As Seen by TV

@ Sanjiagang Beach Resort, Pudong, Shanghai

 

* it wasn’t full moon

EXPOdition Pt. II
August 8, 2010 – 390,700 visitors

Thanks to the Israeli Pavilion, we got VIP tickets to the pavilions of Israel, Japan, France, and Spain. I also dropped by Finland and Belgium, and take it from me, you can skip the French one, unless you really need to see more pictures of Paris and have never seen a Citroën. Japan was interesting, you certainly don’t see a robot playing a violin every day. The Spain pavilion is a definite success, the wicker building, great cave-like entrance and then the infamous gigantic moving baby, something I will not forget any time soon.

Also pictured are the pavilions of Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and of course China. In my Danish Pavilion image, if you squint, you can see the Little Mermaid statue which was taken outside of Denmark for the very first time (unless you count all the times it has been stolen and vandalized; of which including 4 decapitations, an amputated arm, numerous paintings, and the addition of a dildo).

 

Those final images are from inside the Smurftastic Belgium Pavilion, another one worth visiting (without my bias). The Expo Axis (the massive tent construction in the images before the Smurf invasion) is the largest membrane construction in the world, whatever that means.

You will also notice all the water being sprayed in the air… temperatures hit 40C that day.

View my post and all the imagery from EXPOdition Pt. I.

A stroll through the streets of Old Shanghai…

 

Snapped a couple shots on the way to Carrefour the other night…  all around Zhaojiabang Lu.

 

A one hour drive east of Shanghai (map) is Zhouzhuang, the “Venice of the East” (although they call a hand-full of other towns the same thing).  So, now I’ve been to the Venice of the East, the Venice of the North (Bruges, Belgium), the other Venice of the North (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Venice Beach (California), and of course, the Venice.

Last weekend, my company had a team-building workshop near this picturesque ancient town (over two and half centuries worth), so the night before I decided to head into the old town and snap some flix…

 

Day’s 3+4 of shooting with the 12-24mm Sigma lens… first two are near my office building (left, in picture #2), while the others were taken around Jing’An Park.

Boom.

 

And yes, there is a semi-naked dude chilling in the subway entrance in that last image… keep in mind, it has been +35C all week (right now it’s 39C)!

I got the chance to borrow an absolutely wicked lens from a friend for the past week (Roy Frankland; check out his work), these are shots from days 1-2.  It is a Sigma 12-24mm… mix that with a Canon 5D MkII and this is what you get.

 

Qibao has a history dating back to the 10th century, when it was just a small water-town.  Although now completely swallowed up by the metropolis that is Shanghai (and easily reachable via metro line 9), this quaint little “town” has all the views one would expect of the “real China“.  Temperatures reached 38C that night but didn’t deter me to check it out (thanks to The Great Time Out Shanghai Treasure Hunt).