Lets see, it’s been about a week and a half since I was in Hong Kong- it feels like it’s been a lot longer; I guess it’s a good thing then, and as long as I can get these final pictures pushed out before the close of the month, it’ll be good.

It’s the start of my second week at Morodo Group Ltd (I just realized, why do I always end up talking about work when I want to post about Hong Kong? I guess I need to just dedicate a post/update to let you all know what’s been happening at work. Maybe I’ll snap a few pictures with my phone and post them up here too. heh). Anyhow, I’m not going to talk any more about work in this post. I’ll save it all for it’s own post; and yes, I will write that post soon, because I do want to talk a bit about how work has been going.

Here are the second set of pictures from my previous, ‘Hong Kong Sights and Scenes – Vertically‘ post. I thought that this was the last set of pictures that I had from my New Year’s Hong Kong trip, but I realized that I have pictures of ‘Hong Kong Fashion’ left to edit and post. Bah! Why is photography so time consuming? Haha. I complain too much. endrant. =\

These pictures were pretty fun to take; essentially I was ‘shooting-from-the-hip’ again. I don’t know if I really have to shoot from the hip all the time when I’m walking around. Maybe I’m just too chicken to hold the camera up to my face to compose and shoot, but then again, my camera is huge. I think it’d draw too much attention. I guess it draws enough attention as it is, just walking around carrying that huge beast.

-Duncan

So I’m back in Beijing – it was funny because the minute I stepped off the plane and onto the catwalk thing it smelled like Beijing- some sort of dusty, musky smell that entered my nose and sent the olfactory sensory neurons (yes, I took AP psychology in high school, haha) to my brain and confirmed my realization that I was no longer in civilization, no longer in Hong Kong; but I had once again entered, what I like to endearingly call Beijing, ‘the jungle’.

Anyhow- I started my first day at work at Morodo Beijing today. It was pretty awesome stuff learning more of the inner workings of the MO-Call application and service, and it’s a really promising outlook for this industry and company.

But I don’t want to digress too much into that- this post is supposed to be about Hong Kong sights and scenes…. vertically. Why vertically? Because I was walking around Hong Kong taking snap-shots while ‘shooting from the hip’, meaning that I wasn’t looking through the view-finder to grab the shots, but I was doing it (trying to do it) covertly. I’m a stalker…. lol. Then, I was going through the images to postprocess them, I figured that it would be easier if I just went through all the portrait pictures first. So far, I haven’t gotten round to editing the landscape pictures, so… here is Hong Kong… vertically.

//edit: Okay, so after posting these (I edited them in Hong Kong, so I forgot what the pictures actually were) I realized that only a couple of them were of me stalking people. Most of these were actually composed, heh.

These two vertical images were taken by my sister =)

-Duncan

It’s been a long time since my family has had a vacation together- during college my vacations were spent with friends, since my parents were in Singapore; and after my sister’s graduation, her vacation days never coincided with my vacation days.

It’s also pretty funny being back with my sis, cos everyone thinks that she’s younger than I am (she’s a year older) because of my height; I’m a giant. I have no idea how I got to be so tall (good nutrition?). My mom comes up to my shoulders, and my dad, somewhere around my ears. I guess they fed me well =p

The funny thing about photography, is that my sis was more interested in it way-back-when, and I remember my dad used to give my sister lessons on aperture and shutter speed.

Actually, this is kinda the same thing with a lot of other things- my sister played guitar first, and I only started to learn because there was a random guitar lying around at home. I guess I just tag along with whatever my sister does =p

The next pics are taken by my sis- she had a good time playing with the camera I guess =)

Three more days in Hong Kong…. oh snap.

-Duncan

I love visiting the Canon center in Hong Kong whenever I’m here; it’s one of the two things that I must do when I’m in Hong Kong: visit the Canon center, and ride the Star Ferry (more pictures from the Star Ferry in another post. hehe.)

The Canon center in Hong Kong is actually 3 floors (at least, that are open to public); I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more floors that Canon owns in the building, since they have a HUGE rotating sign on top of the building where their center is located in (I love it… and point it out to all my friends that I meet up with here. haha)

This time around I actually got lost and went to every Canon floor (Canon Service Center, Canon Pro Solution Hub, and Canon Image Center? I think those are the names).

The Canon Service Center wasn’t too exciting… just really cute Canon service girls (I’m not kidding, there were no guys working there, just girls…) sitting at service counters in Canon uniforms; okay, it was pretty cool- but I didn’t want to look like a creeper, so I didn’t take pictures of the Service Center. lol.

I wandered onto the Canon Pro Solution Hub floor next, and asked if I could take some pictures- the employee working the floor seemed a lot friendlier when she (yes, another cute Canon girl) saw that I was a Canon shooter… biased. lol.

The Pro Solution Hub has Canon technology on display, a place for photographers to post-process (apparently with really good printers and color corrected screens, and also studios and rental equipment (in the back, so I didn’t get a chance to take any pis of that).

Finally, I made it to the floor that I was actually looking for- the Canon Image Center (where they actually sell Canon products), since I was looking for a neck strap; strangely enough, when I bought my 1D Mark IIN from Fredmiranda, it didn’t come with a neck-strap… dangit.

It’s not that bad shooting without a strap; I feel pretty hardcore since I always have to flex my forearm muscles to grip onto the HEAVY 1D Mark IIN body- and, Mike Colon doesn’t shoot with a strap either… so… yeah.

But I did want to pick up a strap for those occasions where I’m shooting an event and I need to make a quick lens change- without having to put my camera on the ground, lol. Yeah, it’s kind of a ghetto lens-changing technique that I have going on.

Anyhow- they have the 1D Mark IV on display! I had a good time playing around with it and messing with the 10fps =) The Canon service employees (all guys, actually), were giving me the, “do you really have to keep doing that?” look, so I stopped. (These Canon dudes look like serious business too, they all have those windy ear-pieces and they’re always communicating to each other through them; like they’re Secret Service agents or something.)

Here’s the Mark IV and also, the very sexy 200mm f/2.0 =)

And it’s never a complete trip to the Canon center without playing the the super-telephoto lenses.

Since on the topic of cameras- I finally found a place that sells gaffers tape, and I taped up all the model and brand labels on my camera and lenses, I don’t really feel much safer walking around with my camera though, since people would probably still know that my camera is baller, judging by the size of the beastly thing, lol.

I need a point and shoot- I even considered selling my 1D Mark IIN and getting a 5D and S90; nah. =p

I’ll be making a trip to the Nikon center in Hong Kong- because I’m wanting to buy a Nikon strap to put on my labeled out camera; haha. I’m lame. But also so I can spy on what the Nikon center looks like- it also look pretty impressive, judging by the website. I love Hong Kong =) Hong Kong loves photographers. Haha.

Well that ends this post- the post lineup (in no particular order, it all depends on which I feel like editing first):

- Hong Kong Scenes/Street
– Hong Kong Fashion! (with a focus on shoes/boots)
– Mi Familia!

Till next time;

-Duncan

So internet is extremely sporadic and crappy here at my grandparents place… because they actually don’t have internet, and I’m mooching it off a neighbor who hasn’t passworded their network- the thing is, its really shotty and I couldn’t get access all day today. I guess I shouldn’t be complaining at all since I’m at least getting internet every now and then (man, I’m so dependent on internet- I guess this shows how ‘wired’ I need to be).

Anyhow- these are some pics of the Beijing Art District ’798′ that I took before I left Beijing. I’ll make some picture updates of Hong Kong soon. I did manage to wander around Hong Kong a bit by myself today, since my mom and sis were both busy trying to apply for my sister’s 回乡证, and my dad was actually in ShenZhen for business.

-Duncan

Well, I’m off to Hong Kong again tomorrow. I’ll be gone from December 29 – January 9 so hopefully expect some more pictures updates from me (most likely after I’m back though, since my grandparents don’t have internet access =\ sad).

-Duncan

Hello! Yesterday was an intense day of fun with smallgroup (actually it was kinda more like meeting up with different members of smallgroup at different places; heh)- I guess I should have taken more pictures throughout the day to guide the post along; and it definitely would be more fun to look at pictures than to just read through stuff (I don’t even know if I should really write about the stuff that I did yesterday because it would end up just being a list of activities… maybe I should do that. Make a list. It would definitely be faster to read through, than if I wrote complete sentences).

List of Stuff I did yesterday:
– Met up with some smallgroup members for brunch/lunch
– Wandered around The Village at 三里屯 (san1li3tun1)
– Headed to the Bookworm (a well known expat bookstore at 三里屯- but it kinda smelled like yeast/mold in there. lol)
– Ate all-you-can-eat crepes
– Met up with more smallgroup members for dinner at a 老北京 restaurant
– Headed to the Birds Nest to check out the Christmas lights
– Met up with other smallgroup members and their coworkers for noreabang (KTV) which lasted until 4am

It was a pretty crazy awesome day- except that I had to wake up at 8:30am this morning to head into the office to complete my official sign-out documents. Yeah, it was painful.

Anyhows- without further ado; here are the pictures of some of the smallgroup members that I met up with to go check out the Christmas lights that were set up at the Olympic stadium (also known as the Bird’s Nest). Enjoy! =)

It’s been a pretty good week so far- yesterday I ran my errands so that I could go on a photo walk today. I didn’t head out as early as I wanted to (I wanted to catch the sun-rise) but I think I had some bad food last night because I woke up this morning with the runs; bleh- gotta love Beijing =\. I think I’m all better- really gotta watch out for what you eat in this city.

I didn’t really have a theme for what I wanted to take pictures of- just… random sights and things that you see around the neighborhood that I live in. I started out in 五道口 (wu3dao4kou3) and took the subway to 知春路 (zhi1chun1lu4) to look for a small community of houses that I think the street vendors live at because all of their carts are parked there. The train from 五道口 to 知春路 always passes by overhead and I’ve always wanted to take some pictures over there. I didn’t get to wander around too much though- some of the residents started to look at me and I don’t think I was very welcome to take pictures of their community. ’nuff said, I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

-Duncan

This is a very delayed post of some pictures that I had taken while I was in Hong Kong doing a visa run. The date that I have labeled on these images are from 2009.10.28- aish. I’m a bad blogger.

Anyhow, when I was in Hong Kong, I noticed that quite a lot of dudes were totin’ handbags man-bags. I mean, I guess it wasn’t ‘bad’ looking, and maybe if I had grown up in Hong Kong, I could possibly see myself carrying one of them too…. okay, maybe not.

Enjoy! (Please pardon the random composition for some of these shots. These were all shot-from-the-hip, as I didn’t want any man-bag-totin-guys taking a swing at me with their man-bags).

-Duncan

//note: Please note that my RSS feeds are currently down due to the domain name transfer of this blog. I hope to get it up again soon. (Fixed: You may need to resubscribe to my new RSS feed. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.)

This is a really late update, I know. But things have been really busy (what’s new, huh?).
Here are some sights of Hong Kong from my visa run two weeks ago.

Starting off the post with some pics from my Nokia E71 Phone – my mom saw my old converse shoes that were pretty worn, and she didn’t want me wearing them anymore; so I was treated to new shoes! =)

I went to a random clothes store with random branded items, and i thought it was hilarious that they were selling a Subway polo that the employees wear!

Enough randomness. Here’s Hong Kong =)