My personal favourites are the human interest pictures that show all different kinds of human emotion, but there are some very stunning images of other types here as well.

New readers here may not realise that photography is one of my great passions. Well, it used to be. But between work, partying and keeping this blog thing going, I haven’t had much chance to take many pictures.

From my office window, I am lucky enough to be able to see the unique Pudong skyline, and on a clear day, when the sun sets in the west, the light reflecting off the tall skyscrapers looks amazing. Sadly, Mondays to Fridays, I can’t do much about this as I am stuck at work, so yesterday I decided to brave the hordes of (mostly) Chinese tourists as well as the sweltering summer heat and wandered over to the Bund with my trusty Canon 5D.

Don’t be deceived in to thinking this was a quiet Sunday stroll. The picture doesn’t capture the millions of tourists standing behind me and to my right and left, all trying to take the same impressive skyline shot. I literally had to fight my way through this crowd to get the shot I wanted, so you guys had better be grateful!

You can see a bigger version of the photo here.

Photographer Tom Carter will be showing his photographs and telling stories of his epic tour of China at Glamour Bar this Sunday, 8th August at 4pm. As a keen photographer myself, I will be there too, but out of respect for Tom, I won’t be signing autographs or answering questions about my amazing black and white street portraits! Many thanks to Kim C for informing me about this event.

If you want a taste of what the book is like, check out this link.

Details below:

1 COUNTRY, 56 CULTURES 1.3 BILLION PEOPLE, 33 PROVINCES 2 YEARS, 56,000 KILOMETERS A PHOTOGRAPHER AND HIS CAMERA

American photojournalist Tom Carter spent two years traveling and photographing all of China’s 33 provinces and autonomous regions, creating a rich portrait of this diverse nation. Join us for a fascinating afternoon, as Tom shares his photographs and tells the remarkable stories of his 56,000 kilometer journey through a China that still remains unknown to the wider world.

Glamour Bar
6/F, Five on the Bund
20 Guangdong Lu
near Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu

RMB 65, includes a drink; students, RMB 10

Next to the UK pavilion was the Dutch pavilion. It’s dubbed “happy street” and I guess the idea here was for it to be fun and not too serious. It was the only pavilion that wasn’t actually open when I first saw it. There was some kind of opening ceremony later in the morning with lots of people in business suits and a large group of photographers and finally we were allowed in. I say in, the entire pavilion is really just a spiral ramp you walk up and down and along the way there are various small individual rooms that are locked but with windows so you can look inside.

Just an empty locked room with a tiara in a glass case. Perhaps I just didn’t get this.

One had a mannequin dressed in a firefighter’s outfit and the plaque on the wall just said something like “flame retardant materials”. Great! Another room housed a tiara belonging to the queen or some kind of princess. And that was about it really. For me I’m afraid this was the least attractive pavilion I visited, although to be fair I only visited about 6 in total. If anyone related to this pavilion knows more (perhaps it wasn’t fully opened yet?) please do let me know.

The unmistakable Chinese pavilion

Well that was quite enough of Europe for me so I headed over to zone A which is where the Chinese pavilion was located. I had already heard that the reservations were already sold out by about 9am but I was happy just to shoot from outside so I could brag that I’ve been there!

The Saudi pavilion was the most expensive pavilion in the entire Expo. It doesn’t touch the ground as the entire structure is supported by many pillars. It has palm trees on the top, no doubt flown in from Saudi and boasts the largest iMax screen in the world apparently.

The Iranian pavilion, next to the North Korean pavilion was relatively quiet, or maybe it hadn’t opened yet. I’m not quite sure. Ditto for the North Korean pavilion.

Chinese pavilion by night

Saudi pavilion by night next to the smaller Indian pavilion to its right

The Nepanlese pavilion with the Chinese pavilion in the background

As 10.30pm approached and most of the pavilions had closed, the crowds started to head home

It wasn’t actually that bad. Rush hour for example is far worse, although once out of the station, it was as expected, a bit of a struggle to find a vacant taxi before someone else ran to grab it. But I managed to get home eventually after 12 hours of walking around in hot sunshine. My feet were sore, I badly needed a shower and have never slept more soundly.

Overall then, well worth a visit. To be more accurate, it’s worth several visits. The visitor numbers were only around 200,000 on day one, which is well below the forecasted number and attendance fell subsequently over the next few days, so if you’re worried about huge crowds, you needn’t be.

They’ll be lots of special events organised over the next few months, so keep up to date by visiting the Expo website and if you have the chance, do go take a look for yourselves.

The UK pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo

Ow, ow, ow! That’s what I say every time I try to walk. My feet are in a very delicate state after 12 hours of walking the 5 square kilometre Expo site on its first day of opening to the public. To add to that, it seems summer timed its arrival to coincide with the Expo opening, so not only did I sweat like a pig, but my arms are a nice shade of pink and are going to be quite sore for the next few days, I’m sure. So was it all worth it? Well, yes.

The Portuguese pavilion

Quite a few people have questioned my sanity for deciding to go on the opening day. Sure, I could wait a few months for the excitement to die down, but surely opening day has its merits too. I mean, apart from anything else, I get to report back to all the blog readers and share my experience so that when you guys go, you’ll know what to expect.

And so without further ado, here’s my Expo opening day report:

I think the easiest way to get to the Expo site is to take the special Expo subway line (13) from Madang Lu / Xu Jia Hui Lu. The entire line only has 3 stops, so you can either get out at Lupu Bridge (Puxi side) or carry on to the main Expo site which of course is across the river in Pudong.

There were no crowds when I arrived at the subway station at around 10am, so after a quick security check, I was on the subway line and a short few minutes later I was at the Expo site. The excitement was starting to build up as I took the escalator up to street level and headed straight for zone C where most of the European pavilions are located. I won’t hide the fact that top of my list of places to see was the UK pavilion and so I have to admit I sort of rushed passed a few of the other pavilions (Portugal, Czech Republic, Turkey, Sweden) and headed directly for the UK pavilion.

I think it’s by far the most interesting and original pavilion but unfortunately, it seems most of the Chinese visitors shared my view and so the queue for this was the longest by far. The estimated queuing time was over 3 hours. THREE HOURS! So sadly, I did not get the chance to look inside on this first visit.

180 minutes. Is that supposed to sound faster than 3 hours?

I did get to see the Spanish pavilion. The line was long but it moved quickly and after just 20 minutes I was inside.

There are 3 main halls in the Spanish pavilion. The first looked like the inside of a cave and on the walls of the cave they projected movie clips in a sort of 360 degree format on both sides which was amazing. There was also a live dance performance which was integrated in to the video clips being shown.

Live performance in the Spanish pavilion

In the next room were several large TV screens showing various aspects of Spanish life. One of the screens was vertical which was interesting because usually movie screens are horizontal. The clips being shown on the vertical screen were shot specifically in the vertical format. There was also one screen overhead which was very cool. At one stage, they showed a clip of a group of people looking down at the audience which gave the funny sensation that we were being watched. I almost felt like waving back up at the people in the video.

Multi-media presentation in the Spanish pavilion

The screen directly above showing people waving down at the audience

And in the final room, the centrepiece was a gigantic baby, and I mean HUGE! It was a little creepy because the baby wasn’t a happy smiley baby, in fact, he seemed a little troubled. I am not sure what this was supposed to represent but it was interesting nonetheless.

In part two, I’ll show you – among other things – the most popular pavilion of the Expo which of course is the Chinese pavilion and I’ll share my vote for worst pavilion. Stay tuned!

Oh yes, the URL, I almost forgot. You can find the blog here.

This is the view from my apartment building. Stunning isn’t it. You can see a larger version here. Sadly it’s the view from my building but not from my floor. A friend of mine lives in the exact same apartment as mine but 18 floors higher and I took this from his window.

For the technically minded, the exposure was 20 seconds at f/11 at ISO 100.

If you want to see what the view looks like from my window you can see it here.

No Caturday this week.  Tommy’s sulking about the very poor (2 comments) response last week.

It’s a long weekend here in China, no, not for Easter but Qing Ming (tomb sweeping festival) and the three blogamigos are off to “The Jing” in search of some fresh blog material and a few beers.  Well, ok, mainly for the beers.  And when I say mainly I mean “only”.

I took the above picture in May 2005 when I was still living in Beijing, on my way to work, while stuck in traffic. I don’t think they have these old buses / trams anymore.  They were all replaced by shiny new models before the Olympics about the same time they got rid of wood fire ovens and started using electric ovens to make Beijing Roast Duck.

Well, you all know photography is a huge part of my life outside of work and blogging.  The photoblog I launched recently wasn’t a big success, so as suggested by someone the other day, I’ve decided to merge the photoblog with this blog and feature some of my photos here for all to enjoy and comment on, from time to time.

Basically, please let me know if you think the photo is a hit or a miss.  It is VERY hard to be objective about your own work, so the feedback is both essential and appreciated.

This was obviously a night time shoot, so I had to carry around a tripod, TWO lightstands and two flash guns as well as spare lenses, batteries and a remote trigger to fire the flashes.  It’s not easy, I can tell you.  The taxi driver thought I was a musician and that I had instruments in my bags, which made me chuckle.

This was shot in a small “long tang“（弄堂）which is the name given to small communities living in small alleyways in Shanghai (the equivalent of “hutongs” (胡同) in Beijing.  Many of these communites are being destroyed as the tiny lanes are bulldozed to make way for skyscrapers and apartment blocks (because what Shanghai needs is more skyscrapers!).

Because it was late at night there weren’t many people around, which is a good thing.  I don’t mind an audience but we don’t want people walking in to shot.  We found the old chair and decided it would make a good prop. Two flashes were used, one behind the model on the right and another in front of her also to the right of the camera.  The camera itself was mounted on a tripod to allow for the long exposure which was necessary to expose the background.  Othewise, all you would see is the model and the background would be black, making it look more like a studio shot, because flash guns have no way of lighting distant objects, only the immediate foreground.

Without getting too technical, in order to take pictures in low light, you need a tripod to hold the camera steady, because the exposure has to be longer than it would be in bright light. I bought a very steady tripod about 15 years ago, and on the rare occasions I’ve used it, the images have been more than satisfactory:

Taken by me in Hong Kong in August 1998 using a Zenza Bronica ETRS mounted on my old Manfrotto 055 tripod.

But the problem is, it’s extremely heavy and not convenient for wandering around Shanghai in 40 degree heat, together with a camera bag full of lenses and accessories.

I’m sure you’ve heard the adage that the best camera is the one you have with you at the time. Well I guess it’s the same for tripods. There’s no point having one if it stays at home all the time. So on Saturday, I bought myself a lighter tripod and a handy strap that allows me to carry it over my shoulder without a bag, and on Sunday, I decided to try it out and set off with the tripod over my shoulder together with my camera bag.

Of course, it soon started to rain and I was cursing the awful Shanghai weather as I sought shelter in a shopping mall as the heavens opened up. What a waste of an afternoon, carrying all that equipment and no chance of even one decent shot.

But then, as the light was fading, the rain finally stopped, and I managed to end up at Shanghai’s famous Yu Gardens just as the last bit of daylight was disappearing to get this shot:

The shot itself was easy, but I did have to fight through crowds of out of town tourists who would often walk straight into the shot and I had to shoo them away with my hands, like pesky flies. But it was all worth it, the day wasn’t a complete write off and I went home happy.