Recent Pictures

I'm going to try to keep this blog updated with recent pictures. They might not always be the best photographically, but for one reason or another, I'm going to post them. Please feel free to comment and especially to critique them.

I have the week off next week and Ross and I decided to go on a motorcycle ride (big surprise) and go hiking...up a 3,400m (12,000ft) mountain. Well, I decided I needed to do a bit of training so that I don't collapse, and started walking up the small mountains around Xindian.

There's a nice one very close to the train station called "Lion's Head Mountain" (I think). As I walked, I took a few pics. This one is processed via a 9-step HDR and then run through a few Nik filters in Photoshop. It's not my usual style, but I'm quite happy with the results.

Here's another pic from my walks. This is an Orb Spider and is very common in the forests in Taiwan. They get bigger than your hand and build incredibly picturesque webs. This is the first time I saw one with a bunch of babies climbing around the web with it, so I thought I'd post it.

This one is of my friend Chris. John (see the next pic) found this nice spot along the river in SanChong (a Taipei suburb) and we decided to pour some concrete outlaw-style to make it a bit smoother.

Here's John. We also made a small ledge out of concrete and put a piece of angle iron on it to grind. Everything we built turned out better than I thought it would and this experience has really opened our eyes to the possibilities of fixing up skate spots with a little concrete.

Also note that I've been reading strobist a lot recently and I made some snoots and grids that I've been playing with. This pic has three flashes: two with snoots sandwiching John and parallel to the wall he's on, and the main flash (snoot-less) pointing directly at it.

This was shot at a nice riverside spot near my house called Bitan. I walk around down there fairly often and often take a few pics. This night night just had a beautiful sunset.

Same night, different angle.

In-between the bridges again.

Another angle.

This one I shot a few weeks ago. There was a fireworks display just up from this bridge (the one that I've obviously shooting too much). The pics I shot of the fireworks weren't really that inspiring, but I liked this one of the smoke drifting in the wind. The white streak is a lighted fire hose shooting into the river.