六一国际儿童节 – International Children’s Day

It’s Children’s Day.  The little hellions darlings are running around all over the city wreaking havoc spreading joy.  I kid.  I kid because I love.  In honor of Children’s Day, here are a few shots of little Chinese angels I’ve collected over the past couple of years.  I’ve tried to include a variety of situations and emotions.  Here… is the future of China.

Defiance

Flowers & Fish

Schoolyard Buddies

Sneaking A Peak

Screaming In Nanning

Wink

Stickylicious

Water Baby

Zong Houpu

Baby Yao Number Three

Just click on the image to find out more about each shot.

So, yes, I have once again fallen behind.  The new blog/website design is well underway and I hope to have it up and running very soon.  I am also waiting to see the edited version of the photo-documentary on the opera singers and we are trying to get the photo tourism business up and running before we completely miss the summer travel window.  I am also planning my son’s summer visit.  Throw in the teaching responsibilities and trips to the hospital and, well, I think you get the picture.  Trying to stay of top of everything is proving to be difficult.  It leaves very little time to actually write or take photographs.

If you are one of the folks I owe email, know I haven’t forgotten about you.  I hope to get back to everyone this week.  Yes, I know I’ve said that before.

Peace!

China – More Than One Great Wall

If you’re a photographer, China has a lot of “Great Walls”!  Here’s a small collection…

Nanning

Luzhai

Liuzhou

Liuzhou

Rongshui

Liuzhou

Luzhai

Liuzhou

Liuzhou

Liuzhou

Many of these walls are gone now, razed in the name of progress.  I shot walls a lot during my first few months in China but somehow got away from it.  It may be time to for me to once again read the writing on the wall.

Gearing up for the weekend here, it’s hot and muggy already.  I’ll be shooting, editing and writing most of the next four days.  I love my gig.  I’ll get something else up soon with more of an update on life here in South China.

Peace!

The Beggar Returns

A follow up to this post, I am uploading a few more images of “The Beggar”, as played by 68 year-old Wei Qing.  Mr. Wei is a true performer, in that he comes to life on-stage.  In reality, he’s a bit of a recluse.  He lives alone is a small dreary apartment, stuffed full of the artifacts from his life.  He figures prominently in the upcoming photo-documentary.

Porcelain Portriats

There is a nice collection of porcelain being shown this weekend in Liuzhou.  A group selling vases, pots and figurines has set up shop near The People’s Square.  I went down on the recommendation of a friend and took the macro lens along.  I gather most of the porcelain comes from Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province, which I also gather is famous for it’s China “china”.  This is all mass-produced stuff, not prized individual works of art but that’s not to say the quality isn’t good, far from it in fact.  Taking into consideration the quality and the post-bartered price, I picked up a few bargains.  How much you ask?  I will tell you that while I walked in, I had to take a taxi out.  Taxi  full = wallet empty.  Thanks Ken.

Chasing The Green Dragon

Chasing The Blue Dragon

Jiangxi Porcelain 9

Red Plate Porcelain

Porcelain Mao

The Chairman did NOT make it home with me but the other pieces you see here are now adding some “flava’” to the humble abode.  The place needed some color to play off the one red wall and and 21 white walls.  Yeah.  I counted.  I got nothin’ but time.  You can see more of the pottery here.

26C (79F) here as I write this, cloudy and looks like it could rain any moment.  The humidity is still there but compared to this time last year, it’s quite comfortable.  I got the go-ahead to ramp up the workout regimen, beginning tomorrow I expect that muscular pain (and hopefully not heart pain) will be the norm for a while.

I may not be around much for a couple of days, still pulling ideas together for the blog/website re-design and I need to get all that info relayed to Ryan McLaughlin over at Dao By Design.  I am hoping to have it up and running with the next few weeks.

See ya when I see ya!

The Posters – A Collection

This is a collection of photographs created by the infamous Flickr Explore algorithm.  It’s hard to say what the criteria is really.  It involves the aforementioned algorithm (a better kept secret than even the Colonels’ chicken recipe), as well as tit-for-tat relationships and to a somewhat lesser extent, photo quality.  I’m not sure what it really says about the photography, but I do dig the posters.

If you’ve been posting your photos at Flickr, you can see how many of your images have “made” explore by checking out fd’s Flickr Toys at Big Huge Labs.  You can do a lot of fun stuff with your photos there as well, check it out.

So, what else in my little world…

For some reason the Liuzhou  internet is blazing this morning,  faster than at any other time in the past couple of years.  I have actually been watching streaming video from ESPN for a good part of the morning.  I usually can’t do that.  There isn’t even any lag.  The downside is that this blog is once again being blocked by The Great Firewall.  Hopefully that won’t be a problem much longer.  I am closer to getting my new site  (dedicated domain) up and running but finding the time to get the parameters fleshed out and sent to the designer (sorry dude) is proving to be a bear.  I have been working on it, but man, I am overwhelmed with all the choices.  Paralyzed really, I mean come on!  In the past few weeks, not only have I been trying to choose a “look” and a “feel” for the new blog, there  are all these other considerations. to  be made.  Case in point?  I have been moving forward with  just a Flickr of hope that I might somehow StumbleUpon something del.icio.us to digg up and put into Facebook.  If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll create some buzz and people will see the site and then those who have reddit will buy all my work, the whole kit and kaboodle!

In the meantime, I have to be content relaxing here on the TweetDeck, sipping lemonade as I listen to the twitter of the native South China birds.

Speaking of web design, I’ve been meaning to give a nod to Ryan McLaughlin for a while now.  Ryan runs Dao By Design, a comprehensive offering of design and development services for the web.   He puts together incredible, professional web presentations and does so at a price that won’t break the bank.  As important to me, he’s good people.  Drop in and take a look around.

Go Nuggets!