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Tibet is now more accessible than ever! The Chinese government just relaxed the visa rules from “nearly impossible” to “possible,” and there are trains that leave from Shanghai (48hours), Beijing, and most all big cities in China. Pack your bags and get there quickly before they close up shop again.
This part of the Great Wall of China is one of the two sections that are just outside of Beijing.  Due to their close proximity, thousands of people go those places every day, making it a total tourist trap.  The cherry on top was overcast blah clouds.  So, a total waste of time for any real photographer…right?  Wrong.  That mentality is outdated by about eight years.  What you can do now is focus 100% on composition, and then take it to post processing and create your piece of art.  I chose to use this powerful brunt paper texture to give it the feel that you are looking at how the wall was a thousand years ago in its full glory. My suggestion for creating light and mood in post processing are: 1.  Textures (pictured below) 2.  Fake Sunsets (I’ll be releasing a tutorial soon on that with 100 downloadable sunsets) 3.  Photoshop some Fog and Light Beams in (I use Topaz Labs for the Fog and Photoshop>Filter>Render>Clouds coupled with Photoshop>Filter>Blur>Gaussian Zoom set to soft light) 3.  Lightroom (the two biggest secrets by far are the temperature slider under Basic and the vignette slider under Effects) 5.  HDR (using photomatix of course) 6.  Topaz Labs (I especially love the Adjust and Lens Effects plug-ins)
Welcome back to the Shire. Tokien refers to this place as the Hill throughout his novels. This particular version of the Hill is courtesy of Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies. He built this whole set in ‘Hobbiton’ on a farm outside of the town Matamata in the North Island of New Zealand. As you can see, it is beautiful.
A great technique to evoke a yesteryear / old look to any photo is to make it a sepia toned black and white.  For me, the trick is to match the content of your photo to the mood you want to evoke.  The content of this photo = traditional culture.  Sepia tone = yesteryear / old.  Combine the two, and the result is a powerful photo.
This is my take on this famous mausoleum.  What I was going for was something that looked like a cityscape at first glance.  And then as you look closer, you start to pick out details and see that it is in fact not a cityscape but a mausoleum.  I like pictures that are tricky like that.
Why fight the grain?  Nowadays, everyone wants to reduce noise (grain).  I do agree that sharp and crisp pictures are awesome.  But sometimes, for effect, nothing beats grain. I added grain to this image (if you look below you can see the image on the left is without grain and the one on the right is with grain…zoom in to compare the two yourself).  It helps bring an ancient mood to the image. And speaking of the image, I think I have seen the trailer to Upside Down so much that I decided to not crop this image at all.  For whatever reason, the tree coming in from the top doubly mirrors the tree in the water, double tricking my brain into being confused about what side is up.
To really bring the wailing wall to the a fine art level, I brought this picture into Adobe Lightroom to convert it a dark, crisp, shadowy, vignette of itself.  Why do all this?  Because I wanted to use lighting to add drama to the scene.  
I love these café break shots.  Is this not a major part of everyone’s travel?  You’ve been walking around seeing sights, taking in museums...experiencing culture—now you need to relax.  You find a nice café with a view, and you soak it in. My most difficult decision with this shot was deciding between perfect symmetry (so cropping more on the right) or leaving it the way it is with the man leading the viewer's eye into the photo. I obviously chose the later, because I want the viewer to start at the man, go to the lady, and then settle on this beautiful sunset scene of St Peters.
This is a lovely church with multiple levels.  While I was taking this picture, a service was being held down in the catacomb-like basement.  I set the camera up on the ground to take this picture, giving the viewer the same perspective that prostrated worshipper would have.
Tibet is now more accessible than ever! The Chinese government just relaxed the visa rules from “nearly impossible” to “possible,” and there are trains that leave from Shanghai (48hours), Beijing, and most all big cities in China. Pack your bags and get there quickly before they close up shop again.
Tibet is now more accessible than ever! The Chinese government just relaxed the visa rules from “nearly impossible” to “possible,” and there are trains that leave from Shanghai (48hours), Beijing, and most all big cities in China. Pack your bags and get there quickly before they close up shop again.
Tibet is now more accessible than ever! The Chinese government just relaxed the visa rules from “nearly impossible” to “possible,” and there are trains that leave from Shanghai (48hours), Beijing, and most all big cities in China. Pack your bags and get there quickly before they close up shop again.
See photo in original gallery.
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