27/12/2009 - 26/02/2010: Two months passed very quickly. At least compared with time spent with (dreaming,) planning, booking, ... Our flight tickets has been booked through Oneworld a year ago (March) and we started to seriously look into details of our itinerary in August.
How was it? Fantastic! But short, compared to schedules of other people we met :-( We decided to go for more conservative schedule so our employers will be more likely willing to accept us back :-) Thanks to package price for flight tickets we could compensate for lack of time by having more flights at places where people usually use bus. I am slowly processing all photos. They will take some time as well as their publishing.
Only a few more days are ahead of us. We are heading to Rio de Janeiro tomorrow and after couple of days on beach to home.
Again the same problem with NEFs...
Greetings from the middle of our holiday in South Hemisphere. We are leaving Australasia tomorrow, heading to South America so maybe it is good time to write something.
Unfortunately I shoot only RAWs and I do not have any way to process them during our trip. In order to publish at least something I have decided to shoot also small JPEGs for 2 days. But then I still have problem with downsizing. Only quick way to work around that (without much googling) is to upload photo to facebook and let it to downsize it for me, followed by using Paint to convert them into JPEGs :-) .
I went to take a few photos of Cardiff at night on Friday. Cardiff is full of lights at this time of year and there is also the Wheel I tried to take photos last year, but screwed up completely. Back then I took my tripod, but forgot to return the plate for tripod shoe to camera after our trip to India, so I just pretended I had the camera attached to tripod. Results were obviously terrible. And I did not get a chance to get back later.
This time I paid attention to all details and somehow I have decided I do not need polarizing filter. That was mistake too, it would help me to take better photos of revolving wheel and also to blur moving people in the streets. So maybe next year everything will be perfect :-) I am very happy with results because the sky was really dark and I could use ISO 100, so the noise was not the problem. This was the first time I just loaded all photos into DXO, selected a preset and started processing without tweaking every photo separatelly. (Well, I have returned later and fixed a few horizons or geometry, but that is not something DXO could guess itself :-) )China Day 18 - Holiday ends in Shanghai
Added: November 10, 2009
Thursday 23rd of July is our last full day in China. 18 days passed really quickly, I would like to stay for longer. But that's not possible.
Today we plan to see Shanghai. Heidi, our local guide, told us 2 days ago that Shanghai is nicer during night than during day. After travelling through it by bus yesterday and today I can only agree with that.
Finally, 22nd of July - Day of Solar Eclipse is here! We are leaving our hotel soon in the morning. The idea was to beat other groups heading to Solar Eclipse viewing site, but we were hardly the first group in the lobby of our hotel. We got breakfast box instead of proper breakfast and I have already described how bad it is. It was the same this morning, but we were sleepy so we did not care much. What was much worse, however, was heavy cloud cover. It looks like meteorologists fulfilled their threat from yesterday.
We are going to visit only one place on Tuesday 21st of July. It is Terra Cotta Army near Xian. After that we are flying to Shanghai in the evening.
In case you've just come from Mars and never heard about it, it is afterlife army for First Emperor of Qin. It consists from several thousands of life size figures. There are archers, bowmen, cavalry, horses, chariots and more. Every figure was unique. From those thousands only one was found intact. All others were broken during rebellion (and its consequences) a few years after burial of Emperor.
We have not visited many places on Monday, 20th of July in Xian. And that was good, because I got cold yesterday at Bingling Si. I guess it was not warm enough for shorts and T-shirt for me. On the other hand it was really hot in Xian. So I was not in mood to explore exotic places.
Our train arrived to Xian at about 7am. Train station was overcrowded as we had not seen before. We had to keep together to or risk to get lost. We went out rather slowly, it was crowded also there. Slowly, we went around barrier and then back on other side to join our local guide. Then we walked for about 1km to place where our bus was waiting, because it is not possible to park directly at train station. Xian is very old city, former capital of China and it has nicely preserved city walls. Our hotel was inside the walls, near to Bell Tower. It took us about 20 minutes to get there in the traffic. We got keys to our room quite quickly, but the room was not ready yet. It was still before 8am, so we could hardly blame them. Contrary, Rich was able to get breakfast tickets for us, so we could spend time surrounded by nice meals ;-) (I still had no problem with Chinese-style of breakfast, but there were also toasts, eggs and everything).China Day 14 - Grottoes in muddy mountains
Added: October 29, 2009
Sunday, 19th of July. It is cloudy and it looks like it will rain soon. Only reason we came to Lanzhou is that we are going to visit Bingling Si grottoes on the Yellow River.
China Day 13 - Terraced fields and Mosques
Added: October 28, 2009
Saturday 18th of July. The thin crescent of the Moon is directly above our heads surrounded by blue sky when we are getting to the bus for today's journey. It is getting thinner and promises it will cover the Sun in a few days.
We are leaving Xiahe, nice small town we nearly were not allowed in. We are heading to Lanzhou, ugly industrial town. We would have nothing to look forward to, fortunately we are going through amazing country side and we will visit couple of strange mosques (well, they are not strange in China).
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