Let There Be Light!
The heavens put up a spectacular light show for us this morning in the Botanical Gardens 🙂 A passer-by remarked, “Life is Beautiful!”
Feeding The Dragon
During our recent trip to China, we stopped by Qiandao Lake (åƒå²›æ¹–), or literally, Thousand Island Lake on our way to Hangzhou (æå·ž). The lake is actually a man-made one with 1,078 large islands and many smaller ones resulting from damming works to build the Xinanjiang hydroelectric station. Many of the islands are “touristy” types — with man-made “attractions” such as the above “Wishing Dragon” surrounded by people clamouring to feed it with coins for good luck. This is a close-up shot I caught with the details in the dragon boosted via post-processing in Lightroom.
在河边喝茶
The problem with conventional organised group tours (at least those originating from Singapore) is they hardly cater to us photographer-types: limited stops (both in number and duration) for photography, lots of time wasted on “enforced shopping” (the tour guides bring you to designated places in the hope of earning commission) , arriving at photogenic spots at the wrong time of the day etc. etc. That was the problem I faced on my recent trip to China/Shanghai too, unfortunately 🙁 I was very happy when I managed to get half-an-hour to roam about at the picturesque Xitang (西塘) on the last day of our trip. The above scene was well-spotted by Cy, before I decided to make it an interesting candid shot 😀 The title is a pun on the sign at the bottom-right of the picture — literally, it means “Having Tea By The Riverside”.