Photos from Taiwan, Pt. 1

Over winter break I got to spend a week in Taiwan. Naturally, I had to take photos.

Ximending

The first location is Ximending. Ripped from Wikipedia since it can explain it way better than me, "Ximending (Chinese: 西門町; pinyin: Xīméndīng) is a neighborhood and shopping district in the Wanhua District of Taipei, Taiwan. ...Ximending has been called the "Harajuku of Taipei" and the "Shibuya of Taipei". Ximending is the source of Taiwan's fashion, subculture, and Japanese culture. Ximending has a host of clubs and pubs in the surrounding area. This area is in the northeastern part of Wanhua District in Taipei and it is also the most important consumer district in the Western District of Taipei."

After first seeing it at night, I knew I needed to come back for photos. The brightly lit signs, the upbeat atmosphere, the amount of people and energy around, I just had to try to capture it.

The photos above are only the "front" main area. Once you walk around inside, you get greeted with "miniatures" of this space filled with people and signs, but on small streets. Both vehicular and foot traffic busily coexist here.

Furthermore, there are many side alleys where smaller shops are located. In addition to these, there are large "walk-only" areas within the district filled with foot traffic and shops.

Presidential Office Building

Nearby Ximending is the Presidential Office Building. Again, ripped from Wikipedia, "The Presidential Office Building (Chinese: 總統府; pinyin: Zǒngtǒng Fǔ) houses the Office of the President of the Republic of China. …It became the Presidential Office in 1950 after the Republic of China lost control of mainland China and relocated the nation's capital to Taipei at the end of the Chinese Civil War. At present, this Baroque-style building is a symbol of the ROC Government and a famous historical landmark in downtown Taipei."

In previous nights it was brightly lit. I don't know if it was the time I came to shoot (around midnight) or if it was the day (December 31st) that was the reason why the lights were off, but nevertheless, I grabbed some pictures while the undercover secret service agents guarding the area outside watched me. 

 

 

 

New Year's Eve, Taipei

Every New Year a huge fireworks show occurs on the Taipei 101, the tallest building in the city, the country, and the world until the Burj Khalifa was completed in 2009. This being a city of nearly 3 million people and also a tourist attraction, especially for the New Year celebrations. 

My hotel was located close to the Taipei 101, roughly a mile and a half away. It took around 30 minutes to walk one-way, but there was no way I was getting close to it that night due to the crowds. Instead, I set up shop around a kilometer away from the building (yes, I'm mixing units, but as an American I can afford the luxury of doing so). Unfortunately, while I could see the building perfectly, this location did not give me a good photo-taking view of the building. It did however, put me in the middle of the crowds walking closer to it. Thus, while waiting for midnight, I took long exposures of the crowd, and, after filming the firework ceremony, taking photos of the aftermath:

Everyone was so courteous, making sure they weren't in my way, making sure not to hit my tripod's legs, etc. 

Taiwan was amazing, and I will hopefully have the rest of the pictures up soon.

First Street Refined Weekly Meet

After quite a bit of "planning" and talk, my university's official car club, Street Refined, held a meet that will hopefully become a weekly/bi-weekly event. The turnout was great. The parking lot of the Culver's we met at, a meet spot that we've used in the past, was completely full with the cars of our club members. It was an amazing turnout, and in addition, a great example of how diverse the car community is. Muscle, European, Japanese, spanning a range from a Nissan GT-R to a Honda Accord to Miatas to Mustangs, we're all one big happy family. 

It was a great night of seeing people again that haven't been seen for a while, and meeting new people who share a similar passion.

Automotive Photos from the Past Month

I'm not dead, I promise. Just super busy and slow at editing photos. Here are the pictures I've posted on my Instagram/Facebook, I posted these thinking I would be done with the rest in a week and I would have all photos and a write up on the blog, but clearly that hasn't happened. I promise I will work on them as soon as possible though.

Super Blood Moon

Sorry for the inactivity! School has been killer and I haven't had time to edit the 300+ photos I have from various car shows that have happened over the past month. However, last night was the Super Blood Moon, a lunar eclipse coinciding with a supermoon, which won't happen again until 2033. So, since this is a once-in-a-generation (roughly) event, I figured this was a good excuse to duck out of homework and responsibility to take pictures, edit them, and upload them. 

I used my kit 55-200mm zoom lens to take these photos. I don't have anything witha higher zoom, unfortunately, but here is what I got. The first three were taken on top of a parking garage, while the other three were taken in the courtyard of a dorm. If only I had access to a place with lower light pollution.... oh well. I used long exposures to capture the photos, so that way I wouldn't use too high of an ISO and get too much noise in the photos. It's interesting though how you can't use too long of an exposure, otherwise the movement of the earth and the moon cause a blur.

San Diego/Coronado Island Long Exposures

Since I don't sleep until late, and I managed to fit my tripod into my luggage, I was able to play around with long exposures. The Silver Strand Bike Path on Coronado Island gives amazing views of the San Diego skyline, with the bay glimmering below. Since Phoenix, located in a desert, lacks such bodies of water, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to take long exposure photographs of a city that actually can be identified as long exposure due to the water becoming glossy. So naturally, the first pictures I took were of the city. The first photo was taken in the late evening, so the blue of day still faintly remained. The other three were taken in the dead of night.

The locations I took the photos at of the skyline were around a mile away from the hotel I was staying at. Thus, it was a bit of a walk to get back and forth, so I wanted to get my money's worth when it came to subjects and photos. So, I turned my attention to the bay and the ferry landing. The USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) was still in port the first night I was there, with her registry number on her bridge glowing bright. I wished I could've gotten a picture of the Carl Vinson and Reagan's registry numbers as well, but their positions meant they were facing the San Diego side of the bay. Also, facing Coronado was the USS Midway museum, with her registry number, as well as decorative lights, glowing. I thought the pictures of their registry numbers glowing in the night would look fantastic, so after trial and error I managed to snap pics of them. Since I had to be on the ferry landing to get these pictures, I also decided to photograph the pier and local beach area, once filled with people, now completely deserted, save for the fishermen... more on that later. It's interesting what happens at night; while taking photos, I ran into a group from Turkey and talked with them a bit- turns out one of the men in the group studied engineering at the University of San Diego some 20 odd years ago. Night time is always interesting; a whole new group of people are out when the sun sets.

Back to the fishermen, the pier that is usually filled with tourists or people simply seeking a relaxing, fun time on the island was now filled with fishermen. Fishing poles and people lined the sides, with some quiet music thumping and muffled chatter filling the air. This being the first time I've ever been out late in Coronado Island, this was a completely new side to the place that I never knew existed. Despite it being so late, they had an energy with them, that I decided to try to capture with long exposures that would show their movement and activity. I call these photos "The Fishermen of the Night". 

Of course, how can I forget the Coronado Bay Bridge and the shipyards beneath it? To be honest, from the Coronado Island side the bridge isn't really in an attractive position; it just looks like a thin line stretching across the sky. But, the bay below it stretched far out in all directions, and the lights from the bridge and the shipyards certainly made things interesting, especially in the water reflections. 

The walkways emptied out by around 10:30pm or so. Cleverly, the LED lamps that illuminate the walkways stay at half power unless someone walks under them. I always thought the walkways were paved in a fun way, like a race course, and with the lights over them and city skyline in the background, I thought they would make for a perfect picture. Of course, when I first tried taking photos, the half-illumination status of the lights didn't create the bright, dramatic effect I wanted, so I had to run underneath each of them to trigger them before taking the picture. I find a beauty in empty roads and paths; perhaps its the philosophical and metaphorical parts of my brain romanticizing the images. Maybe the stillness invokes ideas of tranquility and quietness. But to see only portions lit makes the effect even more dramatic. 

However, these are the images I am the most proud of. Why is the sky so wispy, and why is the water smooth as glass? Well, each of these pictures were 8 minute exposures. I first noticed on one of my bridge pictures that lasted for a minute that the long exposure caused the clouds the clouds to be drawn out and the water to be even more smoothed over than my previous 15, 20, and 30 second exposures (naturally). So, I decided I would use my ND filters to try to create an ultra-long exposure, and after messing around a bit, I got these two photos. Since they took 8 minutes each to take, it was pretty time consuming so I didn't have a chance to take many. But, I am extremely happy with these.

I also decided to take a blurry picture of the pier and edit it, for l'art: