I Hate The Snow

It's cold, and wet, and icy; just lots of things I don't like.

It's actually snowed here in Shanghai a couple of times over the winter, and settled. Fortunately, where I live it's pretty quiet so when it settled it was largely undisturbed. Also, as it's right outside my front door, I don't have to spend too much time outside wishing I was inside.

You get the idea... Since it's a rather busy city, I figured the snow wouldn't have settled so much on the streets so I didn't bother to have a look.

I got quite a few pictures of these chairs. But I really like the fact that I was using a fairly quick shutter speed to get the snow falling a little more clearly.

Same goes for this one really.

This is literally outside my front door.

I was carrying about two different cameras. As I have vaguely mentioned in a previous post, I use an OM-2 as well as an OM-1. The main reason being so I can switch between taking colour photos and black and white. It means I can get a lot more photos, and try out different things with different lenses with out having to sit and think too much about it. What with the snow I figured black and white would be just as good as colour, because there aren't a whole lot of flowers and colourful things about this time of year, but luckily I was a little prepared.

There was only about 2 inches of snow, if that.

This is actually from when it snowed in December, I went out later in the day and it was obviously a lot darker. There was more snow that time around.

Many Hands Make Light Work

I have a confession to make - well some explaining to do at least: I recently spent some time using a digital camera. I have a legitimate reason for this. One that is rather irrelevant at this point. Either way. I needed to practice using one. Now, I'm not a particularly big fan of digital cameras; I think they are needlessly complicated sometimes, and I hate autofocus, and yes I am sure you can get around it, but I am not inclined to learn this malarky when I have perfectly good film cameras.

Anyway. Thanks to some rather fancy technology, you can get these little extension bits to digital cameras (some of them at least) and mount manual lenses onto them. As I have mentioned I use an old Olympus OM-1 as my default camera (I actually also use an OM-2, but that's also another story, for another blog post - most likely the next one). I have the use of an Olympus Pen, which is a pretty nice bit of kit. But as it stands I can whack on my OM lenses to the Pen. So this post consists of digital images that I have taken recently (my first actual attempt being some random shots of Shanghai from ages and ages ago when I felt like a wander about the city - but that was a pokey little camera that I was also trying to get used to using).

I went down to Suzhou for the day. It's very picturesque, lots of things to see. I went mainly to see some rather elaborate gardens and a water village, but I managed to get a chance to go around a silk factory. Silk Factory No. 1 as it is somewhat formally known. It's rated as the best in China, and as China is rather famous for it's silk, it's a pretty big deal. Now as I wasn't originally planning on going to see this place, I was somewhat uninclined to use up the films that I was carrying, so I figured it was the perfect opportunity to try out this digital camera, since I had brought it along anyway. I was also using a 50mm lens, also something that I haven't actually used a whole lot of in the past year. My first blog post with pictures is the only other example of my using a 50mm wide angle lens. I had found it a strange lens to get used to, and was more interested in using my 35-135mm and 35-70mm which are basically my two standard lenses I use all the time for obvious reasons. Anyway. What follows are some images of me wandering about a small factory and what I saw, using a camera I was not used to, and a lens I was not used to either. The title of this post will make sense.

So silk is quite interesting stuff. The way it is farmed is just as interesting. Here a woman is sorting cocoons, separating bad ones from the good ones.

After they are separated they are put in hot water and the threads attached to these things that run it all together in spools. You can't really see what the woman is holding, but trust me she is holding a bit of silk. Did you know silk is actually just silkworm vomit? Well pretty much. The cocoon is the silk and the silkworm is killed before it turns into a moth. 

The thread that comes out of a silk worm is one single piece and can be more than 1000 metres (yes, one kilometre) in length. Eight strands of silk are wound together to make one thread since one alone is too thin (this is a very basic run down of the procedure, but it's interesting nonetheless).

Moving away from hands for the minute, but this is a cool image.

The main area where the threads are run into spools is quite a long room with a lot of people working on them at one time.

Also a cool picture. Tools make things work too.

This is a woman opening up the cocoon and getting rid of the larvae. They stretch out the opened cocoon once it has softened in the water. The strange thing standing up is what the silk is stretched over.

This is a better view.

They move it from a smaller one, to a larger one seen here.

Larvae from the cocoon.

After it's all dried and and spooled, they make all sorts of things, here four women are stretching it from something that is about a foot squared, to something the size of a mattress.

And then made into the blankets... Silk is meant to be better for the lungs, and therefore better for sheets and covers and whatnot, due to the fact that it doesn't kick up dust the way cotton and feathers do.

I love these two photos together.

Fun in the work place it seems...

More News

I'm having a terribly hard time getting on Blogger at the moment, so updates are going to be slightly here and there (and everywhere). Will do what I can when, when I can.

Progress And All That

Ok. The final bit of Hangzhou is more along the lines of things I find curious. I wasn't so much trying to frame photos and make them look kind of pretty and all that. More just having a nose around. 

There isn't so much to tell about this picture. I was using 200ASA film, which I think I am not too fond of,  if I am being honest. The images are kind of bland. But then the above picture is generally kind of grey. What is interesting, and will become more apparent, is what's in the bottom right corner. 

Obviously there is a big to do about how the Chinese just develop things without regard to people who live in the places where this development is supposed to happen. This is a good example of that. What with the building site, the advertising and the laundry hanging up.

Building sites double as play areas it seems.

I kind of still feel a bit weird taking pictures of people when they are looking right back at you...

... Clearly the guy didn't seem to mind so much. He started waving and having a laugh with his mates.

I am go to be away for a little while in Hong Kong, but will return with some pictures of snow in Shanghai from December, and whatever I come across in HK.
Cheerio.

Waves

This is the photo of water that took me a while to get. It's not the best, but after several attempts, and not being able to actually tell whether any came out, I'm somewhat happy with it. It's a little clearer if you click on it and zoom in.

Either way. I like the spades and shovels that are there. And it was a generally fun day at the beach. What more could you ask for?

Last Bit Of Black and White (For Now)

Happy New Year and all that. I meant to get this up a couple of days ago, but due to some overzealous celebrating I found myself generally unwilling to stare at a computer screen (or bright lights in general) for too long. These are going to be my last few b&w shots from Hangzhou. Sort of. I have more, but they are technically from Xiaoshan. Will do them at some other point - they are of a different lake and it's all a bit much for now.

That's a famous pagoda in the background. I never actually got round to seeing it up close, and I probably should have done, but the view is nice. Not really sure what's going on with the light on the left. Might be the sun and pollution doing crazy things.

This could be split into two separate photos. It might be better like that - the couple asleep on the bench, and the man looking through the guide book.

I'm not sure what this kid was actually doing. Or more why he was doing it. He was picking up these things from beneath the a tree and putting them in a bag. As you do.

Aww.

This I'm quite happy with. I may crop the bit on the left out and just have the boat and bit out on the water. It's silhouetted nicely.

There is a little bit of a different attitude to street performance here. It is given a lot more reverential respect, rather than people just having a gander and chucking money in a hat. 

You can kind of get the idea of how many people were about if you look to the right.