just before sunset in the rain, a magic moment.

To see more flowers from around the world click here.

Bronzed Drongo and Black-crowned Night Heron

Taiwan had a draught for most of the Spring and the situation has been getting serious.  Even a typhoon in early May did not bring much relieve.  The temperature reached over 30 degree C.  Finally, since last week, the raining season started. We had a nice rain and the temperature finally cool down.

I have not seen Paulownia Flower Blossom this year.  I took Taipei metro to a local town then car pooled a taxi up the mountain to the Paulownia Flower Garden.  Most of the flower have gone due to the rain, I can only see some flowering tree in the distance.

I walk down the mountain through a well organized path by the mountain stream.  The temperature was cool that made the walk a very pleasant one.

Here is my first surprise, a Bronzed Drongo (小捲尾) Dicrurus aeneus.

Then I saw this very young Black-crowned Night Heron (夜鷺) Nyticorax nyticorax.   The light down in the valley by the mountain stream created this natural concentration of light on the young bird.

I had my 28-300 VR lens with Nikon D700.  Imanaged to lean on the railing and shot at 300mm, f5.6, 1/20.  The picture came out very nice and sharp.

To see more Camera-Critters from around the world click here.

ABC Wednesday: R is for Rainbow

Have you ever dream of walking into the origin of a rainbow, to be inside of a rainbow, and may be find a chest of brilliant treasure that gives out such beautiful color.  The unexpected surprise when we visited 十分 Waterfall was seeing the rainbow at the bottom of the waterfall.  It was late afternoon, the sun shine through the back of the waterfall and a rainbow appeared in the water mist.

It separates brightness from shadow, light from darkness, goodness from evil and right from wrong!!

When we walked down to the bottom of the waterfall and looking back, we could see the sunstar through the trees.

Closer we finally see what is inside of a rainbow.

It is a dreamy fairyland!

to see more entries of ABC Wednesday click here.