The last three weeks I joined an advanced portrait photography workshop… for beginners. A while back I subscribed for the workshop on the website of the CKE (center for arts). It would be an advanced workshop for portrait photography. I missed the first class because I was in China, and when I attended the second class they secretly changed the name of the course to “beginners and advanced course in portrait photography”. The course explained the use of studio flashes and continuous studio lighting and gave the attendees the possibility to work with the equipment of the school. Which is nice for beginners, but I would imagine that advanced portrait photographers might have already known a thing or two about basic studio lighting.
Apparently the teacher had explained the class on the first lesson (which I missed) that they would have to arrange their own models for a photo shoot at the school on Saturday. I only heard this on Wednesday so I had to call and stress around for some models. Luckily Neda was willing to model in the morning and my photographer friend Odette arranged a model (Nasha) for the afternoon. Adrienne went along to model for me when neither Neda nor Nasha were around, so everything worked out great.
I took along my own studio lights (after you have used the Elinchrom flashes you don’t want to get anywhere near the Falcon Eyes set they use at the school) and took some interesting pictures that day. It was nice to use the environment of the building in my shots. I can’t say I learned anything from the course, but at least I ended up with some extra pictures for my web site.

Today I relaxed my feet a bit, took a taxi and spent a couple of hours in Beihai Park.

Tomorrow afternoon I’m flying back to Amsterdam. I had a nice time in Beijing but I’m really looking forward to see everybody again, sleep in my own bed, and o-god I will spend hours just admiring the cleanliness of our bathroom.

Bye bye hostel…

Today I walked a lot. The “massage for tired foot” offered by the place next to the hostel sounds very appealing right now, however, I’m quite sure a foot massage over there will end in my pants. So I’m going to stay in the bar of the hostel, rest my feet on a stool, hang back, have a huge glass of beer for less than a euro, and type this blog in stead.
The only thing that might end up in my pants later tonight is the cockroach hiding in the corner of my bathroom. Yuch!

My walk started near a Christian church, something that is quite rare here in China. Even though a very small percentage of the people here are Christians, a small percentage of a couple of million (14 million in Beijing) people is still a lot. So the church is making over hours as scenery for the wedding album of Christian newly weds. In the five minutes I was there I already counted 4 couples being photographed at the same time.
After taking some shots of the ridiculous scenes there, I made my way to Tiananmen Square, the “Gate of Heavenly Peace”. It was warmer today, but also it was much more smoggy as well, I’m wondering if the people here wear masks because they are afraid of the H1N1 flu, or of the smog.
After wondering around the square I walked through the Hutongs, the old parts of the city and made my way over to a fake “old” part of the city. Last year when I was here it was still under construction and now all the big brands like Rolex, Zara and Star Bucks have taken up residence in this street. Only a couple of meters behind this facade start the Hutongs with their small, dirty and interesting streets, definitely my favorite parts of the city. Here you can choose either to have a small cup of hot chocolate at the Star Bucks, or have a 10 course dinner in the Hutong. I did both by the way…

If you might slip, just do so carefully ok?

Last year we were in Beijing during the paralympics. Because of that the new stadiums they built could only be seen from a large distance. Fences with razorblades on top and tanks were guarding the site. That’s why I went to see the Bird nest up close today. There was some race car event going on there with “Shumasjuh” according to the Chinese. My guess is that they mean that Michael Schumacher would be there. Anyways I got some nice shots of the thing, I just hope I get to upload the pictures. The internet here moves my bytes slower than my toilet flushes. It’s amazing. As a side note, due to the lack of a decent sewage system, the toilets here are paper-incompatible. Meaning I have to drop my used pieces of paper in an open (why open my god) bin next to the toilet. You understand I keep my bathroom door closed at all times.

Yesterday we arrived in Beijing after a five hour delay. Apparently it had been snowing so hard in Beijing that the airplanes could not land or take off. We found out much later because all the announcements were only in Chinese. Our flight was cancelled and after a lot of running around we got new tickets for a flight later that day. After checking into our hostel in Beijing we took a bike taxi trough the Hutongs (old parts of the city) and tried some tea in a small tea store. Later that evening we went to the Lao She teahouse where we enjoyed a mixed show of acrobatics, music, opera and cabaret, which was nice. Bart has left for Amsterdam after visiting the Pearl market to buy lots of beads and necklaces for his wife’s store.
In the afternoon I went around in Beijing and stumbled upon a very cool temple complex called the Dongyue Temple. They had many interesting statues and buildings there. I brought my radio flash triggers along so I could light the insides of the temples while taking pictures from the outside (picture 7). You can imagine I enjoyed myself.

Last Friday we finished our teaching in Shenyang. In the morning between 8 and 12 we had interviews with 21 students to decide which three of them could finish their master studies at the TU/e in Eindhoven. Because there were so many applicants we had only ten minutes per student to find out if they would do well at the TU/e. It is very strange to be able to change someones entire life in only ten minutes.
The next day, after some presentations by the master-students, the dean of the faculty took us to the Benxi Water Cave. We took a boat trip through a long brightly colored cave, which was almost as impressive as the ability of the Chinese to give wonderful names such as, “eight immortals carrying water to the sea” or “protruding phoenix tail”, to totally random rock formations.

This week I am in Shenyang in China teaching at the “Sino-Dutch Biomedical and Information Engineering School, Northeastern University” (try writing that on your business card).

I have to say I was looking up to this week of teaching, not knowing what the level of the students would be, or how much they would understand of my lectures. But now, after my lectures are finished, I must say that all in all it has been a pleasant experience. My throat is still hurting from talking for four hours this morning, but the fact that the students were very interested in what I had to say and have been working hard to understand the material, really makes up for it. I hope they will do well on the exam that we have prepared for them on Friday (except for the guy that was asleep during my first talk this morning, if only I could remember his name…).

Shenyang is really something else. It is a big industrial city with countless tall and dull buildings. Like probably all Chinese cities it is dusty, smelly, dirty, and interestingly chaotic. The roads have big holes them, buildings are covered in a thick layer of gray dust that would probably give you instant cancer if you were to come into contact with it. Everything seems to have been been worn out fifty years ago, but not even one of the billion Chinese here seems to care.
A tribute to this carelessness is the urinals at the university. Something is wrong with the plumbing; as soon as you start doing your business the urinal starts to flush. Which might sound nice and clean if not for the fact that the drain can’t keep up with the water filling up the bowl at a highly competitive speed. As a result, every relief of the bladder has become a race against the clock. This apparently has been going on for months, but nobody seems to care.

If at this moment you are thinking to yourself: “why on earth didn’t you just go to the regular toilet”, you have obviously never been to China. The “regular” toilets here in China are of the type “hole-in-the-floor”. Try keeping your socks dry while you’re aiming at a yellow-brown stained pit of stink. Standing on the foot pads as you look into that hole, you familiarize with the terror that Han Solo must have felt when he was about to be dropped in one of those teeth-filled holes in the first Star Wars movie. Yikes! So back to the urinals!

There was one time when I knew I wouldn’t be fast enough, which could mean it was going to be wet-pant-teaching for the rest of the day. As this didn’t appeal to me all that much, I figured I had to pull of a daring “hold-and-switch to the next urinal” move.

The “hold-and-switch move”, has done the trick this far, but I fear the day that one of the Chinese students will be occupying the urinal next to me… I just hope I won’t overlook the poor little fellow!

Three other Dutch people are currently working at the university here and I am having a great time hanging out with them. Going out to eat is pretty cool here in China. You have a wide variety of dishes at your disposal, seahorses, chicken hearts, pig feet and chicken heads to name a few. Plus the prices are so ridiculously low you might even ignore the fact that the cook is drying your vegetables on the sidewalk in front of his restaurant, right where the neighborhood dog does its business every morning.

On Sunday I will fly back to Beijing where I will stay until the 6th of November, so the adventure continues… I’ll keep you posted!

Last Sunday we went “Flowboarding” with a Philips “Global I’s” excursion. Dutch water dreams in Zoetermeer has what are called Flowriders. A sort of inverse waterslide where an impressive 73.000 liters of water are sprayed on per minute. On this thing you would, if you are talented, be able to look very cool and board like a pro… Turns out I’m not talented… My record of standing on the board without any help is about 7 seconds, which of course didn’t impress anybody, but nonetheless it was lots of fun.
I tried to take some pictures, but the lens fogged up completely. We only had one hour to flowboard and I didn’t want to waste too much time on taking pictures, so I had to wipe the lens. Unfortunately I forgot my lens cloth and the only dry piece of cloth in my bag was my underwear. Note to self: “Underwear appears to be a great lens cleaner; avoid certain areas of the cloth”. So there you have it, if ever you’re in desperate need of lens cloth and you forgot to bring it, use your undies!

This Saturday I and three other photographers had a photo shoot in IJsselstein with a Swedish Playboy model (Tindra Mantel). Dutch Heaven, a model and photographers website, organized this morning and arranged the model and a great studio in IJsselstein. Bert Beijl, the owner of the studio was of great help the whole morning. His willingness to help set up the lights and work out ideas helped speed up the whole process considerably, so at the end of the morning I had a set of great images to take home.

Here is a selection of the pictures of that day.

We also took some nude pictures. Since not everybody is into nude photography, I added a special nude link in the pages bar at the top of this page.