“Cosplay” is a combination of the words “costume” and “play”. In Taipei, it’s an event held about twice a year at NTU in conjunction with a manga (Japanese comic books) exhibition called Fancy Frontier. During a cosplay event, people dress up as their favorite manga character and parade and pose for photographers. It began as a Japanese phenomenon but it’s caught on in many other places in the world, including Taiwan.
A girl poses while dressed in a "cosplay" costume at National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan.
Been busy lately. Haven’t been out shooting the fun personal projects that I’d like to be shooting, but hopefully I’ll have a little more time over the next few weeks. So, instead of a full sized blog post on a project, I offer you some random images from Taiwan that I’ve recently shot.
It’s quite a mish-mash this time, with photos like the peaceful one below, to skateboarding, to screaming heavy metal bands.
Two swastikas are carved into a boulder facing Taipei, Taiwan. The swastika is a symbol of peace in the Buddhist religion.
The Taipei Jianguo Jade and Flower Markets (建國假日玉花市) are a must-see for anyone in Taiwan. Located next to each other on Jianguo South Road, the two markets stretch for nearly a kilometer (1/2 a mile) under the elevated highway. They are only open on weekends and can make for a wonderful escape from Taipei’s often dreary rain. But even on a sunny day, the Jade and Flower Markets (along with the adjacent Daan Forest Park) make for a nice afternoon walk for tourists and locals alike.
A big, beautiful lily for sale at the Taipei Flower Market.
As a pre-opening event for the Taipei Deaflympics, a company called New Substance put on a fantastic performance with acrobats on cranes, a girl hanging from a helium balloon and colorful dancers in a strange bungee-box. It was very reminiscent of a Circ-De-Solei performance, but all for free!
I shot it in conjunction with Craig Ferguson who also blogged about it, so I’ll save myself some typing and let you read more details about it over on his site.
(Click “Read the rest of this entry” to see more pictures)
A pre-opening event for the Deaflympics in Taipei, Taiwan, New Substance put on a beautiful, dreamy, circus-like show. This girl is flew on a helium filled balloon high above the audience and would sometimes come down to touch their hands.
The Golden Grotto (黃金峽谷) is a beautiful slot canyon up a remote river valley near Hualian, Taiwan. Located a few kilometers south of the entrance to Taroko Gorge National Park (太魯閣國家公園) or a few Kilometers north of Hualian (花蓮), the entrance to the Pratan South River is in Pratan Village (aka SanJhan South River (三棧南溪) and SanJhan Village (三棧)).
Jumping off one of the waterfalls behind the Golden Grotto near Hualian, Taiwan.
There are currently three typhoons out in the Western Pacific. Two of them are forecasted to hit Taiwan next week. This has most people scared, but it has me excited. During the last typhoon, I went out with my buddy Ed to do some “Urban Skimboarding” and I’m hoping conditions will be good this week for some more photos and fun.
If you know me personally, or follow my blog, you probably know that some friends and I entered a contest called “The Best Trip in the World” put on by the Taiwan Tourism Bureau.
It’s a contest that gave the opportunity for selected groups of bloggers to travel Taiwan for 4 days and blog about it. We were one of the lucky groups selected and we completed our 4 day itinerary back in June. The final stage of the contest has arrived and we put our adventurers into a finale video, complete with a goofy music video at the end.
Remember that this was the first time any of us ever tried to put a video together and we had a blast! We highly recommend that everyone get their friends together, plan a trip (to Taiwan, of course!), and make a fun video!
Also have a look at my friends’ websites about Taiwan:
Photographing models is probably a lot of men’s dream. What most people don’t realize, is all the work that goes into those pretty pictures.
I recently had a shoot in with a model in Daan Park 大安公圓 in Taipei, Taiwan and would love to share them with you. Usually for big shoots like this, I like to try to tell you how we did the photos and all the technical information. But… I’m on vacation right now and just can’t wrap my head around it!
Like my last post, I’ll just tell you the basic-basics, and let you have a look at a pretty model from a fun afternoon of shooting.
I just-so-happened to get a lot of good skate photos in the last few days so I thought I’d share them in a “Random Skate Photos from Taiwan” post.
I’ll keep it quick with just some details of how I shot each one:
(Below) Nikon D700, Nikkor 50mm f/1.4, 1/25 sec at f/5.6, ISO 320, Nikon SB-24 on a lightstand approximately head high at camera left shooting straight down the wall (zoomed in to 85mm), Nikon SB-800 with a homemade grid sitting on a wall over head high to camera right (zoomed to 105mm).
Portraiture of all types can be the cornerstone of many photographers’ business. Sooner or later, in one way or another, someone will want you to take a portrait.
The difference between a good portrait and and a great portrait is in the details. Below I offer you the details to what might look like a simple location portrait, but was actually quite complicated to shoot. Lucky for me, the most unpredictable factor in many portrait sessions, the subject, was incredibly natural and easy to work with. Unfortunately, another important factor in a portrait, the light, wasn’t as cooperative.
It’s time for another edition of “Random Photographs from Taiwan.”
Whenever I have a handful of photos and no ideas for a specific post about them, they go into this category.
I guess it’s sort-of a weekly or bi-weekly gallery…
anywho…
This first one was taken on my recent four day trip to promote tourism in Taiwan. Most of the trip I was worried about getting video footage and not photos, but when whenever we had a few minutes to take some goofy pictures, we did.
Here, Phil from 老外的臺灣旅遊日記 (A travel blog in Chinese) jumps over me and my camera. It’s definitely a quick and dirty shot, and I hope to take more with more proper lighting in the future… On camera SB-800 shot TTL… 1/250 sec at f/22. 14-24mm at 14mm… And the lens was real dirty from the previous four-wheeling shoot.
It’s a annual social gathering of photographers in cities all over the world. Basically, photographers get together, go for a walk, then all meet up for dinner. Afterwards, you can upload your two best pictures for a chance to win some great prizes, but I think the main idea was just to go out and have some fun.
Craig Ferguson set it all up for us and I think it’s safe to say that we all had a great time.
Here’s a link to a Flickr page with some of the photos from the day and a handful of the photos that I shot:
Formosa Adventurers just got back from our 4 day trip to promote Taiwan.
We had an absolutely fantastic time and it will be one of those events in my life that I’ll always look back at and smile about.
In four days we went river tracing, white water rafting, 4-wheeling, paragliding, hot springing, local food eating, and we also learned a lot about the aboriginal culture here in Taiwan.
There’s nothing like a fun trip with your friends… you should plan one now and make some videos like we did… seriously!
These are the things we do on many weekends, but the fact that we were doing it to try to win a contest gave us a bit of extra “umpf” and made it really special.
You can learn a lot more by reading our official contest blog and watching the videos below. (If you’re short on time, day 1 and 3 are my favorites!)
Here’s the latest of my occasional offering of Taiwan photography. It’s just a few random photos that I took in the past few weeks.
But first, I have an announcement that I’m quite proud to make (so I’ll set aside the little dignity that I have and toot my own horn!): This month, I was lucky enough to be selected to have a photo in a special edition of National Geographic! I haven’t seen it in print yet, but here’s the online gallery (mine is the first one).
Enough about me, here’s my offering of random pictures from Taiwan:
The Formosa Adventurers got a write-up in today’s China Times! We haven’t been able to find an online version, but if you can read Chinese, pick one up and check out page A10! Woo Hoo!
Also, if you want to follow the Formosa Adventurers on Twitter, click the link below:
Taiwan’s tourism bureau believe so far that the team with the most special qualities and a lot of interest online is the Formosa Adventurers. Comprising of four guys from the UK and the USA, the Formosa Adventurers have had a lot of people watch their introductory video. They are planning a adventure sports and aboriginal culture-themed trip including river tracing and white-water rafting in Hualian, paragliding and visiting an aboriginal tribe in Taidong as well as experience Zhiben and Jinlun’s hot springs.
A combination of Taiwanese adventure and aboriginal culture that is very authentic Taiwanese. The team also write about Taiwan’s natural beauty and their own interesting travel experiences in their blogs which are written in English and Chinese.
“Formosa Adventurers” is the name of my and my friends’ group for Taiwan’s “Best Trip in the World – 世界最棒的旅遊” contest. It’s a contest set up by Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau to promote tourism in Taiwan.
The way the contest works is that everyone who wants to give it a try uploads a travel plan, video and group introduction to the website. From there, the contest organizers select 50 groups to complete their plans. They give them 28,000 NTD (about $800USD) to do it. After you finished with the 4 days, you upload a video and blog showing what you did. Then, one group wins the grand prize of 1 million NTD (about $30,000USD) and gets to travel in Taiwan for a month, blogging on their experiences.
Not a bad deal. And since this is what we do all the time anyway, it sounded perfect for us.
Our itinerary is (approximately) as follows:
(I’ll update this later, I don’t actually have the real one sitting in front of me now):
Day 1:
Train from Taipei to Hualien. River tracing through one of the beautiful canyons down there. Then that night, a visit to the night market.
Day 2:
White water rafting in The Rift Valley. Followed by a train ride to Taidong and a visit to the night market and a few other sites in the city.
Day 3:
Paragliding just north of Taidong. Then a visit to an aboriginal village for a cultural show and some Taiwanese Aboriginal Food.
Day 4:
Hiking through an ancient forest to a wild hot spring. Then, the train ride back to Taipei.
JiaLou Hu 加羅湖 is a mountain lake tucked high in one of Taiwan’s beautiful clouded forests. If you can get to the trail head, it’s a moderate three hour hike to the lake. On the way, you pass through some spectacular forests scattered with luscious green ferns, mossy vines, and a few 1,000 year old trees.
Three friends and I went there during the four day “Dragon Boat” holiday in late May. We did it in two days, but there is plenty more to explore in the area, and most of the people we met there were staying for the whole weekend.
I took this opportunity to give my first shot at a multi-media presentation. I would really, really like to get some critiques and feedback on what you think of it, so please feel free to comment below.
The multi-media presentation is above, but there are some still photographs and more information after the jump…
Elephant Mountain is the most popular of the mountains for a good reason. Being the closest to the city not only means easy access, but it means stunning views of Taipei, especially Taipei 101.
Tiger Mountain is the most northern of the Four Beasts Mountains and the easiest to get to. It’s not the easiest to find (that would be Elephant Mountain) but if you have transportation, it’s an easy walk along a well kept, level trail.
All along the trail are stunning views of Taipei 101, Taipei City, and Nangang.
"Taiwan's Tower of Babel" Viewed from Tiger Mountain.
One of my all time favorite hikes/photography locations in Taiwan is The Four Beasts Mountains (四獸山) area. Located within Taipei City limits, these trails are an easy escape from busy city life and have amazing panoramic views of Taipei City and Taipei 101.
The trail system includes Tiger (虎山), Elephant (象山), Leopard (豹山) and Lion (獅山) Mountains and is very easily reached from the Taipei MRT system. In fact, the base of Taipei 101 is only a 15 minute walk from the Elephant Mountain trail head.
If that’s not enough, many of the trails are lighted, 24 hours a day!
Being a photographer in Taiwan, I have my fair share of random pictures from my daily experiences. Here I present you with a few that I came across in the past few weeks:
Keelung, Taiwan 台灣基隆市 is an interesting port city about 30 km east of Taipei. I had the chance to visit it while on assignment for a magazine and though I’d share some of the highlights.
Even though it’s nicknamed the rainy port (雨港) and I’ve heard that it’s the second rainiest city in the world, I had an absolutely beautiful day there.
The very crowded Miaokou Night Market (廟口夜市) is full of local favorites.
Taiwan is covered in hot springs. There are famous ones like Beitou, Jinshan and Wulai, but there are also many “wild” ones. Generally the wild ones are a bit more off the beaten track, and are almost always quite difficult to get to. The biggest problem getting to them isn’t the drive or the hike, it’s finding good directions (in English or Chinese). But then again, I guess if they were easy to get to or had good directions, there would be more people there and they wouldn’t be as interesting.
I recently went on a ride down the Northern Cross Island Highway 北橫 with some friends. The main goal of this particular trip was to find a remote, wild hot spring called the Siling Hot Springs 四稜温泉.
Crystal clear water under a hot spring waterfall... What could be better?
If you're looking for a specific category that I might have written about, go down to "Categories". If you'd just like to look at some photographs or are interested in hiring me for an assignment, go to my portfolio website.
