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2015年6月29日 星期一

On top of Hong Kong again (再度踏在香港之上)

It's been quite a while since I went up to the Peak. It's no fun being jostled and elbowed by the impatient horde from up North.

 
 
Now that their big vacation is over, perhaps one could perhaps take a peep around the peak again? I was lucky. Not very many of them around on the lookout tower.

2015年6月28日 星期日

Sherbets of Summer from Lio Kuoman (廖國敏的夏日雪寶)

It's rare to see a Southern Chinese face directing the HKPO nowadays. But last night, it happened. We had Lio Kuoman, (廖國敏) a Macanese who first trained at HKAPA and then went on to America and has now conducted orchestras in Philadelphia, Ottawa, Seoul, Copenhagen, Taipei and Macau. As part of the Denim Classics, he offered us some summer sherbets, a rich cocktail mix of pieces from Copland, Mozart, Pachabel, Barber, Tchaikovsky, Mascagni and Glazunov spanning three centuries and an equal number of continents.

The concert began with a short explosion of brass: Aaron Copland (1900-1990) 's Fanfare for the Common Man. It continued with another surprise: with Mozart (1756-1791)'s Rondo in A Major K 386 with the precocious 12-year-old Johnson Li (李仲欣) at the keyboard, who played with a kind of skill beyond his years. Then it switched further back in time with Johann Pachabel'(1653-1706)'s Canon in D major.  It fast forwarded to a work by another America composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981): his Adagio for Strings., the only slow and sad piece of the evening. Then it flew half around the globe and switch to a completely different mood again. This time, it's Russia's Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) 's tempestuous Polonaise from his opera Eugene Onegrin from which it calmed down with Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945)'s Intermezzo from his most popular opera Cavalleria Rusticana before finally fading off into the golden joy of a Russian season of plenty with Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936)'s Autumn from his ballet The Seasons. All the pieces were easy listening and have been favourites of the common folks but they were all conducted with verve by Lio, who gave them all a kind of lively festiveness seldom heard from the HKPO. And as desserts, he gave us more fireworks in the form of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and the concert ended with the audience clapping their hands in rhythm with Johan Strauss Sr.'s Radetsky March, as if we had our own Vienna New Year Concert.

It was a most relaxing evening. It was so not only for us but I believe for the HKPO members and its guest conductor as well.  Everybody had fun.

2015年6月27日 星期六

Saturday Fun (星期六趣味)

The 20th and 21st centuries are different from all other centuries. What do I mean? Previously people appear to know and accept that we can't be happy all of the time. Now we we are daily confronted by people who are obsessed with "feeling good" all of the time, people who think of ordinary unhappiness as a disease or a disorder which somehow must be be kicked out from their lives in the shortest possible span of time and if they are not able to stay in a permanently "happy" condition, which they think is something they are naturally "entitled to" and in America, even something "guaranteed" by their Constitution, they seek the advice and assistance of so-called "life coaches" or therapists and counselors or in some cases, of mood lifting drugs, with or without a doctor's prescription. The shelves of our bookstores are lined with thousands of titles on "how to..." achieve happiness on all kinds of area of personal lives and those who claim to have special insights into the workings of human emotion will probably have to face the persistent headaches of trying to sort out their appointment book for counseling sessions or workshops. People do say the most incredible things during such "life coaching" sessions.The following are some real life examples:

1. On Conflict Resolution
I don't want to solve my conflict - I want revenge!


2. On IQ Test
I took an intelligence test and the results were negative.

3. On Making Decisions
I don't know whether to have a baby or to get a dog.

4. On Dating

I spent a lot of money on opera, dinner and drinks - and she didn't invite me home.
My son doesn't know that his girlfriend is a bad choice. She's the exact opposite of me.

5. On Admitting Mistakes
I am willing to make mistakes if someone else is willing to learn from them.
I am willing to make mistakes if someone else is willing to learn from them

6. On Problem Solving
A good solution to my problem would be someone I can blame.

7. On making changes in one's life

I don't want to change anything - I just want to complain


8. On being Unique

Of course I'm unique - just like everyone else.

9. On Using the one's Imagination

I do use my imagination - I'm really suspicious.

10. On Relaxing
When I want to relax I think about ways I can get revenge.

11. On Mate Relationships
Women should say "Yes" or "No" quickly to save unnecessary effort.

12. On taking Responsibility
I do take responsibility for my actions, when they are not someone else's fault.

13. On Building up one's Personality
I do accept my personality problems - without them I would have no personality.

14. On being Nice to Others
First I say nice things about myself, then, I do nice things for myself, then I find someone to buy nice things for me.

15. On Having Excessive Passive Enjoyment
I do NOT sit in my living room watching TV all day. I also have a TV in my bedroom.

16.  On trying to find out where it went wrong
Who do I blame for my problems? ... I can always find someone to blame!

17. On matrimonial Dilemma
How can I divorce my wife without telling her? She will be very angry.

18. On seeking Self-Understanding
Only people as intelligent as I am can possibly understand me.

19. On the problem of Excessive Lying
I don't want to tell so many lies but I do want to keep my job.

20. On marital relationship
My wife helps me appreciate how very wonderful is my girlfriend.

21. On the need to understand one's Past
Why should I waste time learning from my past when I am worrying about my future?

22. On the need of talking about relationships
If a relationship works - there's not much to talk about; and if it doesn't work - there's nothing to talk about.

23. On the need to see humor in Life
I find humor in my everyday life by looking for people I can laugh at.

24. On the need to change

I want to change my future.
I don't want to change anything - I just want to complain.
25. On the trauma of death
My boyfriend had a heart attack while making love to me. I didn't know that people could die so happy.

26. On finding the ideal mate
All I want is a partner who is rich, sexy, educated, charming and who loves me.

27. On Less than ideal Relationship
What is it about me that attracts idiots?

28. On Dealing with one's problems
Please make it didn't happen!

29. On Trying to solve relationship problems
My husband made me come to see you. I want you to prove him wrong.

30. On Childish behavior
What's wrong with acting childishly? Even children can do it.

31. On the Need to Suffer a bit in Silence
Why should I suffer in silence when I can complain?

There you're, your "happiness freaks"  for the week..


Have a nice weekend


2015年6月26日 星期五

A night of wonderful Russian Music from Pletnev & The Russian National Orchestra (一整晚的美妙音樂:柏尼夫與俄羅斯國家樂團)

Many have heard of Mikhail Pletnev (b. 1957) as a pianist but not everyone knows that he is a also composer and the founder and artistic director of the Russian National Orchestra (RNO), which started life in 1990 and which in 2008, was voted one of the top world orchestras  by a panel of international music critics by Gramophone. Before that, it got a Grammy Award for its rendition of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf in 2004. From 2009 on, it holds an annual musical festival in Moscow in September of each year. In May last year, Pletnev came to Hong Kong as a soloist, playing excerpts from Bach's English Suite, two Schubert sonatas (Nos.4 and 13) and 24 of Scriabin's Preludes ( see http://elzorro927.blogspot.hk/).  Last night , Pletnev showed us what he could do with the RNO but again, it's not his first tour of Hong Kong with the RNO.  They first  brought us some vocal and orchestral from Rimsky-Korsakov and Rachmaninoff in October 2010.

The concert last night was wonderful. They played an all Russian programme consisting of  Glinka 's Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila, Arutiunian's Trumpet Concerto and  Rachmaninoff's Symphony No, 2 in E Minor Op. 27 .



2015年6月23日 星期二

A Quiet Stroll(不起眼的閑逛)

It seems that whenever people go to Tung Chung, they think only of the mall there with all the so-called "factory outlets" right above the MTR station or of the cable car station for bringing them up to the Big Buddha at Ngong Ping and little else.



But there is more to Tung Chung than all those items at "bargain" prices and being simply the transit spot for the Big Buddha.


There is a huge garden just by the coast

2015年6月21日 星期日

Yuja Wang Triptych 3-Brahms (王羽佳三連幅之三--布拉姆斯)

Time flies. Before you know it, it's Yuja Wang's last concert in her triptych last night. On this occasion, she played another concerto, Brahm's (1833-1897) Piano Concerto No. 2 in Bb, Op .83, a massive concerto lasting some 50 minutes, more like a symphony than a concerto which he took three years to write (1878-1881) after a break of some 22 years from his first. It's revolutionized the genre. Instead of having the usual three movements as in the classical tradition, it got 4 movements: Allegro non troppo (B-flat major),  Allegro appassionato (D minor),  Andante (B-flat major), Allegretto grazioso (B-flat major). All the movements in Bb except the second ends with a forceful bang. It's a piano concerto full of passion, power and huge dynamic contrasts, explosive and quiet contemplative passages where the orchestra constantly dialogues with the solo piano with now one taking control and now the other and in the climax both together.  It requires perfect co-ordination between the solo piano and the orchestra. One seems to hear in that great second movement shadows of a future Tchaikovsky or a future Rachmaninoff. Yuja Wang was superb. I came with great expectations. I came away more than satisfied. Yuja Wang delivers not only the power and the passion, but also the subtler nuances in the quieter passages. No wonder all the great orchestras of the world are going after her.

No encore this time. I think I know why. It's an extremely taxing concerto. She only got a bit of relief in the 3rd movement when the movement with the cellos and strings come in to deliver a tranquil, quiet and incredibly beautiful melody of joy and contentment.
Michael Bamping too played the cello with a great deal of feeling and extremely well. In the brief lilting and delightful fourth movement,  she is called upon alternate between strong and light passages and to pack it in all her physical strength again in the finale. 



The second half of the second are both French impressionist symphonic poems :  Debussy's La Mer  with 3 tableaux viz. De l'aube a midi sur la mer (from dawn to midday over the sea), Jeux de vagues (play of waves) and Dialogue du vent et de la mer (conversation of wind and sea originally called "Le vent fait danser la mer" meaning the wind makes the sea dance ) and Ravel's Boléro. Both of them involve extremely subtle changes in tonalities and volume to create the relevant movements and moods of the wind, the waves, the storm in the former or a simple motif endlessly repeated to simulate the undulating rhythms of the sand dunes in the latter.  I enjoyed  the first part of the concert much more than the second. Somehow, the sound of the individual sections in Ravel's piece when it was their turn to take centre stage was a bit too loud and the sense of gradual building up to the finale could have been done much better. Maybe I'm wrong in my impressions but that's how it felt to me. 




2015年6月20日 星期六

Saturday Fun (星期六趣味)

Nowadays, everybody seems to think that not only should they be happy, they've got a "right" to be happy and that if they are not, there must be something wrong with them. And whenever they feel that they are not as happy as they think they ought to be, they think they've got a problem on their hand and they go see a shrink. But shrinks are not magicians. They have no "magic bullet" to solve our "problems". More often than not, they're just like you and me, except that they've read a few more books and have gone through a certain period of "training". Their insight, their capacity for empathy and their skills may vary just as much as other so-called "professionals". Often it's question of luck or chance whether you go to the right one. But whatever your fate may be, there's always some room to discover the lighter side of  clinical psychologist, psychiatrist and therapists.  

1.


Two psychotherapists pass each other in the hallway.
The first says to the second, "Hello!"
The second smiles back nervously and half nods his head.
When he is comfortably out of earshot, he mumbles, "God, I wonder what *that* was all about?"

2.

Two behaviorists meet each other in the street.
"Hi," says one, "How am I feeling today?"...
That evening, they have sex.
The other one says, "That was good for you. How was it for me?"

3.

"Doctor," said the receptionist over the phone, "there's a patient here who thinks he's invisible."
"Well, tell him I can't see him right now."

4.

Johnny paid his way through college by waitering in a restaurant.
"What's the usual tip?" asked a customer.
"Well," said Johnny, "this is my first day, but the other guys said that, if I got five dollars out of you, I'd be doing great."
"Is that so?" growled the customer. "In that case, here's twenty dollars."
"Thanks. I'll put it in my college fund," Johnny said.
"By the way, what are you studying?" asked the customer.
"Applied psychology."



5.


A man is walking along the street when he is brutally beaten and robbed. He lies unconscious, bleeding.
While he is lying there, a police officer passes by, but crosses to the other side of the road, without trying to help.
A boy scout troop does the same. As do a number of pedestrians.
Finally, a psychologist walks by, and runs up to the man. He bends down and says, "My God! Whoever did this needs help"

6.
 

A psychotherapist returned from a conference in the Rocky mountains, where the delegates spent more time on the icy ski slopes than attending lectures and seminars.
When she got back, her husband asked her, "So, how did it go?"
"Fine," she replied, "but I've never seen so many Freudians slip."


7.

RING. . .
RING. . .
CLICK
Welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline.
If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.
If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2.
If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5, and 6.
If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.
If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.
If you are depressed, it doesn't matter which number you press. No one will answer.
If you are delusional and occasionally hallucinate, please be aware that the thing you are holding on the side of your head is alive and about to bite off your ear.



8.

One behaviorist meets another one on the street. 

He says, "Hi. How am I feeling today?"


9.

.During a session, a psychotherapist says to his client:
"Today we're going to try and analyze your Freudian slips. See, a Freudian slip is when you want to say something but you make a funny mistake and say something slightly different. The analysis of such a mistake can lead to some emotions you're in conflict with, some bad memories from your childhood, and so on. Have you made any such funny mistakes lately?"
The client thinks a moment, and responds:
"You know Doc, yeah. I made a funny mistake while talking to my mother. I was eating dinner with her and I wanted her to pass the salad, but instead I said: 'You stupid bitch, you ruined my life, I hate you.'"


10.


One day a guy went to a psychologist for the first time. After telling him his troubles, the man says, "So doc, what's wrong with me?"
The doctor replies, "Well, you're crazy."
Indignant, the man replies, "I am not, I want another opinion."
To which the doctor replies, "OK... You're also ugly."

11.

A Ph.D. student, a post-doc, and a professor are walking through a city park and they find and antique oil lamp.
They rub it and a genie comes out in a puff of smoke.
The genie says, "I usually only grant three wishes, so I'll give each of you just one."
"Me first! Me first!" says the Ph.D. student. "I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat with a gorgeous woman who sunbathes topless."
Poof! He's gone.
"Me next! Me next!" says the post-doc. "I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with a professional hula dancer on one side and a Mai Tai on the other."
Poof! He's gone.
"You're next," the genie says to the professor.
The professor says, "I want those guys back in the lab after lunch."


12.

Top 10 Signs a Therapist is Approaching Burn-out:
10) You think of the peaceful park you like as "your private therapeutic milieu."
9) You realize that your floridly psychotic patient, who is picking invisible flowers out of mid air, is probably having more fun in life than you are.
8) A grateful client, who thinks you walk on water, brings you a small gift and you end up having to debrief your feelings of unworthiness with a colleague.
7) You are watching a re-run of the Wizard of Oz and you start to categorize the types of delusions that Dorothy had.
6) Your best friend comes to you with severe relationship troubles, and you start trying to remember which cognitive behavioral technique has the most empirical validly for treating this problem.
5) You realize you actually have no friends, they have all become just one big case load.
4) A co-worker asks how you are doing and you reply that you are a bit "internally preoccupied" and "not able to interact with peers" today.
3) Your spouse asks you to set the table and you tell them that it would be "countertherapeutic to your current goals" to do that.
2) You tell your teenage daughter she is not going to start dating boys because she is "in denial," "lacks insight," and her "emotions are not congruent with her chronological age." And, the number one reason a therapist may be burning out...
1) You are packing for a trip to a large family holiday reunion and you take the DSM-IV with you just in case.

Have a happy Saturday!

2015年6月19日 星期五

Yanagawa (柳川)


After the stunning spectacle of thousands of roses at Huis Ten Bosch and the fantastic meal there, we were taken to a quiet little town of slightly more than 70,000 in Fukuoka Prefecture called Yanagawa (柳 川市), formed by merging Yamato and Mitsuhashi (both from Yamato District). The city is famous for two things: it's the place of birth of a famous prolific modern Japanese poet and children's song writer Kitahara Hakushu (北原 白秋 ) (1885 – 1942), originally called Kitahara Ryūkichi (北原 隆吉), one of the top 5 Japanese tanka (短歌 or short poem) poets writing in Taishō (大正時代 )(1912-1926) and Shōwa (昭和時代 ) (1926-1989) periods and widely accepted as one of the most popular and important poets in modern Japanese literature, having more than 200 publications under his own name. The city is criss-crossed with nearly 500 km of wide canals. It's really pleasant to feel that sense of leisure and serenity as our small boat glided smoothly along a stretch of one of their canals by one of the 200 professional "punters" pushing their pole proudly and apparently effortlessly in his impeccably clean kimono.


The Japanese May holidays over, the boats lay empty

2015年6月17日 星期三

The Harbor before the Concert (音樂會前的海濱)

It's often said that our harbor is beautiful


Maybe, not all the time.



But sometimes, when you least expects it to, it may surprise you.



Just before the concert last night started, I had a little time.

A night brimming with light and delight: Yuja Wang (一個洋溢著光華與歡愉的晚上:王羽佳)

Amongst the current crop of Chinese pianists on the international concert circuit, there is only one which fascinates me. It's a pianist who has got music in her soul, perhaps in her blood.  She immerses herself into whatever music she plays. She breathes music. She lives music. And she enjoys playing music although it may sometimes frighten her to go on stage. But once on stage, something magical happens. It's as if she has finally found herself again.  Somehow, all her fingers would instantly find the proper place to place themselves, with the right kind of force, the right kind of rhythm, the right kind of tonal quality, the right kind of texture, the right kind of inter-relations, the right kind of touch, the right kind of mood all by themselves. And perhaps for those very reasons, the music which surges from her fingers is imbued with her life and also the spirit of the composer into whose music she plunges herself, the result of long hours of pondering over it, digesting it, absorbing it, feeling it, imaginatively merging into it as if she were entering into the musical soul of the composer and thus infusing it with a new life, a new kind of vitality, a life in which it is no longer possible to tell which part of it belongs to the composer and which to her. She plays not merely intellectually, but emotionally, instinctually, almost viscerally.  She gives the score something its doesn't have, life. She is my favourite Yuja Wang.

Last night, I had the chance to listen to her again, not as a soloist in a concerto, but a soloist simpliciter. She plays what comes most naturally to her, her kind of music: romantic music. She plays music by two of my favorite composers: Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)  and Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), two musicians who write music fit only for heaven, each in their own way, the latter hugely influenced by the former. Indeed, Scriabin imagined himself a kind of messenger of God or even a species of god himself.  Wang plays with enthusiasm, with passion, with power, with poesy and with with soul. Perhaps she finds an affinity with the fire, the passion, the yearnings, and the longings and the characteristic abandon of the Slavs, Chopin himself being a Pole whom some regard as part of the Slavic races,  as is Scriabin, who is pure Russian. And she ends her official programme as she she begins it, with another Slav composer: the music of Balakiev.

2015年6月15日 星期一

Tai O Again (重返大澳)


Tai O is one of those places one can go more than once to practice photography.



It's got hills, houses and boats


 

 leaves

2015年6月14日 星期日

Two innovators in the same concert: Mozart & Beethoven (一音樂會內二革新者:莫扎特與貝多芬)

The HKPO concert at the Cultural Centre last night is unique: in one concert, we had two courageous innovators who made musical history, both in E flat. The first is Mozart with his Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat K 272 ("Jeunehomme" or "Young Man") in Allegro, Andantino, Rondo: presto and the other is Beethoven's Symphony No.3 in E Flat, ("Eroica" or "Heroic") in Allegro con brio, Marcia funebre: Adagio assai, Scherzo: Allegro vivace and Finale in Allegro molto.  But that's not where their similarity ends. I found, though I'm not sure if that's merely coincidental, even a particular compositional device which is used by both composer: the sudden but brief burst of piano notes in the middle of the orchestral introduction in Mozart's piano concerto and the introduction of two apparently "dissonant" notes forcefully played right at the start of the symphonic  movement, as if they were totally unconnected with the main theme which started off the Eroica, something totally unprecedented in musical history. Mozart pulled the stunt when he was 21 and Beethoven when he was 32.

2015年6月13日 星期六

Saturday Fun (星期六趣味)

For many of those actively engaged in honing the skills and training up the mind and morals of our children, with all those additional administrative work invented by educational bureaucrats for their own convenience and which have now been unfairly dumped on to the shoulders of our overworked teachers saddled with large classes,  teaching may have become an almost unbearable burden. But it needn't be that all the time. There could be fun in teaching too. 

1.

Teacher: ‘Craig, you know you can't sleep in my class.'
Craig: 'I know. But maybe if you were just a little quieter, I could.'

2015年6月12日 星期五

Wim Mertens: Struggle for Pleasure (維姆·梅爾滕斯 : 為歡樂的掙扎 )

Music is a very strange medium. It is something entirely abstract. It is abstract in that it doesn't tell you anything concrete which we normally associate with either a visual image or series of images or its representation in the form of words linked together by certain arbitrary and habitual or conventional rules of combination which produces something we think of as narrative "meaning".

Music is not visual images or metaphors or symbols of what we normally think of as "reality" . Though there's something called "programme music" or a "symphonic poem", which tries to create a supposed correspondence between sound and images, any such "correspondence" is always vague, ambiguous and merely suggestive, connotative, never specific or denotative. Neither can music tell any narrative story the way words can. If music "represents" anything at all, it "re-presents" itself, its own sound, its own sonic structures, its own rhythms, its own rules of combination, its own "form" of motion in time. 

2015年6月11日 星期四

Hotel, Food and the Dutch Night (酒店食物荷蘭夜)

The hotel where our  tour group stayed in Nagasaki is an interesting bit of Nagasaki history



It's a hotel built to commemorate the presence of the Portuguese traders and missionaries who first came to Nagasaki in 1543. To the left of the photo, one finds the front of a Catholic church "confessional".

The code of arms of the Nagasaki Monterey Hotel

2015年6月10日 星期三

From Classical to Late Romanticism: Mozart & R Strauss (從古典到後浪漫: 莫扎持與李察.史特勞斯)

Music is good. It's rendered better by a concert. In the space of two hours, you can travel the distance of more than a century, en vivo. That happened last Saturday. At the Cultural Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui. We had only two pieces, the first a symphony, the second a number of what's been called "symphonic poems" but to me, it may be even more appropriately called a "symphonic epic". The symphony is a Mozart (1756-1791) favorite, his Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K500, written in 1788,  3 years before he died, his second written in a minor key, the other being his 25th. The symphonic poems or epic is Richard Strauss' (1864-1949)' s autobiographic Ein Heldenblen, literally "a heroic life". The styles of the two pieces could not have been more different: the former is written in the so-called late "classical style" (although certain romantic elements can already be found in it) and the latter is written in the Romantic style initiated by Beethoven and  developed to extremes by such composers as Mahler and Wagner: no images are suggested in the former whilst certain extra-musical images are explicitly stated in the texts of the titles of various sections of the score of the latter.

2015年6月7日 星期日

The Other Side of Lamma (南丫的另一面)

Lamma Island is the 3rd largest island in Hong Kong, smaller only than Lantao and Hong Kong island,  well worth more than one visit.


On my way again!

 
 Clouds over Western

2015年6月6日 星期六

Saturday Fun (星期六趣味)

These days, it's difficult to go anywhere remotely interesting without  bumping into many others with an I-phone, a tablet, automatic cameras of all sizes and colors with or without zoom functions and those carrying impressive looking black rectangular bodies with lenses which look like mini canons and tripods which have no eyes during the processes of being mounted or dismantled and all having more or less the same ideas as those in your mind. They all imagine themselves "photographers"!   But what exactly is a "photographer"? I looked at the internet for some suggestions. The following are some of the words I found:


YOU ARE A PHOTOGRAPHER IF....

(1) You can’t post a picture without some slight retouching! Even from your iPhone!( Nakesha Morgan)  


(2) When your three year old is taking your picture with your iphone and says “no mom, move over here. I don’t like that background.”  ( Leslie Sarten )

(3) You are up at 2 am up, wired because you only get bursts of editing energy during the wee hours of the morning! (Brynne Owen)  

(4) When your walking or driving somewhere and you take a picture with your hands- CLICK! Boom- look at that backlighting or sun flare! (Julie Wagner)  

(5) When you look at your friends’ profile pictures and they’re such bad quality/badly photographed you can’t stand it. (Kristin Page)  

(6) When you “schedule” a photo shoot with your kids “just because” and they know exactly how to pose without being asked. (Jayme Peters) 

(7) When you cringe just a little whenever you see a kit lens on a DSLR. (Lyra Repplinger)  

(8) When you drive by a location like a junkyard and think “how cool would it be to shoot there”! or how about when you and your friends talk about shooting families, babies, teens, sports teams and no one has to spend any jail time. (Alana Banner)

(9) When you can’t flip through a Magazine without analyzing lighting. (Amanda Williams) 

(10) When you are at a wedding watching the photographer to see what they are doing and what lenses they are using over watching the wedding couple. (Mary Beth Cooper)  

(11) When you buy your children’s clothes based on what would look good in a photo shoot and your children start suckering you  with, ” oh Mom, won’t this look great in a photo!” in the cart it goes! (Amanda Capps )

(12) When you can’t watch an action show or pickers show without looking for potential photo props!  ( Mindy Franich)  

(13) When your 6 year old says mama that looks like a good spot for pictures! – (Carrie Jaquay ) 

(14) You secretly hope the neighborhood doesn’t get cleaned up because you’ll loose some of your favorite locations! (Leah Remillét) 


(15) It begins to dawn on you that having a great camera makes you no better a photographer than having a grand piano makes you a greater pianist.

The sun is out again. Have fun clicking !

2015年6月4日 星期四

Lamma in Mid-Summer (盛夏之南丫)


Clouds have always been an unending source of fascination for me.



  
 Heads rising on the pedestrian bridge to the outlying islands ferry piers



Heavy clouds overhanging Kowloon, our link to China



Symbol of the spirit of Hong Kong

2015年6月3日 星期三

Ray Lynch's Quandra

I haven't listened to Ray Lynch for quite a while now. I don't know why, I suddenly got the urge to listen to him this morning. I first listened to him years ago. When I listen again to his Quandra, part of his Sky of Mind album, it still seems as though I'm listening for the first time. His music has a kind of repetitive yet pleasing simplicity, a kind of reverence for certain forces greater than us,  a kind of spirituality that takes one into a different world, a world moving beneath the surface of our mind, full of beauty, full of a certain tranquility, a certain peace which is so soothing that it makes one long to stay there forever.


2015年6月2日 星期二

Huis Ten Bosch Hario Island, Omura Bay, Sasebo, Nagasaki(長崎 佐世保市 大村灣 針尾島 豪斯登堡)

After stepping on to the dilapidated ruins of a bygone economic era of heavy metallurgical industries fueled by coal, our coach drove us into the glamor of another one based on titillating the human spirit and its capacity for fantasy.




This is the famous Huis Ten Ten Bosch (literally "House of Forest" in the suburbs of The Hague where Dutch Royal Family used to reside) (ハウステンボス Hausu Ten Bosu), a theme park on Hario Island in Omura Bay, Sasebo, Nagasaki  which does its best to "re-create" the feelings of an old Dutch town through life size copies of its hotels, villas, theatres, museums, shops and restaurants, canals, windmills, amusement rides, and a park planted in seasonal flowers. The site is close to Hirado (平户市), where the Dutch set up its first trading post in Japan in 1609.