My son joined me during my first 3 months in China and we traveled a little during his visit. We went to Shanghai for a weekend and also had a good time in Hong Kong (until I got the flu).
I moved to Ningbo in March of 2024 to open a sourcing office for my company. It has always been a dream of mine to live in a foreign country and when the opportunity presented itself last year I lept at it. Ningbo is a “small city” of 9.4 million people. When I first started […]
To celebrate my son Ethan’s 19th birthday we traveled up to Beijing for a long weekend. On the first day, we hired a driver and went to the Great Wall. The second day didn’t exactly go to plan because I didn’t research ticket sales enough, but it was still a nice time. All photos were […]
I moved to China (permanently) in early March of 2024, set up my film lab in my new kitchen and immediately began shooting the 400 rolls of film I brought from the US. My first stop was the village. All of these were taken on a Leica M7 using either a Voightlander or Leica 28mm […]
Back at the village to visit friends, take photos – and watch the rice get harvested. All photos were shot on a Leica M7 with a Voigtlander 28mm Ultron V2 lens. The film stock was either Kodak Portra 400, Kodak Gold 200, or Fujifilm Superia 400. Processing & scans were done in Hong Kong / […]
These two cities are my homes away from home and I bounced back and forth between them during most trips to China.
I took a few trips in and out of Hong Kong in the fall of 2023. As always – it was a very photogenic city, both in the day and the night.
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.
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.
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.
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.