adventures in *

HK skyline from Tsim Sha Tsui

The 14 hour flight wasn’t as bad as I expected. I had enough leg room to stretch out and managed to catch some sleep. The first thing I noticed when I got outside was the humidity. Probably over 80%, I can’t imagine how horrible it must be during the summer when it’s 80F+ and 90% RH. I arrived at the hostel via bus and was shown the room, I’ve heard the accomodation here were a bit small and it wasn’t an exageration. The hostel is located in a residential building, my room was a windowless 12x12ft cell with a 3x8ft bathroom in which the toilet and
shower stall were shared. I gave my aunt a call and she invited me over for dinner. My cousin Banni came by the hostel to take me over to their house. One of their dogs isn’t very friendly to strangers and greeted me
by biting my leg.

Next up is China. I didn’t quite reach my goal of visiting all 7 continents by age 30, I’ll only have 6 under my belt, but I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished so far. I’m leaving on January 28th from Las Vegas, with a stop over in San Francisco, then a 14h 30m flight to Hong Kong.

Plans so far are to meet my grandfather, aunt and cousins in Hong Kong. Then fly to Chengdu to visit the Panda Reserve, making my way to Guilin and Yangshuo to do some kayaking, biking, and photography. And ending the trip with a couple days in Guangzhou to eat continuously. I fly back on February 7.

Using commercially available software is a headache. User interfaces are not user friendly, functionality is lacking, and the cost of the software itself isn’t worth the expense. I’ve tried demos of Sony Vegas, Premiere, Pinnacle. They have some features that are nice, but I would need to buy all 3 and learn the different interfaces to do what I need.

At work, we run a LAMP environment (linux, apache, mysql, php), all open source. I’ve started looking at open source alternatives to do my post processing work and I like what I see. Most of them use command line interfaces, faster and easier to accomplish my tasks. Runtime flags and options are fairly straight forward and are much easier to master compared to the commercial Windows based software.

Handbrake does video transcoding, I can downres my raw 5dm2 video footage from 1080p to 720p and change the bitrate at the same time.

ImageMagick converts image file formats, png->jpg is what I’m doing now.

ffmpeg is the swiss army knife of video editing tools. I’m using it to convert video into still images to reassemble into time lapse footage. It can do the reverse, transcode formats, resize and much more.

stripping audio
ffmpeg -i input.mpg -acodec copy output.mp3

stripping video
ffmpeg -i input.mpg -an -vcodec copy output.mpg

processing multiple videos into one
cat video*.* | ffmpeg -i –

Virtualdub is my favorite program, I’ve been using it for awhile now to convert images into time lapse videos. It includes plugin support to do image manipulation such as contrast/brightness, color balance, sharpness, etc. Very versatile.

I haven’t used yet, but have heard good things about Cinelerra. A linux based near line editor. I think it may replace my use of Sony Vegas.

A couple web pages that have been most helpful are

http://blog.kamens.brookline.ma.us/~jik/wordpress/2009/09/21/script-for-using-ffmpeg-to-crop-pan-and-scale-wmv-to-mov/

http://pr0gr4mm3r.com/linux/how-to-create-a-time-lapse-video-using-ffmpeg/

Shot from my balcony at Hotel Europa, overlooking Puerta del Sol.

5dm2 with 24-70 and zenitar 16mm
music by energipsy – joselito

My first attempt at a slideshow, Microsoft Live Movie Maker made it pretty easy. Just add photos and music, it’ll do all the transitions and make the images fit within the song length.

I grouped the images in somewhat logical order, trying to keep a theme (location, subject, composition, etc) between sets of images. Starting off with the Metro station at Madrid-Barajas airport – the beginning of my adventure. Next, the Roman aqueducts of Segovia and brick wall topped with shards of glass in Toledo.

In Madrid, a fountain in front of the Royal Palace and Plaza de Cibeles with Palacio de Comunicaciones in the background – which you’ll see again towards the end of the slideshow.

A glass window in the Alcazar of Segovia, looks relatively modern for a castle built in the 1400′s, although it was rebuilt in the late 1800′s after a fire so maybe it came from that era.

The memorial to the March 11 2004 Train bombings in Madrid’s Atocha train station is next, then a few modern office buildings in downtown Madrid.

The Giralda tower, part of the Catedral of Sevilla follows, with some pictures from the inside and the tomb of Christopher Columbus ending the set.

Some examples of Muslim and Christian architecture are next, then a picture of the RENFE train that took me to my next stop, Cadiz. A couple random shots from Sevilla and Tarifa, then my pictures of Morocco, Gibraltar, the Alhambra in Granada, some more random shots.

The last set is from La Noche en Blanco, an all night art-music festival that took place in Madrid. The ‘Night in White’ festival started in Paris some years ago to bring art-music culture to the general public. Interactive art displays, live bands, museums were open all night, until 6am for all to enjoy. I walked around until 3am checking things out. The final picture, marking the end of my adventure, the Metro station with a balloon I received during La Noche.

I’ll be posting more images sets in the following weeks.

On the train ride from Granada to Madrid, we traveled about 75 miles with a slower engine car (under 90 mph and battery powered). At the transfer station, we were connected to a high speed electric line powered engine (over 120mph). Pretty cool. Towards the end of the trip, the stewardess handed out individually wrapped warmed jelly beans, strange and a bit wasteful with the packaging.

On Wednesday, my body finally succumbed to the fatigue of traveling. I had blistered feet, all my muscles were sore from walking 3-5 miles a day, hauling a 40lb backpack when going between cities and to top it all off, I developed a fever with chills. I ended up sleeping from 6pm to 6:30am, getting up to see the Alhambra because I reserved a ticket, then slept another 3 hours when I got back to the hotel. After all that rest my fever was gone and I was feeling much better, ready to travel some more.

My Tanger experience wasn’t all bad, I was walking along the northern flank of the kasbah when a lady I passed started speaking to me in arabic. I had no idea what she was saying and continued on. A couple minutes later, some kids came running after me and told me in broken english not to go any further because of cartels. They pointed at my camera and from what I gather, there were some unfriendlies that might try to rob me. So I thanked the kids and turned around. I passed the woman again and thanked her. She made a hand gesture which looked something like pulling a knife from her side then a slicing motion. I’m glad the locals are looking out for the tourists and keeping us out of harms way. Getting stabbed and robbed would have put a damper on my vacation.

Since arriving in Tanger, I’ve been greeted in half a dozen languages. I’ve read that the local ‘guides’ will swarm on foreigners like mosquitos. My experience hasn’t been too bad, most of them approach me to say ‘You from Japan? Arrigato!’

They then ask if I need help finding a hotel, want to go to a shop or restaurant. After telling them no a few times or pretending I’m deaf, they give up.

Tanger has been described as the Tijuana of Africa, I’d say it’s pretty close. Dilapidated buildings, the smell of raw sewage and rotting garbage, and crazy traffic. It took me a few hours to find my hotel, although in hindsight, a taxi would have been a wise choice. The lack of street signs and Googlemaps data makes navigation a bit of a challenge.

These buildings in downtown Madrid are far more visually stimulating to me, the Cuatro Torres, tallest building in Spain.

Giralda Tower, part of the Sevilla Cathedral. Originally an ancient Muslim mosque built in 1184, it was rebuilt throughout the centuries, completed in 1568.

I’ve been a bit underwhelmed by the palaces and churches that I’ve seen so far. It is amazing that they were designed on paper and constructed over hundreds of years without the help of modern machinery but I’m just not able to fully appreciate them.

I went to a chinese restaurant for dinner yesterday. I asked the waitress if she spoke any guangdong-wah (cantonese), nope, just putong (mandarin) and spanish. In my mangled spanish, I tried asking if there is a chinatown in Madrid but neither of us understood what the other was saying.

Overall I’ve managed fairly well despite knowing very little spanish. Single words and hand gestures usually get my point across. In this part of the country, C followed by E and I is pronounced with a ‘th’ sound, as does Z, which is I keep forgetting. V’s have a B sound.. thehr-bay-thah por-fabor

I walked around the central part of the city for the rest of the day to get my bearings and to scout shooting locations.

For dinner, I went to Abuelo for some gambas de ajillo, succulent shrimp sauteed in olive oil, garlic, and dried peppers. They have their own winery so I had a glass of dulce tinto vino. I’m not sure what type of grape is it, but it was similar to a muscat but red.

Tomorrow I plan to visit the street market El Rastro, the Royal Palace, and Valle de la Caido – monument to the victims of Spain’s civil war and grave of Franco.

I landed in Madrid at 9am local time / 12am pacific, managed to catch some sleep on the plane so I wasn’t too tired.

I took the Metro trains to the hotel, all the signposts and maps were in English and Spanish so it was easy to navigate my way through the system.

After checking into Hostal Adriano, I went over to Las Bravas to try the famous tapas dish patatas bravas, deep fried chunks of potatoes covered with a red chile sauce; washed it down with a glass of rioja.

to be continued..

doing some light reading this weekend to prepare for my trip.

My next adventure begins on September 4th, I’ll be going to Spain and Morocco for 2 weeks.

I hadn’t really thought about visiting them until a few months ago. I’ve been toying with the idea of visiting all 7 continents before I turn 30. This trip will cover Europe and Africa, as for the remaining 2 countries, Asia and Australia, I’ll have to figure out how to fit those in before February.

Here’s my itinerary:

Madrid
Segovia
Toledo
Sevilla
Cadiz
Tarifa
Tanger
La Linea
Gibraltar
Granada
Madrid

This time I’ll be packing a lot less photo gear, since I’ll be traveling by bus and train and will be doing a lot of walking. My main interest is the historic buildings and structures. In Segovia, just an hour north of Madrid, are the 2000 year old Roman aquaducts. The port city of Cadiz, is the longest inhabited city in Europe, dating back to 1104BC, amazing. I’m not quite sure what to expect in Morocco, I don’t speak any French or Arabic, it’ll be interesting.

Gear list:
Canon 5D Mark II
24-70 f2.8L
70-200 f4L
Zenitar 16mm fisheye

Panasonic LX3

Slik Sprint Mini II
TC80N3 remote timer
Sandisk Extreme III/IV CF cards
PNY Optima Pro SDHC card
Circular polariser
UV filters

fur seal

gentoo

adelies and gentoo

gentoos

cormorant

giant albatross

young adelies chasing mom for food