En Route: Part Two

Current as of Thursday Jan. 29, 2009. This post will be a big one in the weeklies. Hope you enjoy ‘em. For the most part, I’m letting the photos do the talking in this post (which is probably how you like it, anyway).

This weeks travels have taken me south. I began this session of travels by hitching a ride in a friends car to the city of Xichang in the Sichuan Province. Due to unexpected delays, particularly a nighttime road closure (due to extremely dangerous roads [see weeklies]), we ended up not making it in the same day, and ended up staying in a small town (unsure of its name). The next few days were spent traveling about in the Xichang area taking in some of the local flavors, and having a couple family dinner’s with my friend’s wife’s family. Oh, right, and due to the Chinese new year, I got to blow up tons of fireworks. I must admit, Chinese new years wasn’t the big party I had expected, but instead, consisted of everything closing down for the entire week before, and a variety of small family activities.

2 days after the New Year’s I was off to Lugu Lake (Lugu Hu). On the way there, I met a group of 7 friends with whom I joined in traveling there (lowers costs of activities when you split it 8 ways) All in all, fairly amazing place. I went for a boat ride, saw 2 sunrises, and dropped my hat in the lake (fear not, it WAS recovered). Lastly, I headed to Lijiang on what was supposed to be a 5 hour bus ride, but turned out to be 8. Anyway, enjoy the weeklies. There are quite a few good ones in there, not including the mandatory “I was here” photo.

The Edit

I’ve been recently thinking about my style and my photos. I’ve been considering the idea of going back to doing Photoshop work to my images. I see some of my photos, and I cant help but think how much I could bring out of certain images if I just went into Photoshop and started making adjustments to curves and making masks upon masks. Lately, I’ve been giving you the MOSTLY unedited versions of all of my photographs. The most I have been doing is adding a slight amount of contrast. I feel that this allows you to see the world that I have seen, mostly as it is. The problem, though, is that although many of these photos (I feel) are beautiful, they are not the most that they can offer, and that is the internal debate. I am inclined to continue in my current method, which is mostly unedited, save for slight contrast, mostly because it is more truthful. But if your intention for coming to this blog is to look at pretty photos, and not care about how real they are, maybe I should change it up a bit. Let me know what you think. Anyway, New gallery is going up (old format for now). Enjoy.

En Route

Written Saturday the 17th, regardless of when the update happens. Ill try to cut back on the details, for the most part, as details would make the next few posts incredibly long. The galleries for the next few weeks will contain more images than normal.

Well, I have begun my travels for this vacation period. I have spent the last few days traveling in western Sichuan with 3 travel friends I made in Chengdu. We caught a bus from Chengdu to Danba at 6am Wednesday morning. The bus ride took a total of 13 hours, including a 2 hour stop where the road was closed. The better roads leading to Danba were nothing more than 1 lane of traffic in either direction. The not so good roads were 1 lane dirt roads which hugged dangerously close to the edges of cliffs. All in all, a fun ride.

After the 13 hour bus ride, we arrived in Danba and found ourselves a place to stay at a hostel. Soon after settling in, we went out to find a bit of local cuisine (which turned out to be not-so-special) and had ourselves a meal. Soon after eating, we returned to the hostel. At this point, 3 of us decided to wander about the night streets of Danba. After a slight bit of exploration, and the crossing of a wobbly pedestrian bridge, we made our way back to the hotel and rested.

Then next day was fairly uneventful, except for the climbing of an ancient Tibetan defense tower (see photos in weeklies for more “details”). These ancient structures are fairly well preserved (considering their age), but still dangerous to climb. Other than that, we explored 2 Tibetan villages (Suopo and Jiaju) and ended up in a third village named Zhonglu, where we spend the night.

The 3rd day, I woke up feeling sick, so I got a late start. My 3 companions went off to explore the countryside on their own, while I stayed behind and recovered a bit. I ended up starting my day at almost 1030. Once I got up and going, I wandered about the village of Zhonglu until I came about a house where I heard music coming from within. After standing at the gate for a minute, or so, I was invited to come in. I spent the next 3 hours sitting and chatting in my broken Chinese with the people who lived there. In addition to that, I got to see some of their religious activities. During those 3 hours alone, I felt the most in my element. I was exploring and interacting with the locals the way I like to, which involves spending enough time with them so that they no longer feel awkward with my presence. Eventually, I wandered off and rejoined with my compatriots to have lunch, followed by a hike into the hills.

On the 4th day, the day I write this, we hired a car to take us to another Tibetan town named Badi. Badi, in general, was uneventful, but we did watch the construction of a Tibetan house (to which I helped carry a rock to, Tibetan backpack style). We had the car drive us back to Danba, at which point my partners in travel and I parted ways. I came back to Zhonglu to explore the hills here a bit more, while they head back to Chengdu. I am now here in Zhonglu, writing this just after the sunset while staring up at the sky filled with infinite stars.

Its beautiful out here, and I wish I could share it all, but take what you can get, and enjoy the photos.

Passing the Baton

It seems to me that a good way to start the year, is through exploration, so I did a bit of that this last week. A friend and I went to g gallery of sorts that is currently under construction. After we finished the shoot that we went to do, we began exploring the building itself. The building was designed by a German architect, and is of fairly contemporary design. The really cool thing about the experience, though, was wandering through the innards of this building in progress. I think that one of the most amazing things about the inside was the vast emptiness sad sense of exploration I was experiencing. Wandering through the desolate halls and rooms. Climbing unfinished stairways. testing ground to make sure it was solid. 10 floors of this in q fairly large building is like cave exploration, but urban. It almost felt like we were exploring the ruins of a civilization, but truly, its quite the opposite. We were exploring the birth and growth of civilization. This experience has opened up a desire to do more photography of this nature, and though it wont be often, I assure you, there will be more. In the spirit of it all, I leave you with photos of design and architecture (and a self portrait) for the week.