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.
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.
Seven years after my first trip to Tibet I retraced my steps and was able to take a lot of my photos all over again with much better gear and a lot more experience.
Two quick passes through Hong Kong on this trip – arriving and departing on a three week trip to China. The weather in October is always amazing. No humidity or big heat.
I use Shenzhen as my pivot point as I travel to other cities in China on business. The Shekou area is very western and very comfortable on the weekends. The food is great and the beer is cold.
I’ve been mentally searching for a western city I’ve visited before that is similar to Lijiang. The only place I can think of is Venice, Italy.
I’ve combined my existing hobby of street photography with my new hobby of power walking. I logged a total of 16 miles in 3 consecutive afternoons. That’s a lot of streets that got photographed.
Ah – the first day of 2015 and the beginning of year number five of my Faces & Places photography project. I took a 3 hour photo walk to the most crowded mall they have in Yangjiang and studied the crowd – inside & out. Unlike most people, I love crowds.