Inner Vision

The Children of the Sun

I just took a photography class called Inner Vision under Tilak Hettige.  For my final project Tilak gave me the topic Opposites, Duality and Balance.  The man has to be psychic because he gave me the topic not knowing that I had identical twin girls at home that are just perfect subjects for this photo-essay.

Three days of research and shooting which ended up in my daughters running away screaming “NO MORE PICTURES MAMA!!!!” and quite a few bribes for their cooperation this is the result.

The story line is based on an African creation myth about twins called The Children of Kuiye (Sun).  And the soundtrack is Clocks by Cold Play.

Mistaken Identity

 

Lolo Pop sitting in his rocking chair

 

 

I went to visit my grandfather in the home for the aged where’s he’s been staying since my grandmother passed away.  While there one of the little old ladies who suffers from Alzheimer’s started yelling at me.  Telling me to get away from her husband.  That I’m much too young for him.  That he’s her husband.  

As you can imagine, I got confused, a little upset and amused at the same time.  It’s not everyday that I get a little slip of an old woman accusing me of trying to lure her husband away from her,  especially considering that  for one, he’s not her husband, and second, he’s my grand father for pity’s sake. 

Her yelling and crying caused an uproar so the nuns and the other care givers came rushing out to see what was going on.  Turns out that the poor dear has fixated on my grandfather and has decided that he’s her husband.  She’s actually quite sweet to him, the nuns tell me,  she talks to him, holds his hand, she actually gets quite upset on days when my grandfather isn’t feeling well and can’t go out to the veranda.  

My grandfather doesn’t even mind her, so you really have to feel bad for her.  In the grips of his own problems… the sickness called A-G-E… as he used to tell me when he was still well enough to converse with… he’s not really there all the time now either.  He has dementia and it’s steadily getting worse.  

It’s a funny situation.  Really weird.  But still quite funny.

Notes on China

Inside the Meridian Gate

It’s my last day in China. Here’s what I’ve been up to.

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Summer Palace.  It was the residence of the Queen Mother/Empress Mother and it’s just as huge and imposing as the Forbidden City.  Honestly I don’t care how many wives and children you’ve got but the Imperial Residences over here are OVERKILL when it comes to size.  All the buildings are sprawling and so far away from each other in both palaces.  But when you’re royalty you get to ride in one to those chairs and have 4 servants carry you around every where, so who cares that it’ll take the peasants 3 hours to get from one end of the palace to another.  Given that situation and their ingenuity I’m actually surprised that the telephone/intercom was not invented in China .  

I found out that when a certain location does not have the proper feng-shui then the Chinese will fake it to please the Imperial family.  Water flowing to the residence and building at the foot of a hill is the ideal location. The forbidden city is surrounded by a man made moat and several artificial stream flowing in the correct direction.  They also built an artificial hill behind the palace to meet these requirements.  

The Summer Palace is even wilder.  They constructed a man made lake at the base of the hill so that they could build the palace into the side of the hill going upwards.  I had to climb so many steps to get to the top where there’s a thousand hand Buddha that the queen mother worshipped.  There are actually 2 sets of stairs, one that is very steep and goes up the middle and one that is gradual with very small steps.  After hauling myself up the steep steps I was told that the steep steps are for the regular hoipoloi who want an audience with the empress and only she could use the more comfortable ones.  I was only there for a little while but let me tell you being a servant there is horrible!

There isn’t a whole lot of originality in the architecture of the imperial buildings here.  They all look the same.  The Forbidden CIty, Summer Palace and Ming Tombs all look alike.  Red walls, Yellow tiled roofs (Colors that only royalty may use) the ceilings and support beams all covered in what they call Painted dragon paper with the same designed duplicated over and over again.

The Olympic park with the Bird’s Nest and the Aquatic Center (Bubble building)  Are awesome.  I was able to go inside the stadium and sit in the bleachers.  Walk down to the very center of the stadium.  I waited until the sun went down so that I could see what they looked like with the lights on.  I was kind of disappointed that they only lit the bubble building blue.  I know it can change color,  it can even project videos and stuff but they just left it blue.  The Birds nest at night went from very industrial monochromatic grey to lit up in imperial red and yellow. 

I climbed the great wall today.  It was exhausting.  Some of the areas are so steep that the steps were as high as my knees.  There were several times that I had to crawl up using my hands.  The section of the wall that I went to Badaling has 4 stages of Towers (It continues on as far as the eye can see but you’re not allowed to go beyond the 4th stage.  Stage 0 is the gate house where our van dropped us off.  I was so upset when they said that we could only stay for an hour and a half.  I decided to climb as far as I could for an hour to give myself 30 minutes to get back down.  At some points going down was so much harder than climbing up.  An hour later I wanted to cry I only made it up to the Stage 3 tower.  I wanted to get to the top so badly. I caused a bit of a commotion when a woman doctor from Malaysia noticed that my nose was bleeding (my face and nose were so numb that I didn’t even realize it ) . It really wasn’t bad or anything just a few drops but she insisted on checking me out a bit, sat with me until it stopped and made me drink what was left in my bottle of water before letting me head back down the wall.  I kept telling her it was the dry weather and the altitude that probably did it.  You know I get nosebleeds over so many things, extreme heat, cold, etc…etc…

Turns out the doctor was accompanying a group of senior citizens from Malaysia on a tour to make sure none of them got into trouble. How humiliating is that?  None of her official charges got into trouble but I did.

The upside is that how many people can say that they literally have some of their blood on the great wall?

I’ve got lots of pictures that I have to sort through.  But as soon as I’m done weeding out the garbage I’ll be posting it on multiply. 

Tomorrow I head home and I’m so ready to go.  I miss the girls and I miss Gelo.  

I’ve had some really amazing real chinese food here and some really bad meals as well.  One night we had this Laureat banquet in a local tea house that went on forever the dishes were amazing.  So many of the dishes were acutally vegetarian but prepared to look and taste like beef, pork, chicken and fish.  If they hadn’t told me I wouldn’t have known that it was all veggies.  There was the usual steamed prawn, sweet and sour pork etc… but they had a slightly different taste from what we’re used to.  All the flavors were more sublte  but it wasn’t bland at all.  I did eat rabbit though.  It was a mistake.  I didn’t know it was rabbit.  I thought it was chicken barbque.  It did have a gamey taste to it though.  Wasn’t too wild about it before I found out what it was and I was horrified when I did find out.  Rabbit is not for me.  

They have fed me so much this trip that it’s a good thing I’m getting alot of walking and climbing done. I’ve been drinking a lot of tea.  Each place I’d eat would serve a different one.  I got to try this Litchin tea that is naturally sweet made from lychee blossoms.  I bought a can to bring home because it’s just so good.  That’s the only thing I’ve bought here in China.  

The trip has had it’s downsides though.  I learned that you should never catch a cab in front of a tourist attraction because they’ll tell you that to get back to your hotel will cost you anywhere from 80-150 yuan when the ride going there only cost me 20 – 40 yuan depending on how far it was.  It’s really much better to walk down the street for like 20 minutes and catch a taxi there.  Those cabs will turn on the meter and charge you the right price.  Those crooked cabbies are something else.  Of course I’d know how much a taxi ride will cost me since I did take a cab there to begin with! I’m sure they’ve reeled in many a desperate tired tourist with that scam of theirs.

You also have to be careful when booking tours.  The tour I booked to the Ming Tombs and the Great wall brought us to 3 tourist traps, a jade factory, a vase factory and a stupid tea house called Dr. Tea  without our consent.  Hence we only got that miserable 1 hour and a half at the wall.  Because of those tourist traps we didn’t even get to see the best part of the Ming Tombs.  It’s called the sacred way which is this gorgeous walk where the path is lined with these huge stone animals.  We we’re told that we had to book a separate tour for that.  Since it was a whole day tour, lunch was included and it was the most horrible food I’ve ever eaten in another tourist trap that was more souvenir shop than restaurant called the Friendship store.

New Thing: High Key

Julia the Fairy Princess

As a photo-taker,  I have many, many days when I simply want to throw my camera out of the window in sheer frustration.  Fortunately for me common sense and the high prices of DSLR cameras plus lenses keeps me from making that very big mistake.  There are days when I manage to capture one shot, just one shot that is magic.  This was the magical shot taken last Halloweens. Of course the picture didn’t look like this straight out of the camera. I don’t think you can take something like this straight out of the camera sensor.

A few clicks and several layers in PhotoShop and here is my latest favorite thing to do with black and white portraits. High Key Black and White.  Gorgeous isn’t it?  It absolutely glows but still has that old fashioned 1950′s photography look about it.  Of course it helps that Julia is beautiful too right?

What really gets to me though as I experiment with all these different post processing looks is that I can never get 2 shots, one of Julia and the other of Andrea to look really good with the same post processing technique.  I’ve got a picture of Andrea where she’s standing right where Julia is standing same time of day, same light etc..etc.. but I couldn’t get the High Key bit to work right.  Makes me want to slam my head against the wall.  Well it’s a reminder that I still have quite a lot to learn.  Aurgh!!!!

Death of a Hard Disk Drive

There’s nothing sadder than losing a piece of your life.  I lost a chunk of mine the other day.  Three months worth of unbacked-up data and most painful of all 3 months worth of pictures of the girls.  

The first time my Mac lets me down and it was a whopper.  My computer is a little over a year old.  It’s one year and three weeks old to be precise.  Those three weeks means that the warrantee on my computer has run out.  Note to self:  Buy Applecare!  It’s worth the 12 grand or so to extend your warrantee for 2 more years. IT WILL SAVE YOU MONEY!!!

The saddest part is how it happened.  I was being good and doing a time machine back-up when I hear a small pop come from the general area of the hard disk.  Then the clicks of death began.  Click…click…click…click.. NO DATA RECOVERED! NOT ONE MISERABLE FILE! 

I feel like I’ve lost three whole months of my life.  Just like that. S**T!

Waiting

 

Waiting

While driving along the winding mountain roads between Baguio City and Mt. Data Lodge.  I saw this old cordilleras woman sitting in front of her shack.  I only saw her for a split second.  My husband, a petrol head, was driving too fast for me to even press the shutter to capture her.  Six hours later we heading back down that stretch of road and I asked him to slow down.  I knew that there was little chance that she’d still be there, but there she was sitting in the same spot like only six minutes had gone by and not six hours, almost like she’s waiting for something.

Half a Wheel of Cheese

 

Half a Wheel of Cheese

There are certain points in my life that I turn into an insomniac for no reason at all.  I lie in bed starting at the ceiling willing my brain to shut down and let me have some much needed sleep.  I’ve always considered these moments a trail, unnecessary and just plain cruel on my body’s part.  

One of these nights in desperation I went out to the balcony of my condo. Looked up at the sky and saw the biggest moon I had ever seen in my life.  It was huge.  It was yellow.  I could see the craters.  It was half a wheel of cheese.

If I hadn’t been having a sleepless night then this magical sight would have passed me by. 

I wonder what else I’ve been missing while asleep.