Many Faces of China: Decline of Communism

Double Edged Sword: The decline in influence of the Communist Party in the lives of Chinese is not without its drawbacks. Basic health and welfare benefits are scarcer than in previous years. Regional and local Communist Party offices lack central funding and Party corruption is rampant in smaller towns and villages. Despite China’s rise to global prominence, the new era of “Leninist Corporatization” has yet to “trickle down” to the 80 percent of Chinese who still live as peasants. With diminishing opportunity in their local villages, many Chinese have abandoned their agricultural “roots” and migrated toward China’s industrial regions in search of better paying jobs.

Many Faces of China: The Market

Nice Buns! Hangzhou prides itself as the “Venice of China”. Travel by boat through a series of canals lead us to a narrow winding local street market at dusk. Fresh steamed pork buns were a big hit with the locals.

Many Faces of China: Kids

China’s emergence from decades of Communist “cold storage” is obvious everywhere. The decentralization of China’s Communist Party has significantly diminished its influence on the daily activities of Chinese citizens. The social repression of Mao’s Cultural Revolution is a distant memory. Chinese are “out and about”, traveling freely and every public space is crowded. My greatest challenge was to filter out the massive visual “noise” of these busy urban environments. This series of photographs represents my effort to capture images that separate the individual from the crowd and find the rare moment of quiet among the cacophony of modern Chinese life.

China’s prohibition regarding families having more than one child, established in 1979, has resulted in a huge impact on Chinese families. A generation of Chinese has no sibling. These solitary children have no aunts, uncles or first cousins. Childhood friends substitute for brothers and sisters. Babies are treated like treasured objects.

Yellowstone: Telephoto Landscape

Yesterday's post, mentioned the scarcity of foreground elements for photographers in the Yellowstone. An alternative method of capturing winter images is to employ telephoto lenses to isolate a particularly interesting portion of a landscape. Landscapes captured with telephoto lenses tend to have a feeling of compressed depth, allowing the photographer to "stack" different elements on top of each other. This tree was coated with white ice crystals or hoarfrost. Steam from an adjacent hot spring moved past the tree, partially obscuring it, creating mystery and adding interest in the image.

Yellowstone in Winter

Yellowstone National Park is an amazing place, but the Winter is extra-special. Access to the Park is limited to Snowcoaches and snowmobiles, restricting the usual flow of traffic to a bare minimum. The temperature during our visit ranged from 30 below to 30 degrees Farenheit.
Landscape photography in Yellowstone is especially challenging due to the relative scarcity of foreground elements. There is no shortage of snow and sky to form midgrounds and backgrounds, but a well composed photograph must contain some foreground element to convey a sense of depth. Capture of the dramatic and expansive winter skies of Yellowstone are enhanced through the use of the Nikon 16mm Fisheye lens and with Black and White digital conversion with Nik Silver Efex Pro.

Glacier Point Lenticular Clouds: Yosemite, CA

On the final day before the winter closure of the Glacier Point Road, we attempted to capture late afternoon images of what promised to be a gigantic moonrise over Half Dome. The moon never rose, but the appearance of a huge band of lenticular clouds created more drama than we ever anticipated.
Formed by the condensation of airborne moisture in standing waves of air on the downwind side of a mountain, these lens shaped clouds have frequently been mistaken for UFO's. Power aircraft avoid lenticular clouds due to the severe rotor turbulence that they generate, but glider planes seek out the "wavelift" created by these clouds. The rising air mass adjacent to these clouds enables gliders to soar to extremely high altitudes.

Alpha Male: Quepos, Costa Rica

This Alpha Male was the "advance scout" for a troop of about 20 White Faced monkeys that would migrate past our house each morning. The group would not advance until the Alpha had given the "all clear" signal. This particular male was very direct in his scrutiny of us and seemed entirely displeased that we failed to share our Pineapple with him.
Alpha males have elaborate and socially complex relationships with subordinate males in their troops, setting up pseudocoalitions designed to break up pairs of affiliating males. The Alpha threatens one and simultaneously solicits aid from the other, thus preempting any chance of dominance emerging in these subordinates. The Alpha is also quite fickle in his preference for subordinates and is constantly shifting his favor from one to another.
Photo: Nikon D3, 200-400 f4 lens

White Faced Monkeys (Part 2): Social Grooming

All animals regularly clean themselves to keep their fur, feathers, scales, or other skin coverings in good condition. This activity is known as personal grooming, preening, or auto-grooming and serves as a form of hygiene. Many social animals groom each other, an activity known as social grooming or mutual grooming. Social grooming also takes the form of stroking, scratching, and massaging. Primates provide perhaps the best example of this activity. Primatologists have called grooming the "social cement" of the primate world. The trust and bonding it builds is critical to group cooperation. Among primates, social grooming pays an important role in establishing and maintaining alliances and dominance hierarchies for building coalitions, for reconciliation after conflicts, and is a resource that is exchanged for other resources like food and sex.

White Faced Monkeys: Quepos, Costa Rica (Part 1)

Costa Rica is home to a multitude of monkeys, including Squirrrel monkeys, Howler monkeys and the White Face or Capuchin monkey. These monkeys are named for their resemblance to the Capuchin Friars, an offshoot from the Franciscans. They wore brown robes with large hoods covering their heads, revealing only their pale faces . Like most New World monkeys, capuchins are diurnal (active during the daylight and resting at night) and arboreal (spending most of their time in the dense jungle canopy of Costa Rica. With the exception of a midday nap, they spend their entire day searching for food. At night they sleep in the trees, wedged between branches. Capuchins live together in groups of 6 to 40 members. These groups consist of related females and their offspring, as well as several males. Usually groups are dominated by a single male, who has primary rights to mate with the females of the group.

Convict Lake, California

Convict Lake is located just south of Mammoth Lakes and has a fantastic view of Mount Morrison. Convict Lake marks the location where in 1871, a group of Carson City Prison escapees killed Sheriff Robert Morrison. The expansive view that this location affords is perfect for the ultrawide angle perspective of the Nikon 16mm fisheye lens. This photo was taken by placing the camera on the frozen lake.

Moonrise over the Inyo Mountains

Driving South on Highway 395 presents a multitude of challenges. Avoidance of the "crazies" heading toward Los Angeles after a weekend in Mammoth is hard enough, but the snowclad Eastern Sierra to the West and the fantastically lit Inyo Range to the East is an unbearable distraction for the driving photographer. The Eastern Sierra rises quite steeply from the floor of the Owens Valley. This contrasts sharply with the slope of Western Sierra, where low foothills gradually give rise to high peaks. This gorgeous moonrise through a narrow break in the cloudcover at sunset was a rare treat.

Alabama Hills

The Eastern Slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains has incredible photographic diversity. The Alabama Hills, located just East of Lone Pine, California has served as a location more the filmimg of 150 movies, including Tom Mix Series, Gunga Din, Tremors, Star Trek Generations and the Flintstones. The juxtaposition of potato shaped spheroidally weathered Granite, jagged volcanic rock and the snow covered Sierra Nevada Mountains as a background, forms the substrate for fantastic landscape images.