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Taking pictures of people taking pictures can be interesting. And there was plenty of that here, as a team of four still professionals and two videographers were at the event. Catching snippets of what they were saying to each other revealed that for the first time I could understand some of the lingo, whereas a couple of years ago I would not have known what they were talking about.
I'm not including any captures of people in this blog (at least of their faces), as I don't have permission from the family to do so, but the ability to stay in the periphery helped in that area. Some of the best photos I happened to get were candids of the family while their attention was focused on the "real" photographers, looking not at my lense but at others.
By the time this was taken the shutter was at 1/79th of a second, as can be seen with the increased blur in the falling water.
Those fountains were flat irresistible...I just kept hovering around them going crazy with the camera.
This and the next posting were taken when it was getting a little darker outside, enabling shots with a lower shutter speed without blowing any highlights. Interestingly, this one was 1/194th of a second, but the water was moving fast enough to cause a little blur. Naturally, the effect became more pronounced as the evening wore on...which also required a steadier hand. I brought a tripod, but didn't use it much.
Lots of macro and zoomed-in depth-of-field opportunities with all the flowers around...
Had to catch that breeze...
The pool is even heart-shaped...everything about the mansion is set up for a nice wedding. The details are too small for a posting this size, but the overall ambiance is captured - minus the box that is next to the front row of chairs on the right (which could have easily been cloned out).
The guy that owns the place is a doctor, and very hands-on. Before too many people showed up he was out in this area helping change light bulbs so they'd be in place before it got dark.
...taken from the inside looking out the front door of the mansion.
Right behind me a guy had come in and was decorating the cake. It was mesmerizing to watch, seeing the steady hand doing all of the designs and curly things along the rims of each layer. Unfortunately it was right next to a window and I couldn't get very good exposure, so turned around and put the camera on the table to snap this one...
We arrived early so that I could get some shots like this without any people around...
The father of the bride took personal interest in the selection of candies for the big day...
...to back.
From front...
Moving on to the next thematic set of pictures, the series to be posted now is from a wedding shoot done this past year. We were invited anyway, and a friend asked if I would take some pictures while there. Sure...
Weddings are easy, with virtually everything set up for good pictures - from the location to the decorations to the dozens of photo ops created specifically for the photographer. Since I wasn't officially a photographer, I was happily left to roam and do peripheral shots of the scenery, plus some candids that most would not expect. Almost all of these postings are of the former category, every one taken with the 7000.
The setting was a mansion rented here in Houston for weddings and other occasions year-round. Really a good place to play...
We were driving along a city street in Taipei, looked out the window, and noticed that we happened to be alongside my sister-in-law with my son straddling the back. As stated in earlier postings, Andrew intensely dislikes having his picture taken, so I thought, "Well, may as well get a candid while he's not looking."
What I didn't realize at the time was that it was not my son, but rather the expression on my sister-in-law's face that made the shot.
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Driving the streets in Taiwan is an incredible experience; I've never seen such chaos and impudent disregard for traffic laws, even in Mexico. But I looked around and had to ask myself, "Where are the accidents?" In Houston a person can't go a day without seeing at least a fender-bender, or worse. Yet in the span of four visits during 20 years of marriage I never saw a single accident. So what gives?
In time I concluded that in Taiwan absolutely nobody expects anybody to follow the rules. Thus, everyone drives super-defensively. Conversely, in the U.S. people are largely expected to obey traffic laws, and when someone pulls a bonehead stunt it's a surprise that often leads to accidents...
This concludes the Taiwan series of postings.
This looks like a typical shot - one in which the subject is taken through something else, with a fair amount of depth of field applied to the background.
The reality is that this represents the "one that got away" (to use a fishing term). We were walking up on some trail when I spotted movement on the bridge. It was a lady wearing typical Chinese garb, carrying one of those colorful umbrellas as a shield from the sun. She was more than halfway across before I snapped to what was there, and by the time the camera was in place she was gone. This was the next best thing...
This is from the top of the hill; the city is at my back. The picture from the previous posting was taken from that little building on the upper-right, zoomed all the way in (in the 7000 that's 6x optical), then cropped to composition.
My brother-in-law is the one you see walking down the steps. One of the greatest things about this day was that I had to rely almost entirely on my Chinese to get by...English was not an option, as my wife did not accompany us on this particular jaunt.
Amazingly, within the city limits of Taipei there is a beautiful national park - a wilderness with hills to climb and hikeways to trod. No one would know it from here, but from the crest of this hill, looking down, all you see is miles of miles of cityscape through a dense cloud of smog.
The next three postings will be more scenes from this park...
I'm not sure exactly where in Taipei it is, but there's some fancy mall that has a ferris wheel. This was taken on top of that ride.
My brother-in-law is the proverbial Chinese laundry entrepreneur. His establishment/home in Taipei is accessible by going down a long walk that is lined with motorcycles on one side, and the bicycles you see here on the other...
This is me and one of my photographer buddies when we get old...
This is what people think of as typically Chinese, taken in a museum complex right in the middle of Taipei. There is a person sitting in the pagoda.
The next few postings were taken in this same complex...
It was windy the day this was taken; after swaying with these things for a half dozen shots finally got this one.
This is probably the most serendipitous photo I've ever taken. We were walking down a mountain path when my daughter backed away from the edge and shouted, "There's a bee!" As a younger girl she had a phobia about bees.
In reaction to her fear - which got on my nerves - I said to her, "Well, then, we must take a picture" in a mock suggestion that the moment must be documented. I swung the camera around and just snapped, without even framing a shot or taking care that the focus was right...or even seeing the "bee" for that matter!
It was only after seeing the shot in the viewfinder that I notice that the "bee" (actually a yellow jacket, I think) happened to be in the shot, and also happened to be in focus. After arriving home I printed an 8x10 and got some positive comments, but will always remember that it was pure luck that things fell into place...
These lizards were everywhere, and they let you get pretty close before darting away. I zoomed in from a distance, which made depth of field more/less automatic.
