Art Interests and Practices

Photo Gallery
  American West
  China
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Photo Gallery

Over the years I have taken many photos in several areas at various places. I still need more time to sort and process them. On these pages I demonstrate some of my photo works. New items will be added when they are available. Brief background and photography comments are provided beside each work. For the sake of copyright protection, all the photos are watermarked. If you are interested in any image with higher resolution, please contact me.

Notes on the photo display system: Thumbnails of the photos are displayed together on the main page. Mouse hoovering on a photo triggers the corresponding comments being displayed. For better experience, clicking on any thumbnail brings the viewer into the virtual gallery exhibition. This system is adapted from an improved version of the popular lightbox system. I changed the lightbox view into a framed photo hanging on a wooden wall, to simulate the museum experience. Once you enter the virtual gallery, please make necessary adjustments through scrolling, zooming and/or brightness/contrast tuning, to obtain the best view for your particular window. Navigation in the exhibition is controlled by forward/backward buttons below the photo and/or the corresponding keys on the keyboard (→/←; PageDown/PageUp; Enter/Backspace). To exit the gallery click on the "X" button below the photo or press the key Escape or X. You're welcome to use my adapted system, but please be a good netizen to add a link to my webpage, just like what I am doing here to the lightbox system.

American West

About two years after I began to work at Novell Inc. I felt I had the resource (money, time and energy) to pursue my interest in photography further. Once I made a significant upgrade of my photo gear I launched the project to photograph the American West. From 2002 to 2005 I made over a dozen photo trips to the natural parks and cities in the American West. On the trips I normally visited multiple places. In four years I was able to cover about 20 natural parks and all the major western American cities, with a majority of the places more than once. I left my foot prints in all the 11 western states. At the beginning I was not sure about my travel abilities. But after I tried a long journey with a friend in 2003, I became very confident. Later on I always travelled on my own. I found that's a good advantage for photo trips. I was lucky to live in Central Utah, the center of the American West, with almost every corner reachable in a day's drive. I had a secret to keep myself awake during long distance driving. In a typical photo trip I drove over 3000 miles in about 10 days. To catch sunrises and sunsets sleep was always not sufficient. For a 10 day photo trip I needed to prepare for a couple of weeks beforehand and process the results and recover for another couple of weeks afterwards. The following poem captures some aspects of my photo activities in the US.

摄影途中

我是一个追光人，

痴迷于光和影的神韵。

反光镜起落的咔哒声，

总让我感到无比激动。

乘着滚滚的车轮，

一阵尽情的狂奔。

我热爱陪伴好友亲朋，

我更爱独自天马行空。

我背着沉重的镜头机身，

我的手指时刻不离快门。

我仰慕高山的气势峥嵘，

我敬畏大海的波涛汹涌。

无论山道崎岖险峻，

三脚架总随身不分。

游人还在甜美的梦乡中，

我已在黎明等待太阳升。

当自然之母露出一丝甜美的微笑，

所有的劳累少觉、蚊虫叮咬，

所有的酷暑严冬、耐心苦等，

都在顷刻间消融。

(2011)

The American West is a photographer's heaven, with so many photo generating places. There are still places I would like to visit, but couldn't. When chance comes I will photography there more. The works contained in this gallery represent what I arrived at. I group them into 5 sections below.

Landscape I: Mountains and Lakes

There are many beautiful mountains and lakes in the American West. This section features Olympic National Park, Mt. Rainier National Park, Yosemite National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake.

Landscape II: The Red Country

The red country is a unique geological phenomenon in the American West. There are similar formations elsewhere, but no other place with such a vast area. Spread mostly in Utah and Arizona the colorful sand stones, gone through thousands of years of erosion by the weather, have offered us these wonderful sculptures of Mother Nature. This section features Arches National Park, Dead Horse Point State Park, Canyonlands National park, Capitol Reef National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park and Grand Canyon National Park.

Landscape III: Deserts

People often associate deserts with unpleasantness, sterility, or even death. Here the opposite side of deserts is displayed. In fact deserts also contain pleasing beauty and vibrant life. This section features Death Valley National Park, Joshua Tree National Park and Saguaro National Park.

Seascape

The US has a long Pacific coast line on the west side. It belong to three states, Washington, Oregon and California. I didn't have much chance to explore the coast. My focus was on Olympic National Park, San Francisco and San Diego.

Cityscape

The American West fosters quite a few great cities, especially along the Pacific coast. As you can see my interpretation of the cities was intimately associated with my landscape photos. In the photos of this section I viewed the cities from the perspective of a landscape photographer. Six western American cities are featured here: Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angles, San Diego, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas.