Where in the World... [ part II ]

I finally got around to putting some of the images from my recent trip to China into a slideshow. There are a lot of images so they go by pretty quick in the slideshow. No worries, though - you can see a gallery at the end of the slideshow or you can click on the icon below the show window that looks like a grid at any time and this will take you directly to the gallery. Hope you enjoy.

Hard at play...

My buddy, George, was on the same trip I was in China last week, and he sent these images of me on our photo safari. It's funny to see yourself on the other side of the lens sometimes. For me, it reaffirms why I prefer to be a photographer, not a photographee... interesting how some photographers - myself included - feel out of their element when you put them in front of the lens.



Stay tuned... I should have the China image gallery/slideshow up this this weekend if not sooner.

Made in China

If you use it, whatever it is, chances are it's made in China or could be soon. This place really is ground zero for all things electronic (and non-electronic for that matter).

I don't think most people ever stop for a second and think about where the latest widget they bought at Best Buy came from. It's a mind-boggling thing sometimes to contemplate how all the processes, materials, timing and sometimes serendipity come together just to make one of the hundreds of products we 'think' are essential to our every day. We are undoubtedly a throw-away society, gladly tossing out the (not so) old for the latest and greatest that big companies would have us believe we can't do without. I think if people saw the processes and the people that make this happen, they might - at least for a second - have a little more appreciation for all that goes into making the products that make our lives better.

I have had the good fortune of being able to see some of the behind the scenes efforts involved in manufacturing a product in China. Last Friday I was able again to witness a few of the steps in manufacturing a graphing calculator that millions of math and science students use in the classroom every day. It's a very cool thing to see.

Where in the world?... [ part I ]

Several of you have graciously pretended to miss me and asked where I've been the last week and a half. Assuming my 8th grade World Geography memory hasn't completely rusted (a distinct possibility), at the moment I'm about as far away from home as I can get here in China. I'm specifically in Shanghai, and it is truly one of the most amazing cities I've ever experienced.

It's fascinating to me to see the extremes you can find here in Shanghai. Affluence and technological supremacy coexists with some of the most dire living conditions we as Americans can imagine. You can go from 1st world to 3rd world environments in a matter of blocks.



I'm headed home tomorrow, and I plan to put together a slide show of the images I've photographed on this trip. There are so many things I could've photographed that I just didn't have time for, so I tried to narrow my focus to a theme. This time I chose to focus on raw every day life here in Shanghai and some of the surrounding country. That is still such a broad canvas that I haven't even come close to capturing a fraction of all that makes up that chapter.



Check back soon to see the slide show. After being blessed enough to photograph the amazing people that make up the backbone of this culture, I can't help but feel humbled and even sometimes guilty by how well we live in the US. I hope this helps to remind me not to take all that God has given me for granted.

To be continued...