New Projects

Spurred by an article on WIRED about how the US wants to move more of its freight traffic to internal waterways, I thought about how Shanghai's waterways are always full of freight boats going this way and that.

Thus comes the inspiration for a new project: Document the waterways, its traffic and people.

Spring is Here

Sping has finally arrived in Shanghai and I discovered this cute little market, full of fish, birds, flowers and more. Feels like a photo shoot coming to capture it before it makes space for another shopping mall.

The whereabouts? To be revealed.

Thomas

Moved Hosting

After hosting the site for more than a year from my own DSL connection, I finally got a decent host. Hopefully there will be no more outages and the Shanghai Expo storm can be weathered well.

Other than that, I was horribly busy putting a new website for dining and wining in Shanghai together.
Check it out under EatInShanghai.com

Thomas

Old Sites

Early on, I had created a couple of simple sites for specific trips that I did. I just resurrected them and made them for sentimental value. Have look:

Summer in Oregon, 2006. I documented a trip I made with a few colleagues, the highlight was rafting on the White Salmon River, which was fun in the first part and then just beautiful as we drifted along, surrounded by fog.

Bali, 2007. A magical island ...

Twitter Integration

Hi Folks,

I just finished an integration of the site with Twitter, so now you can just follow me there and whenever I post something in the blog, add an album or photo, you'll see it there.

I also added a news feed to this site and an RSS feed for those who like that stuff.

So please take a look and let me ...

On Shooting in Shanghai

What a strange place this is. I have been living here for more than seven years and yet, there it is full of surprises every time I go out and shoot.

People react in two ways, either very friendly and inviting or with open annoyance and hostility. There is little in between that I have found. The most surprising was a shoot at the maglev construction site, where first our cab driver brought us right onto the site and then the workers invited me up on one of the giant pillars that they were ...

On Equipment

My first own camera was a Nikon F301. I still have it and shoot with it sometimes, but have accumulated a too long list of lenses, flashes, and other bodies too. I have great respect for Nikon and find it wonderful that I can use 30 year old lenses on brand new bodies and vice versa.

I switched to digital in the age of the D1 and love the immediate feedback and control, this provides. Shooting digitally has provided many lessons benefits my film shooting as well.

I guess there is much ...

On Shooting Film

I like to shoot film for a simple reason. I can use a small, unimposing camera and just two manual focus lenses. That makes for a very small setup, and allows me to get close to people, strike up a dialog and get them to forget about me, sometimes.

That is when the best pictures happen. When people start to forget that you are taking pictures of them and they turn their attention back to their work. As Capa said, "If you're pictures are not good enough, you are not close enough."

I use ...