My thoughts on the craft, the process and the subjects
When we view objects from a distance, we do not see small details, and therefore, the objects appear smoother than they really are (when viewed from up close.) If we deal with time instead of distance, we subconsciously draw an analogy between the two, as Daniel Gilbert illustrates in his “Stumbling on Happiness
The next day, I looked back at the set that I selected, and was surprised at how random and incoherent it was in terms of the subjects, the techniques, the composition. Perhaps, it reflects my overall experience from this trip: random, contrasting images of Eastern and Western architecture, rich and poor streets, hot days and cool nights,..
It seems that Shanghai is full of great opportunities, but people living there are prevented from grasping them. For me also, those few days away from the university were an opportunity to collect my thoughts, both on research and in general, to slow down and enjoy the new and exotic place. In reality, the trip was a bit of a blur: I missed my family a lot, and the conference was a rater high-level meeting, where we did not get into the specific details of our research.
The biggest positive aspect for me personally was the chance to get to know my colleagues, some of whom I have worked with for years. During our walks through Shanghai, we talked about children, and photography, and books, and movies, and work, and travel, and languages, and music,.. I would not say that doing so is enough to really form personal friendships, but it is a healthy start, without a doubt. “Collegiality” is a somewhat nebulous term in the academe. I read somewhere that you do not really form a working collaboration with someone until you share a meal together. Exploring an new city together is probably even better.
During my second visit to Yu Yuan Gardens, the light was much more conducive to photography than during my first visit two days ago: diffused sunlight through slightly close cover instead of harsh mid-afternoon sun.
Since I have already seen the gardens themselves, I ended up taking many more photos of tourists taking selfies with their smartphone. This seems to be a universal preoccupation and could probably make an interesting focal topic for travel photography.
I find Shanghai most photogenic at nighttime, when cooler temperature removes some of the haze from the air and multicoloured lights illuminate everything from the skyscrapers of Pudong to the souvenir shops of Nanjing Road. While I generally prefer converting the street scenes to monochrome, the nighttime shots sometimes benefit from the crazy palette.
Pudong, the “new city” side of the Shanghai is incredibly picturesque at night, when viewed from the opposite side of the Huangpu river, the Bund. In the morning, the sun illuminates the city from the Pudong side, so I wanted to explore how the Bund would look like in this light, and also take some photos of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower up close. It turned out that the smog caused by humidity and pollution is so heavy that even when the sun was directly behind me, the contrast was incredibly low.
I boosted both the contrast and saturation in post-processing as much as I reasonably dared, without sacrificing realism of the scene. Another thing that required quite a bit of processing was cloning out sensor dust, which always becomes visible, usually in the areas of flat colour (e.g. the sky), when the lens is stopped down to f/11 or higher f-numbers.
The flower and insect market is the most exotic shopping place that I have visited in Shanghai. Crickets that are kept in small plastic containers with mesh tops make the indoor marketplace incredibly noisy. The crickets themselves are not easy to photograph because of the containers, but the customers make fascinating subjects.
Generally, the insect market and the neighbouring “antiques” market on Dongtai Road are overwhelmingly chaotic. The shop owners mostly do not object to having their pictures taken. They almost never speak English, and I do not speak Chinese, but smiling and pointing to the camera works very well and usually results in them nodding in approval.
The backstreet scenes in Shanghai are so multicoloured (not in a good way) that I find it useful to convert the photos to black-and-white (or other monochrome palette).
For taking the iconic night shot of Shanghai skyline, my plan was to place the camera with a 70-200 mm lens on a tripod and take a long exposure shot. However, during my first evening in the city, I carried only the 35 mm lens and no tripod.
It quickly became apparent that the ship traffic on the Huangpu rive in front of the colourful skyline was so heavy, with huge barges and bright tour boats constantly crossing the field of view, that a long exposure shot would render them as trails of light. Moreover, the panorama of the Pudong district is so wide, that even a 35 mm lens could not capture it all.
I will definitely return with a tripod to take a long exposure shot, as well as a video of the constantly changing light show, but I will also try a wider lens (16-35 mm) as well as some vertical shots of individual buildings.
I do not have a specific photography agenda for my upcoming trip to Shanghai. I will have only a couple of days available for photography, but the destination is so exotic that I want to take enough gear to not be limited in the types of shots I can take. At the same time, I plan to carry most gear with me as I wonder around the city, so excessive weight can easily become a limiting factor itself.
. It is bulkier and heavier that my 5D Mark II, but fast autofocus and much better low-light performance of the 1D X really tip the metaphorical scale. If I had a 5D Mark III
, it would have been a perfect compromise for travel.
.This is the heaviest lens that I plan to take. Leaving it at home would save a lot of weight and space, but this lens is incredibly versatile. In fact, most of my best photos are taken with it. Besides, one type of shot that I do plan to take is a night-time cityscape, similar to the one from Yokohama (above), and this lens is the perfect one for this job.
. This is currently my favourite walk-around lens. I was debating wheteher to take a 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM lens
instead, but I am willing to sacrifice its zoom and image stabilization for incredible low-light performance, shallow depth of field as well as physical size and weight of the 35mm f/1.4L.
for close-up shots of architectural details, like the shot from the Forbidden City below.
. I have a slightly different tripod from the one in the link, but carbon is the key for saving weight.
. Mine is an older model from the one in the link.
One important aspect of travel planning is that it forces us to address the issues at work and at home that otherwise would have lingered on the background of daily business for a long time. Travel dates, defined by the booked airplane tickets, serve as a rigid deadline for either completing or dropping projects on the to-do list. Either way, addressing these lingering projects in a definitive way, gives the future trip a sense of reality by freeing up mental energy and distraction-free time for it. In this sense, doing the work that enable the travel is the first and fundamental part of the travel experience.
My first overseas trip of 2015 will probably be to a research meeting in Shanghai. I have been to China only once before, attending a similar meeting in Beijing. During that trip, I had an opportunity to explore a little bit of the city on my own, in addition to going on an organized tour of the Great Wall. I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to take street portraits in China. Everywhere, people of various walks of life were incredibly friendly and easygoing, always willing, if not eager, to pose for a photo. I have probably the largest number of shots with strangers making eye contact with the camera from that trip than from any other country.
Speaking about books, I would like to start looking through the Beijing and Shanghai travel guide
