I was in Hong Kong three times on my summer 2023 trip. The last time on vacation with Covid. That kinda sucked. The photos below were all taken with either a Zeiss Ikon ZM, Bessa R2 or a Hasselblad Xpan (panoramic images) on Portra 400 or Cinestill 800T film.
I took the Hasselblad Xpan to the village for some pano images. It’s usually a challenge to compose a panoramic photo in a small area like a village, but I’ve started using a wide 28mm Nikon lens on the Xpan which has made it easier.
Wow – it was stupid hot in China during the summer of 2023. I had a choice of weather conditions – extreme heat + humidity or heavy rain. Neither was very conducive for street photography.
Hot, Hot, and more hot. Maybe some rain too. All photos were taken with a Zeiss Ikon ZM on Portra 400 film. Thanks to Anne for being my guide on a couple of photo outings.
Well, that was a long 3 years… All Photos were shot on 35mm film using three different cameras (Leica M6, Bessa R2, Zeiss Ikon ZM).
I was relieved to see all of my village friends survived the December of 2022 Covid wave that swept through China.
I spent a month back in Ningbo after the big Covid wave of December 2022. It was great to see China back to normal.
After getting shut out of China for almost a year and a half, I was finally able to travel to Shanghai for some street photography and vintage camera shopping with my Ningbo friend Barry.
It took me over 15 months before I was able to return to China to continue my documentation of the final years of this 400-year-old village.
It’s been over two years since I was last in Yangjiang and it was nice to spend some time there.
After enjoying the relative safety of China’s Zero Covid policy during 2020 and 2021 I returned after a 15-month absence. Unfortunately, I returned to a very different China.
Well… that was a long business trip. Really long and really amazing. I essentially sat out the pandemic in China – which was one of the safest Covid bubbles on the planet. It was really tough packing up my apartment at the end of my odyssey. I had accumulated a lot of stuff over 14 […]
This week is the one-year anniversary of coming to China in March of 2020. I came to Ningbo with the plan to stay for 6 weeks for a business trip. A few days after I arrived China closed the borders (still not reopened a year later) and the Covid cases in the US spiked.
This post marks the 10 year anniversary of this photoblog. It also coincides with the publication of Volume 2 of my village series.
Some assorted photos using assorted cameras and assorted film stocks. These are the final photos taken in 2020.
It’s harvest time in the village and there were lots of photo opportunities. Harvesting rice, potatos, soy beans, peas, sweet potatos and more rice.
The Shanghai Camera Mall got more of my money. I was in the mood for something COMPLETELY different than my other analog cameras, so I started investigating panoramic cameras.
I was walking through the village in the middle of October and saw a large tent erected in one of the parking lots. After asking around I found out there was a touring company performing Shaoxing Operas for 3 nights.
I decided to try a formal portrait session of some of the older people in the village a few weeks ago. Many of them had never had a formal portrait taken, so I decided to do it pro-bono as a learning exercise.
I met a YouTuber on the bus from the Shanghai airport to our government-mandated 14-day quarantine hotel in Ningbo. He was returning from the US with his family trying to out-run the COVID-19 virus that had just hit the US. I was doing the same thing – for slightly different reasons.
Because the local photo lab is getting slow and expensive I decided to start developing and scanning my own black and white film. I already do that in the US, but it requires some gear and chemicals to get it done here in China. After I was here for about 6 months I decided to set up a film processing lab in my AirBnB kitchen – which I never use.
After jumping into analog photography about a year and a half ago I’ve slowly acquired cameras with larger and larger resolution (negative size). Over the summer I took the ultimate step into large format photography when I purchased a ShenHao 4×5 camera in Shanghai.
My six-week trip turned into an “indefinite” length trip because of COVID-19 related issues (closed borders, lack of flights, lockdowns, etc.). I had plenty of opportunities to work on my photo project in the village and travel around China to capture analog photos on my Mamiya 6 and Hasselblad 500 C/M. Most of these photos were taken using Portra 400 film.
More street portraits from the village in Ningbo. I’ve entered a new stage in this project because in early May I printed a photo book with all of the images I had shot and distributed the book to everyone in the village who had allowed me to take their portrait. This created an incentive for […]