Continuing in my series of “old China” pictures, this one was taken in 1979 on a Sunday morning outing to the Great Wall. Suddenly our taxi coughed and sputtered. The driver simply stopped it smack dab in the middle of the highway. People came from all over not so much to help, but to gawk at the engine. It was – or perhaps we were – their weekend entertainment…
This isn’t my best picture, but it is an early one – circa 1979 or 1980. It was the first commercial billboard in Beijing – I know, because I set it up with the first-ever advertising company in China, McCann-Jardine. There were billboards before – the one before this exclaimed “We Have Friends All Over World!” Of course, there weren’t any cars in those days, so the best location we could find was in front of a huge parking lot for bicycles, outside one of the government ministries…
The Barn House Boys – Joe and Jermonne – host one of the premiere “vintage” markets in the country once each summer, in the “back yard” of their enchanting farm house in rural Battle Ground, Washington. People come from all over to see, buy, eat, drink, listen, play – and to be seen. It’s quite simply THE place to be…
More photos are also shown on the Battle Ground page…
Market
The market, spread out across several acres of property, included over 30 incredible “vintage” vendors plus food, drinks and a live band. It was like a county fair but more intimate and special. Just about everything here was one of a kind. People lined up to get in so the first hour was a bit of a crush … All day long you could see people happily hauling their treasures – big and small – back to their cars.
I love the internet. Got a $250 room for $55. This mansion, in the middle of the French concession of Shanghai, belonged to I.M. Pei’s father in the 1930′s and was recently converted into a boutique hotel. The only thing that was not completely 1930′s art deco was a modern toilet that did everything except talk to me. It even somehow knew whether I did #1 or #2 and adjusted its flush size accordingly.
Here’s the rather M.C. Escher-esque the staircase. Luckily there was also an elevator.
I don’t get out during the days much, except on weekends. So most of my photos tend to be around “night street” life – which, in this city, is pretty much always in motion…
My favorite thing to do is just park myself on a street corner, listen to the cacophony, and watch the motorcycles stream by like schools of fish – hoping that the overhead power lines will not collapse onto my head…
This is how you advertise in Saigon – go around with a big stencil and stamp your short message and big number on any vacant wall. This person got his number on both photos above and below. No idea what s/he’s advertising…
Sunday morning was cloudless – a rarety for Saigon – so I went out early and ended up coming across three markets: the local one by my villa, then the giant Phu Nuanh market, then the Tan Dinh one further down the road towards downtown. Here are a few of my favorite people from the markets…
Exactly my sentiments…
A few more here…
This is why I visit Vietnam every several months. I run a small software development company. It’s a lot of work but we all sit together at the same table, in all senses of the word. We work together in a villa. We take our meals together. I sleep in the office, to save money and because it’s much more comfortable than a hotel. Last fall, when our sales fell behind expenses and our American bank (“We are local! We are here for you!”) refused to extend us a credit line to make payroll, our staff graciously accepted partial salaries for three months. Then our sales pulled back ahead of expenses, and we paid them all back. I think there’s a lesson in there somewhere. But these people have already learned it. They are living it.
Located in the middle of the French Quarter of Shanghai, this park is full of retirees from the generation that knew the opulence, decadence and culture – of the British and French colonial period.
I constantly have friends asking me how I use Adobe Lightroom. Luckily, my cousin George invented it. Single-handedly. Just kidding. But he was one of the creators. Proof: His name is on the Splash Screen (or was, until LR3 came out). Plug for George here. This is not meant to be a definitive way to use LR. It’s just how I use it, for my needs. So let’s start there.
My Needs
I have two types of photography: Sports, and everything else. For the Sports photography, I typically do 500~1,000 shots in one event. For “everything else,” it’s divided into my daily photos (stuff I see when I’m out and about), and planned shoots – professional stuff, trips, etc.
I was lucky to see Yasin Farid during his first ever visit to the U.S.
Yasin is the country manager in Afghanistan for PARSA, an NGO that is run by Fran’s sister Marnie. They showed a short documentary made about their efforts to educate children in Afghanistan in the shadow of the Taliban (who don’t want any females to be students or teachers).
More pictures below…
I can’t believe I have three daughters who have graduated from college. Looks like my investment may have paid off…
Oh. Almost forgot to mention. Here’s the gorgeous graduate:
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Markets are not just about things. They’re about people.
Here are some of the vendors – and a few customers – of yesterday’s “local market” by Remodelista in the Georgetown area…
Lacrosse is known as the fastest sport on two feet, because a transition from one end of the field to the other can take less than three seconds, and a shot on goal can rip at over 100 mph.
One way of ‘capturing’ the speed of the sport is by actually slowing down the shutter speed to show the different types of action that take place out on the lacrosse field…this photo was captured on a 200m lens at 1/20 of a second. Blasphemy!
Game Gallery here: Seattle Prep at Lake Washington.
Okay, let’s just do a little poll here. Which do you prefer? Shorts or longs?
These were both taken at the Lakeside School over a span of 32 years…
Twice a year, Bainbridge has a very special event – an old-fashioned vintage style flea market held at the historic Seabold Community Hall on the north end of the island.
Liz Le Dorze, who founded “Seabold Vintage Market” in 2009, keeps it intentionally small with just 4-6 additional local vendors in order to maintain a sense of community.
Yesterday’s event was especially remarkable because the sun came out after a week-long deluge allowing vendors to display an array of wares outside.
The next market will be held in the fall. Remember: if you want to get the choice pieces, you have to get there early! Many more photos below…
It’s that time of year, the lacrosse season is upon us. Lacrosse is arguably the fastest sport on two feet. It’s also the only popular sport that was created by indigenous North Americans. If you think it’s hard for a pro baseball player to hit a 90 mph fastball from 18 meters away, imagine what a high school lacrosse goalie faces: a hard rubber ball screaming at up to 100mph with a wild bounce off the turf just 6 feet in front of you, without the benefit of seeing the pitcher’s wind-up! Add into that the speed of soccer, the contact of football and hockey, and the rhythm of basketball – you have one of the most exciting sports around. Lacrosse is as brutal as it is poetic.
The last in my series of yoga animals. I promise. Xena did, however, appear earlier on Qamera, and the second photo here is a reprint…
There’s no question that the rate of change is accelerating. Just this morning I was thinking, “My world was different from my parents’ world. But the world of our children – and the world they are creating – is far, far more different.” It’s a world that I can still sort of grasp but which, ten years from now, will probably have accelerated beyond my own diminished capacity for understanding. Then when I got to the airport, I saw the cover of Time magazine: “The Generation Changing the World.” Bingo. But not my generation. This generation.
The red eye from Saigon arrived at 7:00am, and I had about seven hours before the connecting flight was to leave for Seattle. The weather was beautiful. So I ditched the airport and took the train in to my favorite part of Tokyo, Shibuya – “crowded valley” – popularized by the film “Lost in Translation. Those Japanese are indeed interesting, funny people…
More photos in my Japan Gallery…
Ho Van Hue – the main street near our office here in Saigon – is filled with wedding dress boutiques. Paradoxically, it also has a more-then-average number of casket shops. Still, from one person’s viewpoint, you’re never too young to start wishing….
More photos in my Vietnam Gallery…
Usually the flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong arcs out over the Aleutians and down acrosss Kamchatka, but our “circle route” was much higher. Should have known. We dropped right over Siberia and into Beijing for a quick refuel before heading on to Hong Kong and then Saigon. Just an iPhone snap.
Last October I was invited to speak at the Telluride Tech Festival . My topic was the Zen of Productivity and I spoke about the gap between what technology has promised, and what it has actually delivered. The implied promise of technology – as articulated by George Jetson – was that things will get easier, we’ll go faster, and life will get better. And technology delivered. But there were off-setting side effects: because things got easier, we tend to do more, creating a confusion surplus and an attention deficit in everything we do. Because we go faster, everything is blurred – both literally, and figuratively. And because life truly did get better, now we want more and are less satisfied with what we have.
There were about 10 other speakers during the two-day event and they represented a wide range of “technology topics.” But if there was one common theme, it was the “maturation of technology.” In other words, now that we have all these gizmo’s, what are we actually going to do with them? Or, to paraphrase Ellie McPherson, the character in Carl Sagan’s Contact, “How to survive our technological adolescence.”
Just wondering what’s out there after this one is over…
Lafayette Cemetary, New Orleans
Okay these weren’t taken today, but J-E and I were there just a couple of years ago, so here’s joining the celebration…
The Karakorum highway crosses the backbone of Asia, connecting Chinese Turkestan and Pakistan. The Kunjerab Pass, at 15397ft, is probably the highest border crossing in the world. This shows the highway as it leaves Kashgar headed for the Pamir Plateau.
This picture was taken at about the half-way point on a train trip from Singapore to Norway, at a place called Jiayuguan （嘉峪关） in western China…
I’m in a provocative mood. Not sure why, maybe it’s the dogs. Nature is amazing. It will be around long after we are gone. And nature will probably be the reason that we (humans) are gone, at least if we do not follow some of its rules. But as long as humans are here on earth, there are some rules that we do not necessarily need to follow. This “human delinquency” will enrich our lives while we are here, although it may at the same time hasten our demise. Case in point: natural selection. Nature is pretty good at weeding out the sick and weak: it simply lets them die – often before they can contribute to the gene pool. Or often enough. We as humans are born with compassion so we take the opposite viewpoint. We nurture the sick and needy, at least in most societies. Hence “the meek shall inherit the earth.”
So having said that, here’s a provocative what if:
What if…
…I was the ruler of a country of very able, very smart people. And I decided that I wanted to make them more able and more smart. Create the ‘perfect race,’ as it were. And suppose I was ruthless – or at best, objectively scientific. What would I do? I could collect all of my people and ship them off to containment facilities – let’s call them “filtering factories” – where I feed them very little, give them no heat, force them to live in close proximity so that their illnesses are all spread to each other – then force them to work until they collapse. Now, there would likely be a very high attrition rate. But wouldn’t the survivors be the perfect race? Those with the ability to ensure that our species – or at least the members of my ‘country’ – are best suited to survive?
Actually the Pacific Northwest is anything but frigid. But this morning, with frost encrusting the windows of the truck and the dogs exhaling long streams of steam as they waited for me to scrape the windows with my pathetic credit card, it actually felt like we were joining the rest of the country’s cold snap. Maybe it’s just a sympathetic cold…
We don’t have a lot of sun up here in the Pacific Northwest, but we do have some interesting combinations of weather and scenery. While the rest of the country is frozen or under snow, up here everything is verdant, lush, moist, spongy, misty – even sometimes mystical. And it somehow makes the morning coffee taste that much better. Outside, the only sounds are the occasional fog horn, an egret, or perhaps a sea lion. Or the low rumble of the Bremerton ferry…
