Photoshop

Hope? Change? Buy!

In this advertisement, Homa Appliances is playing off of the similarity between the sound of the company’s name to that of the Chinese translation for Obama to sell refrigerators. And, as part of this campaign, they’re using an image which bears a striking resemblance to a poster designed by artist Shepard Fairey, which itself resembled an image taken by an AP freelance photographer Mannie Garcia.

Okay, putting aside the possibly copyright issues (and, this is a case which I would love to see goto court), think about what is happening here. A Chinese brand is trying to sell refrigerators in China by referencing the president of the United States. I can tell you that nothing like this happened under the Bush Administration (who, btw, wasn’t well liked here). I also cannot remember seeing any current leader from another country being held in such high esteem.

I think you’d have to go back to Lenin (before the fallout) to find anything similar.

And, this is even after being two and a half years into the administrations disastrous “pivot towards Asia”.

Now, if you think this is interesting, wait until tomorrow’s posting. 🙂

Hanging Chairs

Installation inside the We-Life shopping center. The shopping center, unfortunately within easy walking distance from my apartment complex, was opened last year. In many respects, it is similar to shopping centers in the US and other countries.

It’s About Milk

After looking closely at the side panel of the City Freight delivery truck, you might have questions such as:

  • Why the Cyrillic script and what does it mean?
  • Why is a foreign blond girl sitting next to a foreign dark haired and bearded man at a table with a woman whilst yet another foreigner –this time a woman– pours them something from a large pitcher?
  • Why is the woman dressed in a track suit whilst the two foreign females are dressed in strange clothing?
  • Where is this pastoral scene set?
  • Why is there a rectangular carton of locally produced milk on the table?

Well, to these –and any other questions you might have– all I’ll say is… it’s about milk.

SHUNFUNG

This is the Shun Fung restaurant, which my wife tells me is known for high-quality Cantonese Seafood. She says that it is also very fancy and expensive.

I was intrigued by the contrast between the massive neon sign and the little man in the large red coat,bow tie, and black cowboy hat.

The photo is a composite nine shots taken with my Canon IXUS 980IS, and stitched together using Adobe Photoshop. In developing the photo, I tried to ensure the blacks were okay, but that one could still see the scaffolding behind the signage as well as the branches in the upper left-hand corner.

There’s a lot of detail in the shot, which I also like. If you click on the picture, it’ll take you to a large version on flickr…. give yourself some time to explore it. 🙂

Inside Building Two

Otherwise known as the brick shithouse. Multiple shots stitched together with Photoshop. Used the D300/14 mm combo with the built-in flash. The flash was partially blocked by the large diameter of the 14 mm, but Photoshop took care of that during the stitch.

Apartment Towers, Night

Apartment towers from a few different communities (all close to mine). Building styles varied dramatically depending upon the decade in which the community was constructed.

This is a composite of four shots taken at 9:30 last night with my D300/50 mm at f1.4 on a unipod, and then stitched together/tuned using Adobe Photoshop. ISO was 3200.

Sunrise, Tower F (I)

As the sun started to rise, I was becoming a bit frustrated with having the golden triangle on Tower F in my shots. So, I climbed down the ladder from the rooftop of Tower E, took the elevator down to the first floor, walked across the lobby to Tower F, took the elevator upto the 25th floor, and then climbed onto the roof there.

Dawn, Tower E (II)

A composite of a couple of photographs (including the one in the first post of the series), with a lot of work using content-aware fill. When I woke-up that morning, and looked outside, I grabbed my camera and headed for the roof.