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.

Glorious Technicolour (And Pollution)

So... Here's some colour. These are from the lake in Hangzhou. I managed to catch a rather impressive water fountain show by sheer chance. The pollution kind of makes the pictures more impressive as it dulls the light of the sun as it comes down. You kind of get a glimpse of the mountains in the background.

I'm not actually sure whether they do this water show regularly. I wouldn't have stopped and took these if it hadn't have started as I walked past. Above and below were just a couple of experiments with silhouettes. 

This one is the better of the two. I think with taking it in landscape you get more of the mountains in the background, and just people from the waist up. 

These with the water are a little tricky to get. You need a fairly high shutter speed to catch it, which also means that less light goes through the lens and on the the negative so can come out a little dark. I practiced this when I was in Jersey, and meant to put the results up - something I obviously haven't done - when I was on the beach; I was trying to get pictures of waves hitting rocks. Out of 4 or 5 pictures, only one came out well. Anyway. So the one above you can kind of see the water being shot up from right to left. There is a little too much glare from the sun though.

This one I really rather like. Unfortunately I couldn't get all of the sprays in. But it kind of gives some sense of proportion.

I think I should probably crop this around the couple. I may do at a later date, but for now I like them as they are. It's a little romantic. Save for the E.T. looking chap behind them.

Lots of people were there. Apparently they seemed to know there was a fountain show. You can tell by the pictures above there were loads of people at the front. This girl was quite lucky though.

More police. Checking their phones.