My photography and travels (Update: Shenzhen, Shanghai, and more HK, post #21 -10/16)

[Blkmage0253]

So I recently got a DSLR, half because I enjoy taking pictures, working out the camera settings, and staking out photo opportunities and half because I'm going to Hong Kong in a week for the entire semester. The learning curve is pretty steep, but I think i'm improving. This thread is basically going to chronicle the pictures i take. Hopefully, I'll be able to post updates from HK too as I'm planning on traveling a lot while I'm there.

feel free to post any stuff you have too, or any tips as they would be appreciated

Directory:
1. Fire Island, NY (first post)
2. Sands Point Preserve, NY (first post)
3. Kings Dominion, VA (first post)
4. Light Painting?
5. New York, NY
6. Tung Chung, Hong Kong
7. Tsim Sha Tsui & last night in Tung Chung, Hong Kong
8. Preview of Lantau and the hike up to Victoria Peak
9. Macau
10. Cheung Chau Island and Ocean Park
11. Mid Autumn Festival
12. Shenzhen
13. Shanghai
14. Victoria Peak on a semi-clear night, and Central

Fire Island, NY

I think this was the first time I actually went out and really got a feel for the camera. Not the best, but I don't think they're horrible. Only 3 decent shots to show for it though

Sands Point Preserve, NY

meh, I'm kind of proud of the shot of my friend sitting on the seawall, but that's really it.

not my dog, but it just came up to us so I couldn't resist:

these shifty motherfuckers pick up the mussels in their beaks, fly up, and drop them onto the rocks below to break them open. not the best quality but whatever:

Kings Dominion, Virginia Warning: lots of pics

This week a buddy of mine and i took a roadtrip from NY to VA to go to Kings Dominion theme park. I'm a roller coaster junkie and i actually want to be a roller coaster designer/engineer, so yeah...

we left at the ass crack of dawn to get to VA by 9 AM. the day was fucking amazing except for the fact that i was running on 4 hours of sleep and drove for 6 hours before walking around a humid theme park. power napped in the hotel though.

I think these pics are a little worse than the previous ones since a) we had to rent a locker at the front of the park to put the camera in b) we were rushing A LOT since by the time we were ready to take pictures the park was about to close. we wanted a few more rides on the big coaster so I just took a bunch of pics and didn't really take time to work out the camera settings

this ride is absolutely INSANE. we both blacked out for a few seconds at the bottom of the first drop and from the talk after everyone got off the ride, we were definitely not the only ones. they actually re-profiled the ride earlier this year partially to decrease the amount of people that black out, but it still happens anyway.

I fucked up the shutter speed pretty badly on the above ones, so they're not as detailed as they could've been

for these I tried to keep the train in focus but blur the background, but it was my first time ever trying that out...

parking lot was pretty photogenic at night, but i didn't bring a tripod so this is the best i could really do:

back windshield of my car, mostly for college pride:

 

[Improbability]

I do traditional BW darkroom photography, and it is an amazingly different process entirely. The joy of not seeing the result of your work until it finally emerges gloriously from a bath of chemicals gets me every time.
Okay okay I might just get a little too excited by photography. I'm no expert at it, but Ill post some of my stuff when I get a chance.

 

[MrIndigo]

365project.org

A friend of mine completed hers earlier this year, and her stuff is viewable here:

http://365project.org/brightness/365/2010-05-01

 

[Blkmage0253]

I do traditional BW darkroom photography, and it is an amazingly different process entirely. The joy of not seeing the result of your work until it finally emerges gloriously from a bath of chemicals gets me every time.
Okay okay I might just get a little too excited by photography. I'm no expert at it, but Ill post some of my stuff when I get a chance.

awesome. yeah, I don't think I have the patience to not know how my pictures come out beforehand, but i'm excited to see your stuff.

um, I just got a shutter cable today and decided to play around in my garage with a flashlight. this is my name with an led

Light Painting

 

[FlamingFighter]

Umm, don't photography threads belong in Smeargle's Studio? I only ask since I've seen a few there, and not here.

 

[Blkmage0253]

crap, it seems so. can someone please kindly move this? i literally only have this sub-forum bookmarked and not the smogon index since this is the only one i really post in. truly did not even know smeargle's studio existed... sorry :x

 

[julios]

Very beautiful work as you'd expect from a DSLR camera.
I specially like the second picture, it seems almost ethereal the way the people and the horizon just blur out
Other pictures are nice, but the composition throws me off a bit
For example, the first picture would benefit a lot if the lighthouse was on the first third or exactly in the middle.
So maybe like this

Hide

Just some thoughts

 

[Blkmage0253]

Yeah, that was like day 2 and I didn't even know what the rule of thirds was yet haha.
_______________________________________________________________________________
anyways, my friend and i were playing around with light painting. anyone have some tips? the main problem seems to be that our drawings come out super shitty with the flashlights, despite the fact that my friend is actually a pretty good artist/art student. some amateurish pics:

amateur light painting

 

[DjGopher]

I really like the one with the dog :)

 

[Blkmage0253]

Some more fun with light painting. My friend was actually able to capture/draw this awesome shot of me.

original image

The only problem is the glare from the vertical yellow beam and the blue beam on the right and also the streak of horizontal light behind me that resulted from lighting up my backside I guess. It's supposed to be lightning btw

I used photoshop a little to fix it up but is there a way to change the brightness of a specific layer? For instance, here is the edited picture. I like how the garage is less visible and the glare is less intense, but the cool blue haze on the upper right is gone and the entire image seems a little less vivid. I'd like to keep the garage and glare beams darker while everything else remains the same

edited image

 

[paintseagull]

Nice work! What kind of camera and lens(es) do you have? Do you do any post processing?

 

[Blkmage0253]

Thanks. The outdoor ones were mostly taken with a 105 mm micro and 180 mm lens, both the old manual non-AF Nikkor lenses.

Most of the light painting ones were taken with the Nikon 18-55 mm VR lens, long exposure on bulb setting. I'm headed to NYC tomorrow night, so hopefully I'll get some nice skyline pics

 

[Blkmage0253]

how does this topic have so many views and so few posts guys!? anyways, I added a directory to the first post just to make it easier to see where pics are

Headed out to NYC with a friend for the day yesterday. We stopped and ate at Grimaldi's then headed to the brooklyn bridge and heights promenade to take some night time shots. We then went to Weehawken out in NJ for some more pics.

I didn't bring my tripod up to the bridge, which I really regret now. But I did have the tripod for the skyline shots at night

Downtown Manhattan as seen from the Brooklyn Heights promenade, daytime

Brooklyn Heights Promenade:

The following were taken in Brooklyn Bridge Park:

Brooklyn Bridge overpass, night. WARNING: lots of rapid fire shots

RAPID FIRE SHOTS - SCROLL THROUGH THESE QUICKLY FOR THE EFFECT

edit: erm, the effect was way better when scrolling through iPhoto i swear

Brooklyn Bridge, night

I really love the tiered section of the BQE. Shame that I didn't have my tripod to properly capture it:

skyline pics, night

I was going to photoshop out the airplane streak but too lazy >_>

Pretty lights:

 

[Blkmage0253]

I'm finally in Hong Kong! I'm staying in the Tung Chung area with my cousin. Here are some night pics. I went to Mong Kok and Kowloon but didn't get any pics. The air was so thick, I was jetlagged, and didn't take my asthma meds so I was dizzy and on the verge of fainting. All is good now though:

Tung Chung, HK at night

 

[Oglemi]

Very awesome stuff here!

I love the last pic of the first hide tag, the second to last pic of the third hide tag, and all of the last two hide tags.

Have fun in Hong Kong! Is it really true that you can't see any stars in the sky at night there? Man I couldn't imagine that at all.

 

[Blkmage0253]

Very awesome stuff here!

I love the last pic of the first hide tag, the second to last pic of the third hide tag, and all of the last two hide tags.

Have fun in Hong Kong! Is it really true that you can't see any stars in the sky at night there? Man I couldn't imagine that at all.

Thanks! And I can't say from personal experience about the stars but I really would not be surprised about the stars. I'm staying with my cousin in his apartment in Tung Chung (western HK near Hong Kong International airport) and he has a view of the airport since he's on the 50th something floor. It's so foggy/muggy/smoggy everyday that I can barely see the airport.

I almost passed out yesterday in Mong Kok (huge shopping district) because the air was so thick. It was probably a combination of being incredibly jet lagged (5 hrs of sleep in 36 hours), walking around in the insane humidity all day, being dehydrated, and not taking asthma/allergy meds. Today should be better though. I should have more pics tonight or tomorrow

 

[Blkmage0253]

Another update! I went to Tsim Sha Tsui the other day, which is a nice shopping district with views of Hong Kong Island.

Tsim Sha Tsui, HK

yesterday was my last full day in Tung Chung. I'm staying with my cousin and aunt but today is move-in day so i'll be going soon. I've gotten to know them soon and even though I only spent 3 days with them, I'm getting that separation anxiety feeling you get when you have to part ways with someone after an awesome time. Anyone know the feeling? it's just odd since i'll still be in HK and never more than an hour away from them

Last day in Tung Chung, HK

 

[Blkmage0253]

I've done lots of stuff since the last post but I've been super busy since I'm on campus now. Here are two preview shots:

fishing village in Lantau

this kid i met is really into hiking. he wanted to go to central hong kong island so we went. Instead of taking the tram up to the top of Victoria Peak we fucking hiked all 1300 ft up from the harbour area. I was absolutely dead afterward, but was so glad we stuck with it:

the top of Victoria Peak, HK

 

[jumpluff]

I really love that picture of the city from the peak. I don't know much about photography so I couldn't give a helpful critique, but I really enjoy lively pictures of city lights, and the fact it's from the top of a mountain makes it more thrilling to me. I hope you'll keep posting, because I enjoyed your other photographs as well.

No stars so far? (re. Oglemi's question)

 

[Blkmage0253]

Yup, absolutely no stars. It's just way too hazy and cloudy all of the time

Next update: I went to Macau a week ago for the day. Legal gambling for the first time since I'm not quite 21 in the U.S. yet :x I also ate some bad food and spent two hours over a squatty potty with no toilet paper. And ended up slipping and landing asscheek-first into the fucking toilet.

Debated bungee jumping off the Macau Tower since it's the tallest in the world but it was just too expensive, like 3 times more than I spent for the entire day. Also couldn't really get good pictures since the "outdoor observatory" was really indoors and just un-airconditioned...

This past weekend I went to ocean park with a bunch of friends (other exchange students mostly) and spent the entire day there. It was very nice and the rides were built right into the side of the mountain. But the next day was much nicer. Went to Cheung Chau Island with my roommate (it's a small island south of Hong Kong that's mostly and un-urbanized fishing village. It had more of a traditional feel. We biked/hiked/went to the beach and all in all it was just an awesome day.

This past Monday was the Mid Autumn Festival. The festivities were great but there was SO MANY FUCKING PEOPLE. I couldn't get many good shots. And I'm convinced that having that many people packed into one place is a hazard, especially when it's as hot and humid as HK

Planning on going to Shenzhen (mainland China) this weekend.

Macau

Senado Square in Macau

Portuguese egg tart. It was really good, but I've had the Chinese version of it before so it wasn't really anything new

This is The Venetian. It's a casino resort/hotel and much of it is themed to Venice. There's a fake sky and canals and even boat rides through the canal:

Ocean Park

Cheung Chau Island

Dragon Boat racing!

Mid Autumn Festival

 

[Blkmage0253]

Hey there everyone, I'm back with some more pictures. Maybe we can get some action going in this thread? ;)

In a rush so I'll go back and edit in captions later, but I think I'm improving. The pollution is a serious damper on getting cityscape shots though:

Shenzhen

They have benches everywhere on the SLC line, pretty cool

It actually wasn't bad

Bullet Coaster is very photogenic (taken three times with and without filters. WHich you do like best?):

Rapid fire:

We actually went on their splashboat ride and it was f***ing hilarious. We bought the ponchos since we didn't want to get a full body soaking. The ponchos for your feet were both helpful and absolutely hilarious. But the beginning of the ride was so long that we were dying of heat in the ponchos

Take special note of the guy in the front row:

Some close ups of Bullet Coaster:

This helix after the top hat looks absolutely crazy:

Very nice looking mine train:

Playing with my gorillapod. It gets me such weird looks in China since I guess it's not really seen:

These are from the folk village + show:

Delicious dinner:

Shanghai!

Yeah so Shanghai was great but it's kind of an instance of "Don't eat where you shit." Eat in Hong Kong. Shit in Shanghai. It was very cultural but not the type of place I would want to live.

My friend and I ended up getting food poisoning. I recovered in less than a day but my friend was vomiting for 3 days before almost passing out on the plane ride back and getting hospitalized for near on a week. Turns out she had shigella flexneri bacteria in her, which is mostly more dangerous for children and the elderly. Thank god my body fought it off.

sugar cane drink stand on the street:

A night out on The Bund:

Jing'an temple:
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6107/6217668677_d1d0a25365_b.jpg

Some nighttime street life:

A stranger in a strange land...not exactly sure why I took this picture:

A bit of background on these next two shots: Shanghai shuts down their lights at around 11 PM. So I raced down the boardwalk in the cold to get a nice shot and two pictures in, the lights freaking turn off. These two shots are with the lights off. I did super long exposure and I think the result was better than with the lights on actually:

Just some fooling around on a nature trail in Hangzhou:

the nature trail was pretty popular for local tourists, and even weddings.

More Hong Kong in decent weather!

Two versions of this pic with just a simple edit between them. Which do you prefer?

Here are a bunch more cityscapes from slightly different perspectives:

The opposite side of Victoria Harbour...much less action

This place sells "authentic New York french fries," which is funny because as a New Yorker I can tell you that the only foods we really take seriously are pizza and bagels. but I guess since New York is so well-known it's a good advertising scheme

I've taken this shot already, but decided to redo. Better?

This is the Bank of China building btw:

another redo:

I need to come back to this spot so I can get the full view. I was rushing a bit and the nice security guard was shoo'ing me away since I guess taking pictures from a parking garage isn't allowed. I'm so disappointed that I couldn't find a spot to get the skyscrapers completely in though. It's not a matter of my lens not being wide enough, it's that the roof of the parking garage extends too far forward so that tilting to camera upward results in me getting a nice shot of roof.