Hong Kong is full of spectacularly tall high-rise buildings, many clad with much glass to reflect their surroundings. This edifice is part of Times Square in Happy Valley where a nearby crane can be seen broken up into various rippled parts like images on water.
Taken on my iPhone 5 and cropped in Lightroom
It’s the Year of the Snake and the Chinese New Year celebrations in Hong Kong were as lavish and spectacular as ever. For several days during and after the actual three-day new year festival everywhere I went around town seemed to have hired the local troupe of lion dancers. The really spectacular ones were like this one at the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club where I went to watch the New Year fireworks. With a backdrop of the city lights, the two guys inside this costume pranced along the poles to entertain the crowd like the true professional they are.
Canon 40D with Canon 10-22mm EFS lens at 19mm. ISO800 1/60 at f4.5 with built-in flash
Railay Beach, near Krabi in PhangNga Bay, Thailand, is famous for its dramatic and sheer limestone rocks and cliffs. Rockclimbers flock there from around the world to scale what to the untrained eye seems unscalable. I’ll post other shots later – they are also in the gallery – but for now, here’s a peaceful sunset from Railay Beach West. Even the long tail boat looks good – when their engines are running there are deafening!
I’m not sure why, but this shot taken in the Al Mahara restaurant in the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, is the most-viewed all all the shots I’ve posted on Red Bubble – 7313 views to date!
The image shows the centrepiece of the restaurant – a huge aquarium to mesmerise diners. The aquarium is lovingly run by a dedicated team who treat each of the 2500 fish in it and two adjacent aquariums as a friend. At the lower right of the shot, you can see a small shark on the gravel bed. She had just laid a couple of eggs on the coral that were a product of parthenogenesis, a form of asexual reproduction in which females produce eggs that develop without fertilization. This process is very rare among sharks and it is extremely rare for the young sharks, which are invariably female, to survive. Last year the aquarium had one that lived to three months but then died. As soon as he was aware of these new egg cases,the marine biologist in charge of the aquarium called one of his and the cases were retrieved, checked for viability and then kept separately to monitor their development.
The Burj Al Arab hotel is a seven star – yes seven – establishment that dominates the skyline along the coast of Dubai between the ‘Palm’ islands development and the even more exotic ‘World’ development – the latter still just a series of undeveloped islands of sand at present.
The hotel (burj is ‘tower’ in Arabic) is a magnificently impressive building from the outside. It soars up over 300 metres and is designed to resemble a sail. Inside it is no less impressive and leaves you standing there with your mouth open. If you stay there, you will develop a huge hole where your wallet used to be. All rooms are suites and the most modest of them costs around US$1000 per night. Interestingly, there are people who live there permanently.
There are more shots of the Burj in the Showcase, under ‘buildings’
Canon 40D with Canon 10-22mm EFS lens at 10mm at 28mm; ISO800 f3.5 1/15.
If you are ever in Florence, you have to visit Giotto’s Campanile, the bell tower that stands next to the Duomo, and climb to the top. Go early and beat the crowds – the narrow staircase is a two-way street and it gets busy.
This shot is taken from one level below the top, the highest level from which you can look down the inside of the building. The tower itself is stunning. It stands 84.7 metres high (277.9 feet), although after you’ve staggered up the 414 steps that take you all the way to the top, it seems higher. Every step is worth it – the view over the city from the top is fabulous. And it’s been standing there in all it’s magnificence since 1359, the year it was completed. Check it out on Wikipedia for more stats and information.
Canon 40D with Canon EFS 10-22mm lens at 10mm. ISO200 1/8 at f10
At several hundred metres across, Jenkins Pond, near Falmouth on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is more of a lake than a pond. Whatever the name, it’s a blissfully peaceful stretch of water that’s fun for kayaking and swimming. And at sunset, for fishing…
Canon 40D with Canon 70-200mm f4 IS lens at 70mm. ISO200 1/100 at f9
Welcome to the revamped dgcPhoto site, complete with a new theme and a new look.
I’ve been rather busy with other things for a while, so I thought a makeover was more than overdue. I hope you like it.
In many ways, the site is the same as before except that with the new theme it’s easier to navigate and more efficient to load. And the layout is far cleaner.
I’m currently using two cameras: the truly excellent Canon 90D I bought several months ago that is streets ahead of any other camera I’ve owned over the years, and a Canon 100D that I’ve had for a couple of years — a really lightweight little workhorse. I am also using my iPhone SE far more than I expected. The latest OS makes it an incredibly versatile camera.
Keep checking out the galleries; the old ones have been reinstalled and new ones are being added.
What were the ‘other things’?
Check out ‘My Novels’ here or in the menu above where a couple of clicks will take you to the world of ClarkeFiction and details of my seven edge-of-the-seat thriller novels and my wife Gail’s wonderful fully illustrated children’s books.
