Following on with the family theme, Dad asked me to produce a set of photographs for his website. Very much improvising with a room with a table, a lightshade and a small white wall the above came to be.

The lampshade was nice because it allowed me to bounce an on-camera flash into, through and off it to create a diffused foreground light with no harsh shadows while a 580EX on the white wall behind set on manual full power bleached out the background.

He’s a creative director for Messerli in Switzerland, who I do some work for as well on occasion, but he is available for high-profile freelance exhibition design assignments. Go check out his website, he’s talented to say the least.

Yeah, it’s my little sister. So nice seeing her grow up - I think I appreciate having a little sibling a lot more now I’m a bit older. She’s a bit funny with me but I suppose it’s to be expected as I only see her once every few months but she’s very cute. I gave her 5 Franks and she toddled off to the shop in the Strandbad to get an ice-cream or “glacee” as they’re called in Switzerland.

On the little children note - I’d forgotten how hard they are to photograph, talk about moody

Some last bits and pieces I found that I thought belonged on here from Beijing. I’m in Switzerland at the moment visiting my Dad and my Sister which is nice! Flying back to the UK this evening.

Photos of note include the photo of the soldiers outside the closing ceremony. They didn’t want any trouble, which explains the massive tank outside the grounds ^_^ Oh the chinese looove their tanks.

The Olympics Closing Ceremonies were pretty awesome - I took a photo and stitched it together above to give a feel of the kind of view we had - in the second row, pretty much right on the pitch.

It was emotional seeing the olympic flame extinguished, marking the end of the 29th Olympic games but at the same time good to see the handover to London, with Boris Johnson riding around the track on a bicycle.

We ended up on international TV a few times which was wicked and pretty funny as well, there’s nothing better than getting a load of messages from people saying “omg you were on TV!”.

I’ve added my favourite photos from the ceremony below:

Just a few HDR images of the Great Wall very very early in the morning. We managed to get on the wall before it opened which was, in one word, awesome. Sunrise at one of the world’s most amazing structures was an experience I will remember my whole life.

This place is actually pretty crazy. It’s the first culture I’ve been in where I’m like wtf, I genuinely have no idea how to react to people and what to do when people talk to me.

We went to the Great Wall this morning. And I mean morning. We were there at 3.30am (work reasons which I can’t disclose). It was magical to see the approaching light of dawn reveal more and more of the wall. Unfortunately we were in a valley so I didn’t get the shots I would have liked to get but it’s not the end of the world. It’s a crazy place, it stretches on practically forever and feels like it hasn’t really changed much in the last 1,000 years or so. The steps are uneven and dangerous and a lot of the time I have no idea how they managed to build sections of it.

I talked to a Chinese guy today who shall remain anonymous for obvious reasons. He told me how the Chinese government are “comforting” the Tibetan monks, just like they did a few hundred years ago when they built pagodas for them in Beijing. No mention of the whole “let’s kill all the monks” thing then. No surprises there…

I talked to him afterwards and he told me that he doesn’t really believe what the government-run media tells him. He just seemed scared that someone would notice he doesn’t believe 100% in the government. This country is run by fear and you can smell it in the air wherever you go. The chinese government have perfected the whole “disappearing” trick, and I don’t mean it in the sense of Abra-cadabra.

I also found out that unofficially most countries were blocked from Visa applications for the Olympics to prevent them coming and causing trouble or protesting. The same man I talked to above told me that France, Spain and Italian citizens had all been completely blocked from coming to China for the Olympics. Of course that’s just word-of-mouth but I can’t help but notice the complete and utter absence of any westerners not part of a corporate outfit of some kind or another.

I’m going to post some photos and some more commentary later, got a lot on right now and crazy busy and we’re going to Beijing’s most famous Restaurant, the Beijing Duck in about 20 minutes and I still need a shower!

Laters… 

Above: Beijing Airport

Arrived safely, hellish long flight unfortunately but I made my transfer from Manchester -> Heathrow -> Beijing successfully.

I’ve decided to post some images from my trip here on my blog - nothing work-related as I’m not allowed to but it’s so far removed from the western culture that I’m used to that I think it might make interesting reading now or in a few year’s time.

Arrived in Beijing airport this morning at 09:00 local. That would be about 02:00 GMT. Nice. Not much jet lag as I slept on the plane though.

This photo was taken out the window of the bus that was taking us to the Hotel:

Talking of flights, I never truly appreciated how big a 747 is inside until now. They are HUGE. It felt like flying in, I don’t know, a tennis court.

Went down to the Olympic green today. Interesting place, a few quite interesting corporate stands as well!

The Johnson & Johnson pagoda:

The olympic flame:

There was also the usual Chinese oddities, including some amazing development planning right here:

The description of boxing as an Olympic sport was also very interesting. Weird, but interesting:

I’ll be updating with some more tidbits soon Go Team GB!