When you get more used to something you sometimes start to lose this excitment. That sounds bad but sometimes that can be a very good thing. At the beginning I somehow tried to hard, I tried to take shots which were not there, at least not for my skills and the camera at that time.
There are guys out there who can take a shity as you can get camera, a situation which couldn't be worse and than walk out with a shot which just has something. I guess I will never be one of them but I am getting better, slowly and sometimes.

In my case losing the excitement just ment that I stoped forcing it, forcing to get a shot when there wasn't one. It wasn't a sudden thing, it was and still is a slow process. I still tend sometimes to force it, to not be patient enough and just wait for that moment, that one little fraction of life that you actually want to capture.

One of this moments happend to be right after a typhoon and right in my neighbourhood and I went there, just to have a look actually but of course with the camera with me, after all the excitment wasn't that much down yet.
I arrived at a near by reservoir, Shimen Reservoir to be precise and one of the few shots I am really happy with through out my short time running around with a DSLR just happend:



It's simply a shot which drags attention I guess, so I put it on the back of my current business card too and it is a conversation starter par excellence.

I took a couple of more shots there that day and somehow they all came out quite well. Another one which made it quite far was this one:



This shot was published in both, the domestic and the world wide newsletter of a company called Zetron, a subcompany of Kenwood, specialising in emergency operation centres. They happend to have done the one in Taipei that year. The circulation of that newsletters was just about 25000 but it was a nice start and getting contacted for images because somebody wanted to publish them was just a good feeling.

Here are some more shots from that moment of time, just was the right place to be and get good shots I guess.





That life buoy just felt so, how to say, out of place like trying to stop a 747 from takeoff with bare hands.




Most of the time they just open one overflow, that time both were fully open.




I also met that little girl, she was sitting on her fathers shoulders and seemed to be, well amazed. I guess it was rather the water fountains and not so much me and my camera.



I really start to enjoy this blog thingy, thinking of what to come up with next, which photos to use and actually say a bit more about them. It feels good and it is also great to go back in time and dig a bit into the past stuff to actually see it again, with maybe different eyes now than then.

It seems there are a couple of people actually also visiting the blog or at least my site here, not aure how many actually read anything or watch at least some photos (besides Craig that is), I will pretend that I am basically still do it just for myself but feel free to add comments, critics, suggestions for improvement or anything else for that matter.

And in case I don't come up with anything in the next 2 days, a Happy New Year to you all...

The end of the year is always a time of reflections I guess and after the last couple of weeks I take it on myself. Lots of things happend this year and by starting this blog I want to work all that a bit up even when some of the stuff I write about isn't even from this year.

In the last "Milestones" I focused purely on some shots which were kind of hoovering me one step higher. I know it's not a single shot which does that, more the way which leads to that shot but when that shot finally works out you suddenly realise it too, you kind of take it notice as you were too close to be able to see it.
It is almost like beeing yourself, not noticing anything till you pass a reflecting piece of shopping window and suddenly realised that things have changed.

However, to change things you need to get them started and keep them rolling. I said before that I started with my step into DSLR photography just about 1 1/2 years ago now. Not that I didn't liked to take pictures before but it wasn't really much more than having a point-and-shot camera with me and sometimes trying a bit and before that there was long nothing. Somewhere in highschool  we had a project week on the end of one year which we could decide what to do. I took on with photography and got for a few days a slide film camera, couple of rolls film, few colour filters and at least some basic instructions (like to hold the camera in the right direction...).
The cool thing there was that the guy we had for that 3 or 4 days showed us even the developing, we had a small darkroom in which we basically moved in short after starting. Was some good time but I kind of never took it on from there.

Now, back in 2007 I had some idea which was to show people that Taiwan actually was more than a dirty industrial factory zone. The idea was and still is to create a page really showing the beauty which there is, sometimes not even that hard to find.
That's why I started with www.discoverformos.com and for that I thought I need some photos as, well a photo tells more than a thousand words and a good photo might be worth a whole book.

So I got a DSLR with some basic setup and started. I started so hard that I actually didn't created anything or better say at least very much to really show. Well at that time I thought there were a couple of usefull shots but nothing great. I still had other work going on and was focusing on that of course.

Anyway, one day I finally went up to a place in the mountains in Taoyuan County, not too far from the house I lived at that time. It was a beautiful day, a typhoon was starting to move closer and that always means wonderfull clean air and bright skies. It proved to be the right thing to do and on that afternoon I really got a couple of shots working out for me, nothing especially great but at least a good stroke of decent shots which finally made me do this step into capturing this moments to make people look and forget everything else at least for a moment. A moment of enjoying and wondering.

Here are some of the shots I took, as I said, just some useable ones but at least you can imagine the beauty of Taiwan and especially its mountain reagions.



All this shots are taken at a place near the Dongyuanshan Forrest Recreation Area. This first one shows the lower mountains coverd with bamboo forrests. What the shot doesn't show is the wonderfull sight when this bamboo is starting to move in the wind, looking like waves going all through it. I really loved to watch that, just kind of calming you down and giving you peace.




The next shot shows one of this huge spiders which you can find here. She (Yes, its a she. The males are just a fraction of the size) is absolutley harmless but they reach about 8 cm (the body length) and I heard they can reach about 30 cm in diameter with the legs streched out. Webs can be more than 2 meters in diameter too.
She was peacfull sitting in her web and slowly moving with the wind.




That photo shows the clear sky and the sunset on the clouds. This kind of conditions are usually announcing typhoons moving in as the winds pick up and clean the air. You also can see some storm clouds crawling over the mountains in the lower left corner of the photo. The sun was setting on the right site over the ocean, not to see from that spot but the plains in that direction made it possible to get that flat sun light on the clouds.




The storm clouds moved in over the moutains and the low standing sun just perfeclty lighted them up into this golden colour. It was just breathtaking to watch.




The last shot was taken as the rain started on the hills away from the sun and I just saw the situation and tried to compose it with the rainbow right over the umbrella and the couple below. Some first small trials on actually moving myself into positon and creating the shot rather than just try to press the button when I see something I like without really taking this extra effort to make it somehow special.

Anyway, enought words again. I guess you get the point and the general idea why I started it. I went a long way since than but this were the first steps which kind of lightend the fire and led to the passion I have now for "taking pictures".

I know, more than 24h already since the last entry but sitting here, working on photos and waiting for uploads and renderings I may as well work up a bit of the past.
The statistics of visits also indicate that not much drop in here, so it's still kind of safe to write now and having not too many droping in. So better now than later.

The first shot I wrote about in this series was the Red Dragonfly. It took me about 2 months or so after buying the DSLR but I wasn't taking that much such back than either.
Number two which I want to write about today was just about two or three weeks later. The passing typhoon delayed the event a bit but it couldn't stop it.
Additionally to that I got my first kind of assignment, just some simple shots with a girl and some products of a friends company, waterprove MP3 and MP4 players and all that. I learned a lot out of it and it was a perfect start into that weekend with the charity event going on.

I think I took more than a thousand photos on that weekend, most of the products but lots from the event too. Anyway, let's first show the one which had the biggest impact on me from that weekend:



I just love the strenght of that shot, me standing in the middle of the river, trying not to ruin my equipment and having these kids drifting towards me. Between, these two kids are the kids of the victim the charity was held for and the rubber ducks were part of the event. People could buy them, numbers were put on them and the first 20 of them floating down the river for 30 min would win some prices.

It was one of the best weekends in my life, taking photos, getting paid for it (just the product shooting, not the charity part) and even more beeing part of something doing some good and even having lot's of fun with it. The jam session around a campfire which started all on Friday night made it even worse (I didn't go to sleep that day, just went right through the day) and meeting plenty of great people who I still have contact with. One crazy guy even become a good enought friend to later hire me for pool party shots and other stuff his company needed.

It was a great time and there are actually more ideas still in our heads, so maybe we make once even more out of it. Stay tuned for that, you might be surprised one day....

I guess I am kind of overdoing it at the moment but I somehow feel like to write and explain and well show my thoughts behind some shots.

Flickr is all good about posting shots but usually I just add a couple of words and that's it. I somehow enjoy the possibilaty to talk and write tons of words and go on and on about my photos here. Now we say a picture says more than thousand words, but also sometimes some pictures have stories behind them.

The last weeks I was on the search for the magical light, this mystical warm light in the early mornings or late afternoons. That kind of light which let you feel good, warm and holded. So even when actually not taking a good shot, it still feels kind of nice.

Now while searching for this side of the light I kind of sharpend my eyes also for the other one, the cold one. I kind of felt that when you have a already beautiful object it sometimes let you create a very different atmosphere.
Take this two shots I took from flowers. Both aren't that special, still shooting with no macro lenses and one was even with the kit lens I believe.





Both times the light isn't great, rather missing out or being really kind of cold, still the combination make this shots somehow special. At least for me.

The lack of light or the pure coldness reduced the images on the beauty of the objects, making them appear as this type of cold beauties, the "Nicole Kidmans" of flowers if you want,
Astonishing beautiful but somehow simply untouchable and out of reach.

The first shot was taken in a place above Beitou here in Taiwan next to a street and already in the shade. Most other flowers were over their prime already and had started to fall off, this one was one of the last still fighting the battle against time.

The second shot was taken in Kowloon Park in Hongkong. I came accross a field of flowers, basically all of them already faded in various stages just one seemed to be still not giving up. The area was already in the shade and althought it was a beautiful day you still could spot it was a December day, not really cold yet but as soon as you went out of the sun's warming rays you got that soft chill running up and down.
I kind of tried to get that feeling into that shot, it worked somehow, althought I am not sure if it was skill or pure luck.

I guess I have a lot of stuff to catch up so I try to do a series of posts where I focus on some of the "milestone shots" throughout the last 1 1/2 years.

This should help me to work on myself but also is a kind of working up the memories and taking a look back on the path I went with my photography through this time. After all, it is good to learn new things, try out and experiment but sometimes it's also good to turn back and have a look and reflect.

I don't want to just throw this pictures in here as they somehow grow on me through the time so I rather try to explain a bit (as far as I can remember) how it came to this shots and so on.

This first shot is one which was the first I really felt very happy about. Yes, I know, it's just a insect and it's not a perfect shot but at least it contained for th first time a bit of this "Wow-feeling" in one of my shots which I since than try to hunt down as often as possible.





I took this image up in the mountains around Pinglin in Taipei County. I went up to a place called Cloud9, a campground and adventure camp.
The reason was to get know to the location and shoot few pictures from there as some people tried to organise a charity event for a guy who had a terrible traffic accident here in Taiwan. I couldn't help much but I volunteered to take photos from the event to at least be somehow usefull.
I went up there about a week before the actuall event and the day happend to be one of this bright and beautiful clear days which you get here in Taiwan right before Typhoons are coming in. I instantly fell in love with the location, it reminded me so much on back home in Austria.
A river going through a valley, everywhere green and quite and peacefull.

I tried to catch this feeling and post it and forward the photos to tease people to go there, if not for charity but to enjoy them self.  I posted a set of this shots on my flickr account here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mingxia/sets/72157601499000976/

However, while going around and shooting with my camera I saw a red dragonfly and I tried to shoot it. Having no macro lens wasn't a help and the kit lens as well as the cheapish 75-300mm f/4-5.6 weren't making things better. The photographer did the rest to somehow not getting a shot for almost 45 min. I gave up and was concentrating on other stuff.

Some time later, while trying to shoot something else, one of this beauties just landed on a rope I happend to stand next to. The camera was more or less, set, the cheap tele zoom was mounted and I bascially just turned a bit and shot.
Lucky enought to get a good shot with real good details. Now, of course the lens didn't allow me a very close shot but with some cropping it still got quite good. Nothing for National Geographic yet, but ok to fascinate people and give them a few seconds of amezment.