Month: August 2015

Chong Chong at 22 Months

Earlier this month, Shanshan and I were taking Chong Chong on a nighttime stroll around our community. When we were passing by our favorite traditional Beijing restaurant, he wanted to break away from us. So, we let him, and here’s what happened.

He has a thing for stairs, so he climbed up some of them, and then started playing around. He caught the attention of one of the costumed greeters, who then helped him up to the top.

 

After she brought him to the top, the greeter went inside, and one of the managers came out to spend time with him, and coax him inside (I just love this shot of greater taking a picture of him).

After he was safely inside, one of the other managers grabbed him, and took him to the front of the restaurant to see the bian lian performance that was in progress.

He was just in time to see the performer as Sun Wukong!

And, took a photo with him after the show.

Yes, folks, this is Chong Chong’s Beijing Life.

Five B&W Shots from Germany

The first three were taken on one of my many long drives with Chong Chong whilst Shanshan was attending a conference. The last two were while we entertained ourselves at she when shopping at a huge outlet mall. Nope, I don’t like shopping.

Conversion of all five shots was done with Adobe Lightroom 5.7* Mostly it involves doing a stock conversion, and then boosting the Clarity and Contrast, and then mucking a bit with Highlights, Shadows, and Exposure.

* I’ve been trying to find a compelling reason to upgrade to Lightroom 6.0, and have so far unable to do so. A big negative is that the trial version crashes whenever it encounters a video.