Photos from Taiwan, Pt. 2

Shilin Night Market

Night markets are a wonderful part of Taiwanese culture and something I really liked while I was last there 5 years ago. I brought my camera along to Shilin Night Market, even though I didn't think I would be able to take many photos due to the low lighting, packed streets, and cramped quarters. However, it turned out to be a wonderful opportunity to try out street photography for all of the reasons that I thought would be hindrances. I certainly could never take photos like this here in Arizona, or anywhere in the United States.

At first, I only took photos of the entire market to capture what it looked like as a whole. But after a little experimentation with my lens and camera settings, I realized I could get some pretty good shots of people and other isolated subjects in the markets. And thus I went about trying to capture the atmosphere of a bustling market filled with people from all walks of life, eating, shopping, and having a good time, all under the night sky and neon signs.

Here's a little blurb about Shilin Night Market, again taken from Wikipedia (yes, kill me English professors, I'm not sorry though): "

Shilin Night Market (Chinese: 士林夜市; pinyin: Shìlín Yèshì) is a night market in the Shilin District of Taipei, Taiwan, and is often considered to be the largest and most famous night market in the city…. The night market encompasses two distinct sections sharing a symbiotic relationship: a section formerly housed in the old Shilin Market building, containing mostly food vendors and small restaurants; and the surrounding businesses and shops selling other nonfood items….

In addition to the food court, side streets and alleys are lined with storefronts and roadside stands. Cinemas, video arcades, and karaoke bars are also prevalent in the area. Like most night markets in Taiwan, the local businesses and vendors begin opening around 16:00. As students begin returning home from school, crowds reach their peak between 20:00 and 23:00. Businesses continue operating well past midnight and close around 01:00 or 02:00."

I really wish I could have spent all night here taking pictures. It was an entirely new experience for me to take shots like this and I could have experimented for many nights. Each second was a new frame as people hustled and bustled around. Plus, I would never go hungry with such amazing night market food. Until next time, Taiwan.

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.

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:

Twinning

Starting to publish and share my photography has been interesting and exciting. You can meet so many cool people by doing so and find new opportunities. For example, I published my picture from my earlier blog post, "My Car", to my Instagram page, and the Cars of ASU (@carsofasu) page commented on it, with one of the admins saying he owns an Accord, too. And by "Accord", I mean identical Accord: 2008 Honda Accord sedan in the EX-L trim line with White Pearl Metallic paint and sand/beige/tan interior. So, we decided to have a photoshoot together with our Accords at Tempe Town Lake.

Both of us regularly go out to shoot supercars/exotic cars/expensive cars, but it was nice shooting our cars. After all, these are what we drive everyday. For me, it was especially exciting to meet another Accord owner who both loves cars and likes the car he drives. It felt good appreciating our cars for what they had to offer, including an actually-pretty-decent amount of power and pull (hey, 268hp and 244 lb-ft of torque, especially in the era when V6 muscle cars could barely make above 200 with larger V6 engines, is pretty good). It was also cool talking about the small details of the car that only comes from long ownership, such as the leather on the center armrest peeling off or being able to feel exactly when VTEC kicks in (yo). 

But, the sun was setting and we already got yelled at by the people who patrol the lake for parking in front of the boat-launching area, so we decided to relocate and try some more photography.

We ended up going onto the Mill Avenue bridge that crosses over Tempe Town Lake and parking on the side. Oh, the things that you feel safer about doing when someone is with you. Neither of us would do this alone, after all. Since it was dark, i decided to try some long exposures, not only to help overcome the darkness, but to also create light streams past our cars. 

It's fun shooting with other people, not only because you feel more emboldened to try new shots, but also because you can talk about photography with them. As we waited for the exposures to finish, we talked about long exposures and other photography styles, continuing our conversations from Tempe Town Lake. 

Eventually, we came to the point where we agreed that we've taken "enough" pictures, since we both know how it is: we plan for some time to take photos, spend double the amount of time planned taking photos, and still feel disappointed in how all the images are coming out. So, with photos taken, information exchanged, and each other better known, we left the bridge in our cars. (And also the photos did come out pretty well.)

Thanks to Hemang at Cars of ASU for the shoot!

More photos:

Beautiful Weather

The summer this year has started off rather strangely, with cool temperatures and, on the 15th, a torrential downpour of rain. On the 16th, there were still scattered showers, but for most of the Valley, all that remained were beautiful skies.

Here are some shots I took up in North Scottsdale, where I was at the Penske Cars and Coffee event (coverage of that coming soon). The weather was indescribably beautiful, and the scenery was wonderful. 

When I got home, I decided to go for a hike in the mountains by my house to get some pictures of the beautiful sky and enjoy the air. It was the type of day where it didn't matter what you were doing, you just wanted to be outside.

I took photos as I went up the mountain, as well as at the top. The hike up is not difficult, nor very long, making this a nice spot to go to for nature and landscape photos. The photos below are ones I took on the way up.

The path I take is great because the closest way to access it is through a neighborhood rather than a park, so there were not too many people by me. It's a great place to sit and think.

At the top, I was met with a wonderful view. Blue skies, white clouds, a beautiful breeze of fresh-smelling air; I wanted to remain up there for the entire day. The skies were wonderfully clear, except for over downtown, where a pollution cloud was already forming. Still, the clouds and blue skies allowed for some wonderful photos.  I loved how the clouds cast shadows on the ground, creating pockets of light, which for some reason centered for a while on the several houses built on the mountain.

The clouds moved fast; in fact, I tried taking some time-lapse photos of the sky (about 5 seconds worth according to my calculations), which I will play around with after all the photos I have are edited.

Enough of me talking. Enjoy the beauty of nature, and how such a place can exist in the middle of a sprawling city.

I decided to come back later in the evening for the sunset; however, the view was not what I was hoping for. Still, I might post the photos later.