My favorite piano bar

The pictures below are from my favorite little hangout spot in GZ.  Cheap beer, nightly live music and comfortable couches and homey chairs and lighting.  What more could you need on a Friday night?

“A valiant effort”

That’s what my friend, T, named the items in the photo below.  Strategically-placed fruits and veggies amplify the glory that results when a new-found excitement for learning to cook meets a newly-found wet market just a stone’s throw from a kitchen with actual space and amenities (I will soon post pictures of my outrageously small kitchen to show people what I personally have to work with in this country that doesn’t value kitchen space).

Waaaayyyy to go, T!  I’m extremely proud.

Header photos

If you’ve poked around on the site, you’ve noticed by now that several photos provide the header on whatever page you happen to be looking at within the site.  There are, so far, 38 pictures that randomly cycle up there, and I intend to update that number as I continue to take photos with my old film cameras and my new point-and-shoot digital camera.

For a full picture of the different headers on this page, I’ve added this post with some descriptions.  Not all of the pictures are mine, which is my main reason for calling attention to them to begin with.  Some of them were taken by from friend Ryan B., who also has a few vintage cameras, including a great little lomo and a very classic Minolta, and well as my friend Larry N. on his Kodak Fun Share digital camera.

If you click on any of the photos, you can see a larger version.

The following were taken by Ryan B. on his vintage Minolta film camera:

• Fishing (Lamma Island, Hong Kong)
• Monk (Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia)
• Angkor Wat (Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia)
• Sunset over the Mekong (Don Det, Laos)
• Mr. Coffee (Paksong, Laos)
• Chicken leg (Bangkok, Thailand)
• Cambodian street food (Siem Reap, Cambodia)
• Waterfall (Bolivan Plateau, Laos)
• Weekend Market meals (Bangkok, Thailand)
• Save me! (Bolivan Plateau, Laos)
• Spices (Bangkok, Thailand)
• Graffiti in Thailand (Bangkok, Thailand)
• Traveling companions (Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia) (This one was actually taken by a tuk tuk driver.)

The following were taken by me on my Asahi Pentax film camera:

• Light graffiti over Wu Yan Xin Cheng (Guangzhou, China)
• Tex-Mex feast (San Antonio, Texas, USA)
• Lime trees in Texas (Austin, Texas, USA)
• Just a number (Guangzhou, China)
• Pathway in paradise (Ko Samet, Thailand)
• Thai food (Ko Samet, Thailand)
• Cross Roads Tavern (Cat Spring, Texas, USA)
• Recreational activities (Guangzhou, China)
• Fresh out of the oven (Lamma Island, Hong Kong)
• Pier family kitchen (Bellville, Texas, USA)
• Hong Kong street (Kowloon, Hong Kong)
• Weather rock (Bellville, Texas, USA)
• Yawning (Lamma Island, Hong Kong)
• Texas trees (Austin, Texas, USA)
• Bangkok bus (Bangkok, Thailand)
• Vintage cars (La Grange, Texas, USA)
• Fayetteville, Texas (Fayetteville, Texas, USA)
• Banana pancakes (Ko Samet, Thailand)
• High-tops on sand (Lamma Island, Hong Kong)
• Kowloon building (Kowloon, Hong Kong)
• Inside a Hong Kong minibus (New Territories, Hong Kong)
• Sunset boy (Hong Kong)
• Lamma Island ferry pier (Lamma Island, Hong Kong)

The following were taken by me on a Canon Powershot digital camera:

• Peppers and bugs (Dali, Yunnan, China)

The following were taken by my friend Larry Nodarse on a Kodak Fun Share digital camera:

• People’s Rock ‘n Roll of China (Guangzhou, China)

Let there be light!

My aunt came over yesterday and figured out how to attach an old Minolta flash to my Asahi Pentax AND get it to actually flash when I snap a picture (something I had failed to do myself after multiple attempts and subsequently given up on).  She’s a camera whiz, and her first camera – the one that made her fall in love with photography – was the exact same Japanese camera, given to her by her now husband (my uncle) at the age 17.  Lucky me!

Here are new pictures of my baby.

New pictures from Thailand and Texas

Some favorite photos

I took these with the Pentax and Peafowl.  They are the best ones I’ve taken to date.  I used a variety of film, from regular 200-ISO Kodak or Fujifilm, to very nice, special-effect-inducing Lomography film.

I took all of the below pictures in Hong Kong, Guangzhou or Foshan.

Peafowl

Last weekend, I bought another vintage camera.  I’ve taken one roll with it that I still need to develop.  This one was in an antiques market near the Chen Clan Academy old village and museum in Guangzhou.  A man who has old swords and rings and trinket boxes had two cameras just sitting on his shelves, hanging out like hidden gems.  He had a Peafowl, a Chinese-made camera, and a functioning Seagull, the kind you look down into to see an image.  I paid a foreigner’s price for the Peafowl, but after bargaining, paid almost half of what I paid for my Asahi Pentax. 

The best part of the Peafowl, which has an original lens, is a yellow lens cover to give an old-looking tint to photos.  The camera has just enough decay that the pictures will come out with little spots here and there, making them look especially old.  I had only a very nice roll of 800-ISO film on-hand but used it anyway.  The lens’ ability to focus is not as sharp as my Pentax’s, but I’ll get a chance to see very soon what it can do!

Here’s another stock image of the camera I bought.  I’ll put up a link to a Photobucket album of the images it took as soon as I get them developed.

Asahi Pentax

It’s very fitting that my favorite beer available in China is Asahi, a Japanese beer.  A late-comer to acquiring a taste for beer, I have learned to love the beverage, and I especially love Asahi.  So, when I bought an old second-hand camera a while back, I was happy to find one called an Asahi Pentax.

The camera I found in the second-hand electronics market here in Guangzhou was an amazing find.  A few vendors have stalls filled with nothing but old cameras…everything from Polaroids to functioning old Seagulls and more.  A friend of mine has a few old cameras and got me interested in the hobby.  Having taken my fair share of photographs in high school in yearbook class, I quickly remembered a latent love of capturing the unique, the interesting, the bizarre.

My Pentax has a very nice lens, made who knows when.  It seems older than the body, which is the original Spotmatic model (which Wikipedia says dates back to 1964).  It takes regular 35-mm film, and I’ve had 4 rolls developed so far (with more on the way).  I’m not posting any of them on this site because it’s too slow and cumbersome, but below is a link to my Photobucket site with an album containing the best of the first four rolls.  I’m still learning a lot about aperature, ISO, and shutter speed.  I have no ability to zoom or flash, but using natural lighting and the ability to focus crisply on objects in the foreground or background, I’ve been able to play around and take a few photos that show the side of Guangzhou I find most appealing.

Here’s a stock photo from the web of my camera.  I don’t have the same lens; I think mine’s much newer model.