Update on updates

Because of the situation with this blog being blocked in China, it has become a little more difficult to update. I am currently updating my twitter fairly often (http://www.twitter.com/dandoval) and also try to update a gallery of current photos every week (http://www.dansandoval.com/weekly) Feel free to send me twitter messages and e-mails (dan(at)dansandoval.com). This blog will be sparsely updated until the situation with Chinese censorship changes.

 

Dan Sandoval, photographer
www.dansandoval.com

Updated Bio

I was bored so wrote myself an updated bio. Dont have a place to put it yet, but Ill find somewhere...

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Dan Sandoval. Born in the City of Angels on August 12th 1984. In his youth, Dan was an explorer. Whether digging a hole in the yard (and subsequently running from his mother) or reading a book, he had an insatiable hunger for exploration that constantly got him in trouble. Growing up, Dan dabbled in many things as he pursued the holy grail: Knowledge. Along his journey, Dan discovered he had many tools at his disposal—Spanish, English, and Public Speaking, which came to him naturally. Other tools, Story Telling and Leadership, he learned slowly but honed to perfection. On his journey, Dan teamed up with many unlikely allies on the road towards Knowledge. Despite natural abilities of his own, he found that sometimes they were not enough. He sought out new clues and information to reach his goal. He trained in different schools of thought with gurus from the Temple of Compu-Sci and Lit Rature. Sometimes he was reluctant to team up with some, but keeping in mind his goal, he bit his tongue. These powers included Math-e-Matics, priest of efficiency, and Bio Logy, cataloger of life. Eventually he met a mysterious man that would inspire him to train with the ultimate tool. Lumina was introduced to him by the Librarian of Sci Ance. When Dan first met Lumina, he seemed to beam with radiance—beneath the surface lay great power. Dan immediately became fond of him. Lumina took Dan on a journey to visit many scholars that held the secrets to the universe, such as Astro Nom-E and Fiz-X. Lumina attempted to convince Dan to join one of these schools but Dan desired more—to understand the power behind Lumina.

One day, 2 years after their journey together began, Lumina approached Dan. "The time has come for me to teach you about a device which gives one the ability to freeze time itself. You must train well and hard to use this device to its utmost. Keep in mind, that everyone can use the device, but it is only by mastering it that you will truly unlock its potential. A master of this device can control the minds of others; influence their thoughts and bend them to your will. You will find that you can make people feel emotions they thought they had forgotten, as well as give them desires they never knew they had. The name of this device is the Cam R.A."

He handed Dan a device that, once in his hand, seemed so familiar—a missing appendage he has somehow forgotten. Upon waking, Dan discovered Lumina had disappeared. He had known it had been coming, but was saddened, nevertheless. Dan found himself on his own once more but now with newfound determination. Dan gave a silent thanks to Lumina for introducing him to the device and continued his quest. As Dan journeyed, he developed his control over the Cam R.A. and learned to harness and control the power of the sun by bending light and capturing it. Even now, Dan is constantly refining his technique with the device, learning even as he teaches others. These days, Dan can be found in the far eastern lands of Chi Na. As he wanders he finds pieces of the puzzle that lead him further along, closer and closer to his ambition: Knowledge.

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On a side note, new weekly post up. Watch what happens when Dan tries his hand at Fashion... Weekly

Zebra Attacks Chengdu

The Zebra Music Festival. A 3 day rock my socks event that I never imagined could happen in Chengdu. Given, its no Woodstock, but holy crap was it good to see something of this magnitude in a land where bureaucracy abounds. Alright, lets get to the meat of it:

The Zebra Music Festival (ZMF) was a 3 day extravaganza that was organized by Zebras and Chengdu (Zebra Media and the Chengdu Media Group) alongside many other associations. The official English web page can be found by visiting: http://www.myzmf.com/en/index.html

I really want to get into the nitty gritty of the festival, but my words just wont do it justice. Instead, I’ll just list some of the highlights (including favorite artists):

**3 Stages: Main Stage, DJ Stage, and the Chengdu Stage (which consisted of local artists [I wish warp tour did a local artists stage])

**Tons of food to try at different locals around the event

**Favorite Artists:
- Brain Failure
- Shin
- Essay
- Omnipotent Youth Society
- New Cools
- Hedgehog
- Ashura
- Subs
- High Tone
- Proximity Butterfly
- The Trouble

You can probably google any of those names with a “band, China” add and get their sites (or something of that nature)

Anyway, as I probably should have done from the beginning, Ill let my photos do the talking. Nevertheless, it was an awesome event, and I hope to be at the next one.

Updated

Sorry for the lack of big updates, but at least the weekly gallery is updated. Check 'em out at The Weeklies. Anyway, here is a little sample of things to come.

Prints for Sale

Hello. I hope that this e-mail finds you in good health. It may or may not have been a while since we spoke, but I thought I'd send you a quick notice as to what I've been up to:

I am currently live in China. I moved here 6 months ago and am working here as an English teacher. My plan is to be here for a total of 2 years. Additionally, and more importantly, I have been traveling and taking photos. I invite you all to take a look by going to my website (http://www.dansandoval.com/) and taking a look at some of my most recent work (http://www.dansandoval.com/chinaone/). Some of this work has recently made the cover of Chengdoo Magazine (http://www.chengdoo-magazine.com/) issue 21, which also includes a photo story on Lugu Lake. Also, if you would like to keep track of me on a more day to day basis, feel free to check out my twitter feed (http://www.twitter.com/dandoval/). The main reason for this e-mail, though, is to let you all know that prints of my work are available for sale. If you are interested in purchasing an image, please let me know by e-mailing me (dan(at)dansandoval[dot]com) with the name of the print you are interested in, and what size you would like it to be (you can just say big, med, or small if you are unsure of an exact size). I will get back to anyone who responds as soon as I can. Other than that, most of everything else I have to say can be found on my blog (http://deathtalk.blogspot.com). Feel free to respond and just say hi, if youd like (but please change the subject heading). Feel free to pass this information on to anyone who you may think is interested. Also, if you, or anyone you know of, needs anything related to travel in China for a magazine or... anything, really, let them know as well. Thanks for reading.

 

Dan Sandoval, photographer
www.dansandoval.com

A Letter from the Editor

Dear Blogosphere,
I'm very sorry I have not posted as often as I should have, but I have been slightly busy with other projects. Amongst those projects is the brand spanking new Afterthoughts Podcast. Some of the other projects I've been working on are a little hush hush at the moment, as I'm not completely sure they will ever come to fruition. I find its better to just not say anything than to disappoint. On a side note, I did just get the front cover of Chengdoo Magazine (see the Geese?). Pretty excited about that. I can now officially state that I am an internationally published photographer. They gave me a pretty nice two page spread (not as nice as it could have been, incidentally, but nice, nevertheless). Its a photo story on my travels to Lugu Lake, which borders the Sichuan and Yunan provinces here in China. Please, feel free to download the issue and check it out. As always, if you really like it, send some love (chengdoo[at]gmail{dot}com) to the editors at the magazine and let them know what a fine job I've done. Last thing I want to mention, is that I have posted an archive of all the images from my last journey (sans the self portraits), which you can find at The China One Gallery. Of course, with this update comes the usual weekly photo gallery update (didn't think I'd leave ya with nothing new, did ya?). As usual, click on the image below to go to the gallery. We'll be in contact.

Regards,
Dan Sandoval

Apologies

Sorry for the lack of recent updates. I'll get back on the blog with more info as soon as I get the chance. Meanwhile, just know that there have been a couple of side projects in the works. Check out my twitter (twitter.com/dandoval) for a temporary fix.

The Missing and the End

First off, I’d like to start by apologizing for the extremely late post. Things have been a little hectic as I go back to the day to day affair that is teaching. This post will be wordy. If you don’t like my writing, or happen to be illiterate, just scroll to the image and click on it to see the weeklies. Although, if you happen to be illiterate, you wouldn’t be able to read this anyway, so I guess its just for you lazy haters. This update will be in sections divided by stories, and not chronologically. I will not tell every little detail, I will just relate the adventures I think were of note. The Weekly Gallery will stay the same for 2-3 weeks, at which point I will put up a massive upload of all the choice images from my travels at some soon to be disclosed location.

Edit: I will only do 2 stories for now, and will write more when I have more time. Update just happens to be long overdo, although its not finished yet. Also, it seems I forgot to title the post.

Men With Knives (a.k.a. The Robbery)

It happened in Dali. It was late night, perhaps 2:30 in the am. I had just come back from hanging out at a bar with some friends I made while travelling. I was on my way back to my hostel admiring the sights in the darkness. Dali is an old city. The main part of the city is surrounded by ancient walls that protected the city against any invaders. My friends had chosen to stay at a different hostel than I. Their hostel was very close to downtown, while mine happened to be just outside the city walls. To get outside the walls, you have to walk through a big tunnel that leads beneath the walls. As I entered the tunnel, I noticed a couple guys hanging out at the other end. As I reached about the half way point, they started walking towards me. That’s about the same time I heard someone behind me say “Hello.” It was a friendly hello. The kind of “hello” that you typically hear followed by “where are you from?” I turned around and saw 3 guys. The one that said hello was standing on the right side smiling. Instead of the typical statement, the words following this “hello” were “Please follow.” The other 2 guys had just about reached me at that point, and I began to get an inclination of what was going on. I said to the guy “I am very tired and want to go home.” At that point, the man said something in Chinese, which made his 2 “associates” draw long 8-12 inch knives from beneath their jackets. “Please follow.” I did as I was told.

The men led me just outside the city gate, where they had me stand in (there is no other word for it) a dark corner. The man said “Give money.” I took out my wallet and gave him everything in it: about 400 RMB. I then proceeded to take out my "small money” wallet (where I put in anything under 100 RMB) and handed them another 150ish RMB. The man then said something along the lines of “Don’t hide money, or things go bad.” I decided that money wasn’t worth the risk of getting stabbed to death in a Chinese city, so I opened up my stash and handed it to them. About 490 dollars and another 500 RMB. The guy counted the money. He then took out a 100 dollar bill, two 20 dollar bills, and 300 RMB. He then handed them to me. I was confused. I didn’t understand why he had handed me back some money. He then said something in Chinese to one of the guys, and one of them pulled out a small bottle of bijou (Chinese alcohol. A poor man’s drink) and a glass. A shot was poured, and then handed to me. I don’t normally drink, but I thought to myself ‘If you’re ever going to drink, there seems like no better time than now,’ so I drank. The guy then said “Thank you” to me, took back the glass, and they all walked off, leaving me standing in the dark thinking ‘What the fuck was that?’ I made my way back to the hostel and filled out a police report. Later that night, as I lay in bend, I couldn’t help thinking that it could have gone much worse. I had my camera gear, and they weren’t even interested. They gave me back about 30% of my money. Hell, they even gave me a drink. It dawns to me, looking back at the situation, that is was the best robbery I had ever heard of.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Legend states that a long time ago, a tiger was running from a hunter. As he was running, the hunter managed to corner the tiger and put its back against a large canyon. With nowhere to run, and desperate to escape, the tiger decided to leap over the gorge in order to evade his pursuer. What legend doesn’t say is if the tiger made it or not. I assume he didn’t (its a rather large gorge).

Tiger leaping gorge is located near the lovely city of Lijiang, in the Yunan province of China. The adventure began at 8 a.m. in the morning. A number of us left the hostel and loaded into mini vans for a 2 hour drive to get us to the starting point of what would be a 2 day trek. On the road, I became friends with a couple of really cool cats: 1 woman, from Spain, and 2 girls and 1 guy from France. When we arrived, we were instructed to pay the 85 RMB admission fee, but being a cheat and a no good liar, I decided to try to pass off the good old student I.D. card, which yielded me a 40 RMB discount. So far, so good. There are two routes that lead through the gorge. There is the lower route, which is the route that the majority of Chinese tourists take. This consists of a bus ride to the gorge itself, and a short 2 hour hike down to stand next to it. Chinese tourists have a tendency to be lazy. They go, they pose for a picture (with the mandatory peace fingers), and then they get back on the bus and go about their merry way. Don’t do this route. You’ll miss out on the good stuff. My compatriots and I began the hike taking the high route. The high route, as previously mentioned, takes 2 days of walking, but is definitely worth it. The hardest part is called “28 bends”, but I do believe that the Chinese definition of a bend is different than ours, as I counted more than 35 bends. Reaching the top, though, is amazing. Whenever you are exhausted on a hike and manage to reach the highest point of your trip, it feels incredible. To have that “I’m on top of the world” feeling combined with beautiful scenery… well, you just can’t ask for much more. You get a beautiful vista of the surrounding areas, in addition to having gorgeous snow capped mountains in front of you. At the top, there is also a direct view down into Tiger Leaping Gorge. There was a man at the top who told us that its free to walk to the viewpoint, but if you want to take a photo, you were required to pay 10 RMB. Being the cheat that I am, I took photos and didn’t pay. Shooting from the hip FTW. That night, we slept at The Halfway Guesthouse (which is more than half way). The view there is magnificent. I don’t think I have ever stayed anywhere with a better view from the rooms (see star trail image [10 min exposure f4.0 ISO 200, in case you are wondering]). The next day we hiked down to the gorge itself (6 more hours of walking) and made our way back to Lijiang. All in all, one of the best things I’ve done in China.

Coming soon…

No Money, No Food, But I Can Play Guitar

The Bamboo Sea

Birds, Birds, Birds

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.