This seems to be the “thing to do” – climbing a temple to gain a view across the Bagan plain, and taking photos of sunrise or sunset. Very few of the 2,000+ temples allow you to climb up them but I managed to find a small one yesterday for a few sunset pictures. This morning I got up early and cycled out to the “big one” – where everybody goes with their tour busses and tripods – to catch the sunrise. I made up for joining the crowds by then cycling over to the local ferry pier and taking in groups of local Myanmar pilgrims doing their own, much more down to earth, temple tours. One family asked me to join them for breakfast and I did, presenting the father with my treasured silk Chinese fan.
My second day here, the sun came out and so did my hat as I rode along dusty paths from temple to temple, meandering like the nearby Irawaddy River. The temples were beautiful, especially taken as a whole dotted across the countryside; however I found the people to be even more interesting. I’m not convinced that some of them haven’t had lessons, or at least experience, in posing for cameras…
Yangon, like Tokyo, also has a ‘circle line’ commuter train that goes around through the suburbs. This train was a bit different than the Yamanote Line. It leaves once ever hour or so, and the 20 mile loop takes between two and three hours. Still, it was a good way to see a bit of the railway bazaar.
This is the largest Buddhist temple in Myanmar and has got to be the largest stupa anywhere. The taxi driver informed me that there was a Buddhist celebration going on for two weeks, and that the streets surrounding the Shwedegan would be packed with stalls. He was right. My first impression of Myanmar – after just a few hours on my first day – was somehow a cross between India and Thailand. But then I realized, the country is sandwiched between those two.
We’ve had a gorgeous run of beautiful weather during the day – and an unbelievable full moon at night. There’s a string of houses along Point White that all have gorgeous waterfront views of Mt. Rainier, and only one spot along the road where a photographer can peep in between the hedges. This is it.
I played around with a few Lightroom adjustments, with varying degrees of satisfaction. Most importantly, the entire sky was washed out, particularly at the exposure settings I was using (1/2000 sec at f/7/1, ISO 1000 on a 300m F4 lens and D700 body). So I used the Graduated Filter to burn the sky slightly and also to add some color back in. The saturation level of the color filter was 56% but would probably look more natural around 35%.
I also did a color dodge of light green on the trees on the left side, to bring up the color. I darkened one of the houses in the forest on the right side – mainly because when I was looking at the view, my eye was drawn to the ferry, the mountain, and the trees on that point in the foreground – not on the houses along that point. I also pushed highlights to +86, to pull out the detail of the glaciers on the mountain. Again, this was because of the flat light which my camera saw but my eye did not.
Ok what the heck, here’s the original:
And here’s what I would call a “purist’s compromise”:
Mustagh Ata, the “Father of Ice Mountains,” towers nearly 25,000 ft above sea level. Further north, there is no higher mountain on earth (with the exception of its twin summit, Kongur). The Kirghiz muslims called it “Hazrat-i-Musa” and believed that white camels bore Mohammed’s body to heaven by ascending its staircase slopes. It is situated on the Karakorum Highway, half-way between Kashgar and Hunza, in Chinese Xinjiang, about ten miles from the border with Tajikistan and 40 miles from the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan.
Our office here is just behind “Wedding Dress Street.” This particular shop caught my eye and I spent part of an evening waiting for the red-eye to Seoul, shooting people in the area…
This is one of my favorite photos of all time. It was taken by a close friend of mine, Anthony Willoughby, on our expedition to Mustagh Ata, in a small town called Tashkurgan, high up on the Pamir Plateau in western China just near the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan. “Pamir” means “Roof of the World” and there they play a Central Asian version of Polo called “Buzkashi,” with a sheep carcass.
I spent the weekend in Las Vegas. On business. I promise. Armed with only my iPhone, I was determined not to take any photos of people gambling or acting stupid. Here’s what I came up with. One person acting stupid, and eight other snap shots.
This is mainly a comparison of the 28-300 and the 24-120. I head read that the 28-300 is actually a sharper lens, so that would seem to obviate the need for even considering the 24-120. But let’s take a look. The first pair is a full photo comparison; the second pair is a full-res crop. I think it’s pretty clear which is more sharp. These were taken hand-held, but the shutter speed on the 24-120 was faster because of the slightly lower f stop.
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The flight from Saigon back to Seattle is brutal. It’s an overnight flight to Tokyo, then an 8-hour layover before another overnight flight on to Seattle. Rather than sitting in the comfy executive lounge at Narita, I decided to jump a train and spend a few hours walking around the city. In a daze.
But here’s my favorite. The pensive woman who, just as the doors were about to close, realized that I was taking a picture of her and was’t quite sure what to do…
Annual Labor Day celebration up here in the Pac Northwest…
It’s not just about music, but that’s how it started…
…for example, the water fountain…
I’ve just put up a new page of scans from “Old China” – that is, slides taken over 30 years ago. Here’s the link: http://www.qamera.com/places/old-china/ and here are a few photos from the “old day”…
A few short notes about scanning with the V700.
First of all, it’s a great scanner. I did the research and it’s the best flatbed scanner out there, and – according to the salesman at the Pro Photo Supply in Portland, it’s the reason why the Nikon film scanners were discontinued.
I bought it for the purpose of archiving my collection of slides that range from 1970 to 2000. So yes, some are over 40 years old.
My purpose is not so much to ‘archive for posterity’ as it is to scan and archive for potential digital use such as printing or blogging.
I use two different scanning software: EPSON Scan, which came with the scanner, and SilverFast 8. SilverFast has many different versions and it is very confusing to tell the difference between them, but I think SF 8 is the best for most purposes; the added features of the ‘higher’ versions are a bit esoteric. Also, for the most part, you want to do a basic “non-destructive” scan, then do any post-scan editing in Photoshop or Lightroom.
So let’s cut to the chase.
EPSON Scan is the best for overall quick-archiving. The interface is clean, simple and allows for a repetitive batch workflow. It also has “most” of the basic settings that you will need to get the most out of your scanner.
Okay, I’ve got my the Promise Pegasus 4-drive array plugged into my tiny, paper-thin MacBook Air. I ‘ve got 2TB of photos on the PP drive, a combination of NEF files and some gigantic TIFF’s from the 48-bit scanning I’ve been doing to archive my Kodachromes of early China. Those familiar with Adobe Lightroom know that it takes time to load, and it can take time to browse through your workflow even on a fast computer with a fast hard drive. Say good-bye to all that. Lightroom has become light fast. It loads instantaneously (thanks to the solid state drives on my MacBook Air) and workflow is instantaneous as well. It’s such a pleasure to edit real-time. Sure it takes about 0.5 seconds to load the previews from a 40 GB shoot. Gosh, what am I going to do with all that time!
Photo editing will never be the same.
A: You usually don’t.
See why it’s called the “Fastest Sport on Two Feet“…
Photo: Reynolds Yarbrough is the youngest goalie to ever start in a Washington State Lacrosse Championship game.
We spent the weekend at the family compound for the the annual “summer clean-up”. Here are a few photos from the weekend.
“Smoke gets in your trees”
I’m just setting up this Promise Pegasus 4-drive array to my MacBook Air. It connected up immediately. The nice thing is, I can connect my non-Thunderbolt external display to the back of the Promise drive using a standard mini-display port adaptor (which fits in the Thunderbolt connector). That’s nice to know, since the TB cables are $50 each. The drive is quiet, and immediately started the process of synchronizing the four drives in the array. It’s supposed to take about 10 hours. After that, I’ll transfer my Lightroom files over via ‘snail transfer’ (usb 2.0) and we’ll see just how fast this thing runs.
