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celebrations CHINA Travel

Xīn nián kuài lè

The fireworks in Shanghai on Chinese New Year’s eve are the strangest I have ever seen. I took a walk over midnight around the streets and witnessed a frenzy of fireworks lit up by people in every corner of the city. It is not the usual big fireworks show I saw 2 years ago in Hong Kong during the same holiday. Here everyone lights up these big fireworks in front of their buildings and homes. The louder and bigger the better. The loud noise is meant to scare the bad spirits away and welcome the new year with its clean slate. It is just what everyone is doing that night and the city is taken over by it. Incredible to watch and be part of.

Categories
children Travel

Shanghai Sculpture Space

A very cool art destination in Shanghai is on 570 Huai Hai xi Lu in Puxi. It is a large complex of art galleries and a large and odd sculpture garden. Great place to watch buzzing little children interact with stiff statues and sculpture pieces. Very much worth going back to again and again.
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Travel

Reflections of a city

Nothing is more elegant than holiday windows in New York City. Beautiful attention to details, incredible richness of decoration, haunting drama in the windows of Bergdorfs this year. I was lucky to shoot this at sunset the buildings of 5th avenue were reflected in the window adding to he eeriness of the window.

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children Travel

A rockin’ attraction

I had no idea how attractive a bunch of rocks can be to children on a cold winter day in central park. We planned to go to the zoo, but after walking the crowded streets of the city, and suddenly arriving to the park, the children could not contain themselves, and went straight to the rocks. They/ we climbed for more than an hour and a half and never made it to the zoo, which is just as well.

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Travel

A random face, a human story

I always wonder about the story behind a face in the crowd. We pass so many every day and every once in a while one of them catches me and makes me want to know its story. This one is amazing to me, the careful braids, the painted eyebrows, the outlined lips, the sleepy eyes, the bright shirt, the swirly earrings,… she stood out in the crowd. It never fails to amaze me that there are about 6.7 billion people alive on this planet and each single one of them has a different face, different life, different mind, different soul, different spirit and a different set of fingerprints. Life is a genius puzzle begging to be investigated…
Categories
children Travel

Making a buck or a 100

It is genius, put on a random character costume, make a sign that says tips, hit the touristy streets of NYC and you are guaranteed to make a little fortune 🙂
This one gave me an opportunity at a cool photo of Lea getting an Elmo hug,

Categories
music Travel

“Music Inn” New York City

A quirky gem of a store on W4th street in the village. This store is around the corner from where I used to live on Jones Street. I remember 10 years ago you had to pay a dollar or 2 to even get in to the store. A very cool old man owns and runs the store which is packed full of musical instruments, antiques and odd objects from around the world. I went back there with a very dear friend and had a trip into an odd world of music, history, dust, strange feelings for about a half hour, during which we were taken through grungy corridors to look at a packed basement room filled with dusty world treasures and oddities.