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Photography

Day Two Hundred Twenty Five, Septmeber 4, 2011

walking tall

When you live like me in a city like Shanghai, a city of 18+ million people, something strange starts to happen to you, you start walking the city walk. This used to happen to me also when I lived in New York City. What I mean by the city walk is walking a bit like a zombie, not seeing people, not looking into their faces, not really acknowledging them. It is a very unfortunate result of city living. But when you carry your camera around all day, you sometimes see, really see people, your eyes meet, you connect to them for a moment or two, a human connection, and you stop for a second to have awe and fascination, like I did today. I saw a worker at the end of his work day walking tall, walking proud, walking happy and walking alive. I was very glad I ‘saw’ him.

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Photography

Day One Hundred Sixteen, July 26, 2011

soaring steel

Shanghai, a city of soaring steel, a Gotham of Asia, a place that races to stamp it’s place in the modern world as a mighty metropolis and uses every resource it has to fulfill its visions of greatness. Every day of the week, of moment of the day and night, workers toil to add more and more height to the skyline of the city. These magnificent architectural creations are a wonder to behold, and they look different depending where you stand. Today, I was standing in between the twin towers of the IFC tower and the HSBC bank making the Jin Mao builiding and SWFC (nicknamed the bottle opener) look shorter in the distance.

Yes, I do miss the wild flowers living in Shanghai…

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Photography

Day Eighty, April 12, 2011

looking differently

Familiarity is our biggest enemy in life isn’t it? It creates the illusion that we already know something, that we understand it. But life is not really like that. There are so many ways to look at something, anything. There are so many levels to things, to truths, to people, to thoughts, that we will never really stop searching if we put aside our familiarity.

This building in Shanghai is fascinating: It was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, in such a way that from each place you stand it looks completely different, and I mean completely! Every time I see it I marvel at these simple truths. Nothing is as it seems…