Brian Q. Webb

Window on China / Xiao Ren Guo

Brian (online) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:28:14 +0000

Window on China is kind of a misnomer, depending on your perspective. What I mean is, I personally believe that Taiwan isn’t China. Considering that the majority of their exhibits are on Taiwan, the name is mostly incorrect. I say “mostly” because there are a couple of P.R.C. exhibits but there are also some Japanese, American, Indian, European, and so on. Interestingly, the Chinese-language name, Xiao Ren Guo, differs from the English name is much more appropriate and so that is the one I will use.

Little Person Country

No, that’s not a joke about the stature of Taiwanese people. I guess I should explain what Xiao Ren Guo is: It’s an amusement park half of which is filled with miniature “sets” of famous areas and landmarks throughout Taiwan and the rest of the world.

Thus the Chinese name that translates to ‘Little Person Country’.

A working miniature of Taiwan's high-speed rail (HSR)

As alluded to above, the park is split into two distinct areas. The first area is a series of open dioramas…miniature sets…of famous global landmarks. Within the Taiwan part of the area, it also includes local technological achievements, such as the high-speed rail, and other things critical to Formosa but not quite “landmark” in status, like Keelung harbor or the island-wide rail system.

CKS Airport in miniature

Keelung Harbor

Photo tip: Yes, these are miniatures but since the sets are blocked off macro lenses won’t do you any good. For close-ups, bring a telephoto. Also, they prune the trees often, meaning the sets are all in direct, bright and unshaded sunlight so bring ND filters if you’re looking for narrow DOF control.

Once you’ve walked through the ‘educational’ portion of the park you arrive at a small train station. Take a small train ride through some surreally-placed farmland and you will arrive at the second part of Xiao Ren Guo.

The entertainment part.

On the small train separating Xiao Ren Guo

Honestly, there’s not a lot for the parents but for the kids, this is where the real fun is. Yes there is a large water ride for adults, but for the kids there is an entire water park, a dozen kids-sized rides, an indoor area with carnival rides, and a Doremon show.

Arcade basketball with dad assisting.

Xiao Ren Guo is a county-apart from Taipei, but that doesn’t make it difficult to get to. From the northwest side of the city, there are direct buses (run by FeGo) that depart from the Main Station If you’re in the southeast corner of Taipei, head to the Sungshan Airport where you’ll find the same FeGo bus. Expect to be at Xiao Ren Guo all day.

More Photos

Waiting at the Doreamon ampitheater

Post-lunch nap.

Another view of mini-CKS

Another view of "Keelung"

A local father

My favorite photo of the day.

Let Google guide you:

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Streets Saturday Features for Week 33

Brian (online) — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 01:00:21 +0000

I spent a chunk of last week in the city of Hualien, located in central Taiwan. That being the case, none of the photos in this week’s series were taken in Taipei. I will be posting more images from out-of-town later on.

As always, comments are welcome.

Enjoy!

Until next time.

Street Photo Tip: Stick With an Interesting Subject

Brian (online) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:30:39 +0000

We see them a lot on the street, don’t we? Interesting subjects. Not just interesting subjects, but a continuing series of interesting moments and interactions between those interesting subjects. Normally, we take a quick photo, perhaps pausing a bit to get the right moment, and move on. How often do we stick with a particular subject looking for something more complex?

Okay, yeah…sounds kind of stalkish-creepy, I know.

That’s not my intention. Just like in the 5 Street Photography Tips: be respectful and not obnoxious.

So I was at the main train terminal in Hualien, central Taiwan when one of those perfect subjects appeared right next to me. It was a grandmother feeding fast noodles (that’s Cup ‘O Noodles to us “Western” folk) to her infant grandson.

This was my first photo, taken right after I noticed her. Honestly, as a street shot it’s okay. Even the eye contact (I was right next to her…a 6’2″ foreigner like me stands out like a sore thumb.) didn’t ruin the shot for me. But I knew that she had just started feeding her grandson and so there would be more opportunities to capture something better.

Here’s the 2nd photo, taken as she set the fast noodles down on the chair next to me. Still an okay image and the overall composition is definitely improved, but I could still do better with them.

Here’s the next photo, taken after she sat down across from me. I really, really don’t like this one. I was so focused on the infant that I didn’t pay attention to the edges and ended up getting a half-person on the left side of the frame. Yes, I know I can crop it in post, but I firmly believe that post-processing should be used to make a good photo better, not a mediocre photo okay. In other words, I don’t want to get into the habit of using Photoshop as an emergency bandaid. I prefer it as a complimentary tool. Plus, I also nipped off the grandmother’s toes and you can’t crop those in.

Now to the final photo and the one that made me feel that I had achieved what I was after. Not only is the grandmother interacting with her grandchild through feeding, but she is also interacting strongly with other components in the environment. Specifically, she is staring suspiciously at the back of a man standing near her. Overall, the composition feels well-balanced and there is some complexity to it.

What do you think is the best of the series? On which one would you have stopped and why?

An Exercise in Composition

Brian (online) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:00:17 +0000

We left Taipei by train at 7AM, arriving at the Hualien station at 10:00 and the Farglory hotel 30 minutes later. Once at the hotel, we discovered that we couldn’t check-in until after 3PM. My wife, her sister, and the kids unanimously decided to leave the bags with me and hop the next shuttle bus to Ocean Park, a nearby amusement park.

I unanimously decided to leave the bags with the front desk and head to the lounge area for a latte and light lunch. Two lattes and a sandwich later I looked down at my watch.

12:00. Crap.

Then I looked out the window and noticed a Romanesque marble column topped with a Cupid sculpture. Instinctively, my hand reached into my messenger bag and grabbed my camera. I realized that photographing it would render a static and cliché image, but it was an excuse to get up and maybe exercise my compositional “muscles” a little. Without occasional stretching and exercising, they risked atrophy. Plus, I had three hours to kill and shooting digital is “free”, right? Yes, the quotes are intentional.

So here’s the exercise: Find a static subject and come up with as many different photographic compositions as you can with it. Here’s what I got out of the statue.

Tools: Olympus Digital PEN E-P2, M.Zuiko 17/2.8, M.Zuiko 14-42/3.5-5.6, CV 90/3.5 Lanthar.

Yes, I know I cheated a little with the second-to-last image by using the “pinhole” art filter built-in to the camera, but the composition is different. Due to the bright sky I ended up purposefully overexposing by 2/3 to 1 full stop on all but the first image.

Give it a shot. Remember to pick an immobile subject so that you are forced to vary composition to vary your images. Feel free to link to your results in the comments below and above all, have fun!

5 Tips for Better Street Photography

Brian (online) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 01:00:08 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, Craig Ferguson invited me to write a guest post on his blog. It was something I felt somewhat honored to do since I both find him to be an excellent photographer and his blog to be incredibly useful. I’ve cobbled together this short pieceon street photography in the same vein as his “photo tip of the day”. It’s only five tips, but I hope that it’s informational enough to help newcomers interested in the genre, but not so pedestrian to be useless to more experienced photographers.

5. Use a fixed focal length lens. No, fixed lenses aren’t a quaint novelty. Generally speaking, they are faster and stop-for-stop sharper and cheaper then their zooming brethren. From the perspective of street photography, it lightens your load (see point 4) but more importantly it teaches you to pre-visualize your composition. Being able to know what you’re going to get before raising your camera to your eyes to shoot mitigates the need for you to make compositional adjustments and speeds up execution, an important skill in a pursuit where the moment must be captured, not created. In addition, using a fixed focal length lens allows you to make use of zone focusing (including hyperfocal technique) eliminating even more time from execution.

4. Lighten Up. This is partially accomplished by following tip number 5 and facilitates tip number 3. Pear down your gear into the bare essentials. The first part of this has already been covered. The second part would be to toss out your external flash. Considering that a key aspect of street photography is documenting the interaction between subjects and their environment, a flash would not only destroy the ambient lighting and natural mood of the environment, but would also interrupt that subject/environment relationship and eliminate any further opportunity to get candid, natural photos. Finally, dump the heavy accessories like battery/power/booster packs. You should be thinking portability and ease of access over power. On that note…

3. Always have a camera with you. The reasoning behind this should be a no-brainer and if you’ve followed the prior two tips, should be a non-issue. If all you have is a pro-level dSLR with a huge white (or black with a gold ring) f2.8 telezoom and permanently fixed battery pack, then you might want to invest in something smaller and more portable as a “back up” that you can carry in your messenger bag or coat pocket. There is a large selection of large sensor, interchangeable lens cameras on the market like the m4/3 offerings from Olympus and Panasonic, the Nex series from Sony, and the Ricoh GRX. For a little less money, there are also quite a few large sensor P&S offerings on the market, now too.

2. Be proud! Yes, it’s a bit cliché, but confidence is key. You will be treated according to how you behave. If you’re off at a distance, half hiding behind a wall and sniping away with a 400mm cannon, you will be treated with suspicion and possibly confronted (not to mention eliminating the environment component of street photography). If you walk around pretending to be a ninja, imagining that you won’t be seen not only are you self-delusional, but once again your behavior will be met with suspicion and you will probably be confronted. However, if you keep your camera out and photograph confidently (respectful confidence, not obnoxious confidence) chances are that not only will you be left alone but that you will be ignored. The people around you will assume that you are doing what you are supposed to be doing. Counter-intuitive perhaps, but true.

1. Leave your camera at home. Find a nice city street with loads of foot traffic and a comfortable place to sit. Now, grab a latte, relax, and people-watch. Practice reading people’s motions and interactions. Developing the ability to predict human behavior is key in being able to capture that decisive moment, much more so then something like shutter lag.

You can find the original article on Craig’s blog. He is

Have any additional street photography tips? Leave them in the comments below!