New Year 2009: Afternoon Tea with Friends

When we walked down the trail on the "Lion Head Mountain", we met several friends who were having afternoon tea by the roadside.  Are they celebrating the coming end of the Year of Mice?

New Year 2009: Lion Head Mountain

After we visited the plum flower garden we went up the near by "Lion Head Mountain".  It is a famous recreation area, but both Grace and I are not good climbers, not even for well-paved stairs.  We drove up the mountain to a major temple.  Most local Taiwanese Temples are "Tao" religion which are different from Buddhism.  Although both of them are polytheism, Tao religion is really local Chinese in contrast to Buddhism which was originated from India.  Tao is very similar to the Greek paganism, worships all kinds of deities in the mythology, and many historical figures.  In China, Tao religion went back many thousands of years.  On the other hand the local Tao Temples in Taiwan worship many different deities than that in mainland China.  The Taiwanese Tao temples are also very different and unique.  They have very colorful roof decorations.  I have been interested to photograph them for a while.  When we arrived at the temple, a most brilliant sun appeared and lighted up the newly renovated roof.  Here are more of our photos.

New Year 2009: Plum Flower

Plum flower has a special meaning for the people in Taiwan.  It is the national flower of Republic of China (R. O. C.), its major territory now is Taiwan.  From 1911 till 1949, Republic of China was the China.  In 1949, Chinese communists took over the mainland and formed the People's Republic of China and ROC retreated to Taiwan.  Plum flower was chosen as national flower because it is the first flowering tree flowers during the year.  It always flowers during the bitter cold in early Spring.  It symbolizes the endurance under harsh condition.  

On Friday, January 2nd, 2009, we went to a plum flower garden by the village of Nanchuang (南庄).  It is an old village about an hour and half drive south of Taipei.  It is in a region traditionally inhibited by Hakka people.  The tourist part of the village consists of one lane passable by two person side by side only.  It is lined with stores selling local delicacies.  We visited the village last Spring during the Tung Blossom Season.  In the Southern Taiwan, they are mountains with thousands of plum flower trees.  We arrived at Nanchuang at about lunch time.  We stopped by a fish farm outside of the village first and had a traditional Hakka meal.  The garden we visited has over 60 different varieties of plum flower trees, but only four trees are in full bloom.  Well, we only need just one branch of perfect flowers to photograph, who need thousands of flowering trees.  Here are more photos from the garden.

Bird Nest by the Water Cube

Here is the "Water Cube" at day light with the "Bird Nest" in the background.  Click here to see more of Grace' pictures of the Olympic Stadium

Water Cube Reflection

Usually one sees the reflection from water.  Here we see the reflection of water, the water of "Water Cube".  But anyway, how can water form a cube if it is not ice?  This is a shoot across the street from the Beijing National Indoor Stadium, "The Water Cube".  Grace took the picture for the light columns in front of the building, then saw the reflection. 

Water Cube in Beijing

I, Grace went to Beijing for a short business trip this week.  I stayed in a hotel not too far from the Olympic Stadium.  I got a shot of this amazingly colorful Water Cube where the Olympians competed in the indoor swimming pool.  

ABC Wednesday: Y is for Yuan (園)

Yuan is the phonic spelling of Chinese character  園.  The meaning of this word is garden.  Chinese garden of the southern China has a history goes back to many hundreds of years.  Obviously its landscape is very different from the English country garden and the formal French garden.  We went to this garden properly named "South Garden" (南園) on Sunday, December 28, 2008.  It is located about one-hour drive south of Taipei.

It has been owned by a newspaper conglomerate and only opened to public in 2008.  It is modeled after the garden design of Southern China, which is a rarity in Taiwan.    You can see more of our photos of this garden here.  

See more entries of ABC wednesday here.

ABC Wednesday: X is for X-legged

This is our first attempt with ABC Wednesday.  We saw this black swan in an extraordinary garden about an hour drive from Taipei.  When we loaded the picture, we noticed the special way of how the swan cross (X)-leg to stand on one foot.  

We will show more pictures from this quite interesting Chinese landscaped garden next time.

Happy New Year everyone!

Taipei National Theater

During our trip to New Mexico, we photographed many adobe colored building against beautiful blue sky.  I have been wondering where can I have such amazing color to photograph again in Taiwan.  On Thursday, December 18, I was on my way to lunch on the bus.  On impulse, I jumped of the bus at the Freedom Square near the Presidential Palace.  It is the location of Chang Kai-Check Memorial.  It was renamed to "Freedom Square" during the last presidential election due to local politics.  I have photographed the location before when I just had the D300 with the 70-300 VR lens.  At that time, the National Theater which is at the same location was under renovation.  Thus I only photographed the Memorial Hall which has glazed blue tile roof.

The National Theater has glazed gold/brown tile roof.  It is the largest structure in the world with this type of the roof.  When Photograph against the winter blue sky of Taipei, I got very similar colorful scene as in new Mexico.  Here are more photographs.

This time I used D700 with the 70-300 VR lens.  The lens was easier to use on the FX format D700 than on the DX format D300.  The field-of-view is much more natural without the 1.5x factor.  I did not have to keep on stepping back.  The lens was good, but I still need to do a lot of distortion adjustment by Capture NX or Photoshop.  Shooting against the blue sky also made the vignette very evident.  They were so strong that could not be corrected easily using Capture NX, the Photoshop corrected it without a hitch.

Taipei Zoo

Today is Saturday, December 13th.  Grace was out for her company's clinical PI meeting.  I took my D300 with 70-300 VR lens to Taipei Zoo.  It is not too far away from our condo.  But the metro was out of order.  Though, the connecting bus was free.  I was out to the zoo for photography two times before.  They were with my old D70 and the old 70-300 lens.  That lens was not really a very good lens and without VR.  It was quite difficult to use hand-held.  This time, I just wanted to see how good are the new camera and new lens.  They can be really good.  Click on the photo and you can see the photos in larger size.

I photographed him once before.  The photos were quite sharp already.  He looked even better this time with the bright sunshine and the water in background.

It is amazing how the camera and the lens bring out all the detail of his fur.  I think I also caught a better expression of him this time.

North Shore

It was Saturday, December 6, almost one month after we came back from New Mexico.  I had spent most of my spare time on the computer to develop the images from that trip and had not touch my camera.  I suppose after the intense 5-day photographic session, I was a bit shell-shock and gun-shy about photographing again.  On this Saturday, Grace had an outing with all her lady-friends from the Biolady Club at Danshuei Village.  The village is reachable by metro from Taipei city and is a very active tourist town.  I also bike over there often.  Danshuei river is the major river of Taipei.  The village is where the river flows into Taiwan strait.  Because of its location, it has many historical buildings from the 18th and early 19th century.  I took her to Danshuei by car then continued northward alone the ocean for a little tour of myself.  It was a very scenic drive started from Danshuei and ended at Keelung.  The highway then continues southward alone the northeast shore, where I have photographed several times before.  I took only my D300 and the 105 VR micro lens.

The first place I encountered was this nice litter park by the sea.  It was made of various concrete structures.  Guess what, it is a special park constructed by the county government for wedding photography.  As shown at the LeDeux Street in Taos, New Mexico, the 105 lens was just perfect for the location.  I got many photographs in perfect geometry.

The next place I stopped by was a small harbor called Dragon Hole (龍洞).  It does have a natural stone gate (a big hole) about two-story high over looking the ocean by the harbor.  There was a squid boat in the harbor.  Squid boat differs from the normal fishing boat by the lines of enormous lanterns on the boat.  It uses them to light up the ocean surface at night to attract squid.  Just as at Elizabeth Town at New Mexico, where I took a series of photos of an old truck.  I took a lot of colorful photographs of this old squid boat.

Then I saw this incredible image by the sea.  An ocean-going vessel tied to the beach.  I did not think it was beached by accident, but was tied up for repair.  There were some kind of operation on the beach.  Here are more photos around the area.

New Mexico VIII: Photographic Equipment and Post Processing Work Flow

Grace took her new Nikon D90 and the 18-200 VR lens.  Mine was much heavier set up.  I had the Nikon D300 with vertical grip and the 12-24, 16-85 VR and 70-300 VR lenses.  I also had the Nikon 50/1.4, and 105 VR micro lenses with me.  

Contrary to conventional wisdom, we often used the wide angle lens for closer scene.  For the wide open space, actually we used more often the long telephoto lens.  I did not have a chance to really use the micro lens capability in the New Mexico trip.  However, I used the 105 VR micro lens, just for fun, for all the shots at LaDoux street after the morning snow.  The lens was amazing when used to photograph buildings, every line was straight, perfect vertical or horizontal, almost no prospective distortion.

Each one of us had two batteries.  I kept one in the camera and one in the vertical grip.  We brought with us also two 8 GB memory cards each.  Each one of us took over 400 pictures per day.  We rarely used out one fully charged battery each day.  We took all the pictures in RAW.  8 GB memory card can store over 500 loss-less compressed NEF RAW file.  Thus in reality the extra battery and memory card were just for emergency.  

I had a 160 GB storage device that we transfered all the pictures of that day to it every night.  Grace had her portable computer with her and we transfered another backup copy to her computer.  We then erased all the pictures from the memory card and ready for next day.

Shooting NEF and using Capture NX2 allowed us to mend many mistakes that happened during our photographic process, especially for Picture Control.  Photoshop's ARC (Adobe RAW Conversion) does not always convert the in-camera Picture Control reliably.  It takes quite an exercise in Photoshop to reproduce the Picture Control effects.  Thus my work flow is to review the pictures in Nikon ViewNX, open the selected photos in Capture NX2, adjust exposure, picture control etc., save as JPEG then do further adjustment in Photoshop. For people portraits shot in "neutral" of Picture Control, I will then open directly in Photoshop ARC, which gives me better control on skin tone.  Photoshop ARC will not read any adjustment done by Capture NX to the RAW file.

The unselected RAW pictures eventually get deleted.  I keep both adjusted JPEG and its RAW.  Unless the JPEG compression artifact is obvious, I do not save pictures in TIF.  I also do not save Capture NX2 adjustment in RAW file unless necessary, it increases 50% of the file size to 15 MB each.  This way, I keep a middle ground between keeping the pictures either all in RAW or all in JPEG.

New Mexico VII: Ojo Caliente and Round Barn

Ojo Caliente is a hot spring resort, we passed by on Monday, November 10th when we were on our way to Abiquiu.  Much to Grace' dismay, we did not stop for the famous New Mexico hot spring spa, but to photograph a round barn!!!

This is a scene from the Ojo Caliente Mineral Spring Resort taken by Grace.  I often have to straighten Grace' photo in Photoshop and do some prospective adjustments due to her height and the wide angle lens that she used.  However, if I do any of these things to this photo, it will lose its charm and make it to become so ordinary.

The round barn has been totally renovated (unfortunately).  I had a look at it and did not know what to do with this huge brand new structure.  Grace got a reasonably good shot.  

Dave was even better, showed us his picture of the round barn on his computer converted to sepia monochrome, which made the new barn aged 50 years and filled with character.  Here is my attempt.

New Mexico VI: O'Keeffe Museum, Canyon Drive and Bosque del Apache

Wednesday, November 12th, it was the last day of our New Mexico trip.  We came into Santa Fe last night and stayed at a very nice hotel just by the Santa Fe old Town Center, Inns of the Governors.  In the morning, we visited Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.  It had a special exhibition of the photos that contemporary photographers took for her and her life in New Mexico with selected paintings by her.  We then walked alone the Canyon Drive, a street lined with famous art galleries.  Here are some photos of the morning tour.  We then drove back to Albuquerque to send Grace to airport to continue her around the world trip.  The rest of the group then rushed to the famous bird sanctuary Bosque del Apache.

We arrived just about sunset when the birds were coming back from a day of feeding in the surrounding grounds.  There were thousands on the lake and hundreds continuously fly in.

The scenery pushed us to the limit of our skill and photographic equipments.  Here are some more of my photos.

Bosque de Apache not only is a bird sanctuary, it is also teamed with other animals.  Here was a lucky shot of a deer family.

All through the trip, we have been chasing the moon rise, over the adobe church, over Hernandez, etc.  We finally got the perfect moonrise at Bosque del Apache.  

It was matched by an even more amazing sunset New Mexico style.  Here are more photos.

Finally, the dark fall and it was time to go back to Alburquerque, packed the luggage and ready to head home.

New Mexico V: Mountain and desert landscape, mural paintings and Santuario at Chimayo

Today, Tuesday, November 11th, we said farewell to the Adobe Wall Motel, which our group holed up for three days at Taos.

We had breakfast at LeDoux street and took our final photos at Taos' old town plaza.  The sky was again brilliant blue.  We took the High Road (Highway 76) back to Santa Fe.

There are so many artists around Taos (7000?).  We could often see them unleash their talent on mural paintings.  This mural painting of eagle was taken yesterday on the way to Abiquiu.  It was painted between two walls.  I took three pictures and stitched them together in Photoshop.  Today we saw other amazing mural paintings on the wall of the Sugar Nymphs Bistro at Peñasco.  Here are some of the photos.

In the morning, the road we took first lead us through the mountain range.  We could see snow covered mountain top in distance.  We passed by many interesting farming valley and small towns.  

In the afternoon, on the way to Chimayo, we then surrounded by the typical New Mexico desert landscape.  Here are a few more photos.  

Chimayo was settled by Spanish settlers not long after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680-1692.  El Santuario de Chimayó is a church filled with legend.  The location was where a crucifix was found around 1810.  It was brought to St. Cruz three times and mysteriously returned by itself.  The church was built at 1816.  The crucifix is still located in the chapel alter.  However, the real magic power is from the "sacred sand pit".  All kind of diseases have been claimed to be cured by it.  Grace had a shot of Dave lay on ground to take the photo through the doorway, then Ken lay on the ground.  Finally it was me, just follow the masters to get the best shot.  Here are our photos of El Santuario de Chimayó.

New Mexico IV: Snow over Taos and Abiquiu, Home of Georgia O'keeffe

On Monday, November 10th, a light snow covered Taos just before down.  We went out to photograph very early in the morning.  The historic LeDoux street is just by the old town square.  It was established by the frenchman LeDoux many centuries ago, originally as a walled compound, now is lined with art galleries.  We took many pictures, the light snow covered adobe wall and art decor were very photogenic.  

We then drove around on Highway 64 in and around Taos Pubelo to photograph the snow scenery.  There were many farms with horses and cows and with the mountain as backdrop all covered with a layer of white light snow.  They were very beautiful and so different from the scenery of previous days.  Here are a couple of the photos.

After breakfast, we drove toward Abiquiu, home of Georgia O'Keeffe.  On the way we visited an Earthship exhibit.  It is a community of ecological friendly buildings in the middle of the barren desert.  The buildings were half underground, and virtually self-sustainable.  They used solar and wind energy and recycled water from natural vegetation inside the house.  All the houses were built with reclaimed materials.  We than visited the interesting art collection by Ken Nelson at Pink School Gallery.  It was again in the middle of desert.  The collection was so diverse and so colorful.  Here are some photos of them.  

The sky was very different from the previous several days.  It was a stormy sky covered with clouds.  It made the desert landscape very dramatic.  We arrived at Abiquiu, but O"Keeffe's house was closed for the season.  A local, Napoleon Garica gave us a first-hand account of her life at Abiquiu.  The challenge of photographing the Abiquiu pueblo church was how to avoid the modern out buildings and electricity wires, but include the red cliff and mesa in the background.  We then drove around the back road of the town and came across the three crosses, which may gave her the idea for her "Black Cross" painting.  I was the last person to get back into the van, and got the amazing light at far away mesa behind the crosses.  Here are some more photos.

Our final task of the day was to look for the location that Ansel Adams photographed his famous photograph of "Moonrises over Hernandez" at 1941.  Here it is, the church and the grave yard, minus the moon.

My first impression of Bosnia and Herzegovina

I, Grace visited our clinical investigators in Sarajevo and Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina (part of the former Yugoslavia) on Nov. 21, 2008.  Three clinical associates from Croatia and Bosnia accompanied me for a very short one-day tour.  Sarajevo is famous for the winter Olympics held in 1984, and sadly the country was besieged between 1992 to 1996 during the Bosnian war. I was impressed by its religious diversity of Islam, Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Judaism, which is why Sarajevo is nicknames Jerusalem of Europe.  

Mostar, about two and half hours by car from Sarajevo, is located in the Herzegovina part of the country.  It is named after its old bridge, built in 1566.  Unfortunately, the bridge was destroyed in 1993 during the Bosnian war.  It was reconstructed and completed in 2004.  It was very difficult to walk with dress shoe heels on the white limestone.  I had to hold on to Mirna to cross the bridge with 29 meters in length and 20 meters in height.  The night scenes of the bridge was unreal. Here are a few photos of both sides of the bridge.  

The next morning I woke up to a beautiful early snow.  I looked out from the hotel window, the picturesque views look like those in the postcards.  In the fore ground, there are mosques and church towers; and in the far ground, there are many houses on the nearby hills.  I stayed at Hotel Europa Garni right in the old town.  The hotel was bombed during the war.  It has a Moroccan restaurant in the basement which serves good Couscous!  I only had one hour to photograph that morning before leaving for the airport.  Here are some photographs of the old town and the restaurant.

New Mexico III: Taos Pueblo, Elizabethtown, Eagle Lake and Angel Fire

On Sunday, November 9th, we rised early to photograph the Saint Francis of Assisi Church at Rancho de Taos again.  This time from the front when it was bathed in the morning light.  it was cold and our van was stucked in the car park with all the other cars of church goer.  We end up walk over to a nice restaurant, Ranchos Plaza Grill for breakfast.  It had some amazing mural painting.  Here are the photos.

After breakfast, we drove to visit the famous Taos Pueblo.  The adobe walled buildings are over 1000 years old.  The material is made up of clay and grass, thus it disintegrates in the rain and has to be repaired continuously.  The buildings are actively live in with no modern electricity, water and plumbing.  The local indians received their own language and culture education in addition to normal American education.  The color of the wall and the smoke from cooking fooled the camera's computer.  The pictures have to be extensively reworked by computer software to bring out their true color.  Here are the photos.

We then drove through the Enchanted Circle route around Wheeler Peak (13,000 ft), stopped by the Red River to photograph the mountain stream, frozen lake and beaver dam.  We end up in an abandoned mining town, Elizabethtown.  There were many old barn, horses, farm equipments to  photograph.  We also meet up with the gospel music group of "Cowboys for  Christ" in the local church.  They sang for us with their amazing voice and served us their moose chilli. Here are the photos.

The most interesting subject in the Elizabethtown to photograph was this old truck.  It was very colorful and the photographs came out perfect.  Unlike the photos from the Taos Pueblo, it needs no additional work up on the computer.  Here are more of them.

After the "Cowboys of Christ" sang the "Amazing Grace" for us, we were ready to leave.  Then we saw this amazing light, a real alpenglow, across the field, "The Load is shinning light on us".  It is followed by a beautiful sunset.  We chased the beautiful color all the way to the Eagle Lake, in time to photograph the moon rise.  We finished the trip by photographing the Vietnam Memorial at Angel Fire in the dark.  Here are the photos.

New Mexico II: Arroyo Seco, Rio Grande, Ted Egri and Taos

The second day, Saturday, November 8th, we started our trip to Arroyo Seco and had breakfast at Abe's.  The Holy Trinity Church at Arroyo Seco was the only church that we were allowed to photograph the interior during our entire trip.  We then drove to Rio Grande Bridge to really have a taste of the open country of New Mexico.  We came back to Taos old town plaza to hang around various art galleries and had lunch.  The high light of the afternoon was the visit to 96 year-old artist,Ted Egri.  His wife Janet gave us a good tour of his studio and sculpture park, and an overview of his life.  It was really interesting and impressive.  We end the day photographing moon rise at Saint Francis of Assisi church at Rancho de Taos.  Here you can see our photographs of the day.

New Mexico I: Albuquerque, Turquoise Trail & Santa Fe

Grace and I joined a photographic tour organized by Dave Wyman of Image Quest and co-led by Ken Rockwell of KenRockwell.com.   We arrived at Albuquerque airport at 7 pm Thursday, November 6.  The whole group of eight photographers, gathered from all corners of the US, came to meet us at the airport and drove us to Albuquerque old town to have dinner.  They gave us the warmest welcome and let us felt at home right away.  After all, we are all photographers.

The trip started the next morning of a visit to the Albuquerque's old town plaza and the San Felipe de Neri Church.  The day was just beautiful.  We could have photographed the adobe wall against the turquoise colored sky all day.  We left Albuquerque to Santa Fe by way of Turquoise Trail, and passing by many old mining towns.  We arrived at Santa Fe in the afternoon and finished the day by walking alone and photographing the Santa Fe Old Town Plaza.  After sunset, we drove further north to Tao and settled in Adobe Wall Motel to get us ready for venturing into the Tao Pueblo country for the next few days.  Here are a few of our photographs of the day.