Tag Archives: #julysquares

China

The start of the trek to the top

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The grand entrance to the path to the top of Taishan, the one in Tai'an.
I wished the day had been clearer.
A carved granite mural in an underpass in Tai'an.
A mural that uses a perspective technique to represent the above avenue.

Tai’an is at the base of the sacred mountain Taishan, where the emperors would go to the Dai Miao temple at the base of the mountain then to the top to perform certain rites. I was really impressed that they went up until I learned that they were carried up on a litter. I am very impressed by the guys who carried the emperor up. There are some super steep areas. My son was quite relieved that I chose to take the cable car (after I learned that the emperors didn’t do it!). He admitted later that he was trying to figure out how to carry both our backpacks and prevent me from falling.

For Becky of WInchester’s July Squares: Perspective.

Snapshots from a Happy Life

City views

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Chicago really isn’t my kind of town. But, back in the summer of 2017 I was there once for a 23 hour layover between the Southwest Chief and the Empire Builder trains. Because of the height of the buildings it is hard to get a perspective to take a photo that gives a sense of being there. All of these were taken either beside or from on the water.

Walking along the river in the late afternoon.

The one tourist thing we did, aside from just walking around, was to take an architecture cruise. The following two were taken on that trip.

The reflections let you see both sides of the river.

For Becky of Winchester’s July Squares: Perspective.

Snapshots from a Happy Life

Coming from behind

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This is a really random assortment.

Japanese anemone.
Commuter or shopper in China
My husband on the city walls of York
We wound up behind this truck for quite a while. It seems like he was reading our minds.

Just for fun here is an antique-y sort of effect applied to a couple of them.

I kind of like this effect, like he is materializing from mist.
I couldn’t resist applying the old-time, romantic sort of look to the mighty johns…just for a giggle.

For Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge: Back of things, and of course the back of things is also a Perspective, for Becky of Winchester’s July Squares.

Flowers

Different ways to see a dewy rose

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Color view.
A conventional black and white view.
An inverted black and white.

This is an interesting rose that changes color and tone as it ages. The tiny drops of not quite rain (it was more a heavy enough mist that it was yielding to gravity than rain) create an interesting texture. That is more noticeable in the black and whites, especially the inverted one, than the color.

As I seem to often do I seem to think about perspective as how you look at something. Since I’ve been focusing on black and white processing this past month or so it is becoming second nature to turn a photo black and white at some point as I work with it.

For Becky of Winchester’s July Squares: Perspective and Cee’s Flower of the Day.

China

Precious Stone Fortress

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On a peaceful late afternoon from the river cruise boat.
Looking up as we were about to enter it.
A different angle from the river (on a different trip, we drifted by on a misty morning). This gives you a better idea of how steep the angle is.

Different views of Shibaozhai. A very impressive sight whichever way you look at it. The entrance to it would have been underwater once they filled the reservoir for the three gorges dam, but they built a coffer dam to protect it.

For Becky of Winchester’s July Squares: Perspective.

China

There’s something about a bridge…

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Cable stay suspension bridge in the foreground, a steel girder bridge a bit up river and the city of Chonqing appears to go on forever.
Bridges over the Yangtze River in Chongqing at dusk.

There is not a vanishing point in the above photo, but the buildings appear smaller farther away. That’s probably accurate: Chonqing is huge and the urban area extends as far as you can see.

The next one,taken a couple of years earlier, is downstream from Chongqing city. The water is brown because of flooding, when the river runs normally it is green.

A cable stay suspension bridge downstream from Chongqing city (though still in the Chongqing municipality). The river is full but appears placid.
From this angle the bridge seems to emerge from the hillside

I have always loved the elegance of cable stay suspension bridges. When I was in college, a very, very long time ago I was part of a team that built a model cable stay bridge that won a contest (a nerdy kind of contest where you were judged on things like displacement and strength over weight, as opposed to total weight, although there was a minimum load it had to bear.) These bridges along the Yangtze reminded me of that.

For Becky of Winchester’s July Squares: Perspective.

China

No pain, no view

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View

View from the Jade Emperor Pavilion on top of Yishan in Linqu country of Weifang.
View from the top.

Pain

Of course you had a climb up to get to the view.

Looking up at the temple from the shuttle drop off point.

Yishan is an interesting place. It is not as famous or tall as Taishan, but it was important in the traditional worship and the emperors did come here for some rites. It is known as “little Taishan”. Fortunately the climb was not as intimidating either.

We were really fortunate because we caught a re-enactment of one of the imperial rites at Dongzhen at the base of the mountain when we came back down.

It was interesting to see how the things we see were used.

For Becky of WInchester’s July squares: Perspective.