The autumn here in Vancouver is quite beautiful because of it's splendid colors. Most trees here, mainly maples, would have three or more difference colors during Fall--green, yellow, red, etc. It might already be too late to realize the beauty for me. Most leaves are falling these days so that I have to seize the last several days of the colorful season. I don't know if I still could stay in vancouver in the next Fall.

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Yellowstone National Park locates at the border of Montana and Wyoming. The main features of the park are the yellow rocks, geysers, hot springs and wild animals. Under strong sunshine, it is better to under expose 2/3 to 1 stop after evaluation metering. The pictures from yellowstone are quite colorful. My WA zoom lens now is sufficient for the scenary.

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Glacier National Park locates at the border of USA and Canada. The spectacular landscape is the main character of the park, including high mountains, blue and clear lakes and large forest. Most times, it is quite difficult to record the beauty of that spectacular scenary with camera. At least, my WA zoon lens, which is 27.4mm equivalent, can not capture all that I want to include. Although everyday is sunny day when I was in Glacier, which is supposed to be good for taking pictures, the dynamics of the cloud made the exposure quite difficult. Also because the limit of storage space, I have to use media format rather than RAW so that it is difficult to get high tolerance.

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July 1st is the national day of Canada. Normally there will be parade in downtown Vancouver and some performance at Canada Place. During the day time, I, together with some friends, I went to the Golden Ears National Park for BBQ. Lucky enough, we got sunny day and beautiful scenary. There were quite a lot of people around the lake for BBQ and you can feel the strong atmosphere of the holiday. Although it is already July, you still can see those mountain tops in distance, covered with snow.

When we got back to downtown, it was already after 7pm. There is no an performce in the Canada place, so I just took some pictures of some buildings around Canada Place to finish the day.

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It was really a short vist to the city, I only spend one day there. I just got the free ride from my friend. It also provide me the opportunity to fetch my new camera from a friend of mine there. The short vist is just a BTW. ^_^

Although I used my new camera to shoot those picture, I know nothing about it. Most of the pictures are terrible in exposure. Fortunately, the DSLR provide me with enough freedom to use Photoshop to compensate the error in exposure. When I saw the outcome, I was really shocked by the sharpness and smoothness of the overall picture.

On the other hand, it was my first time of street shooting. I have never shoot a city before. But I start to love this topic because those pictures convey much more information to the audience than those pure scenary ones. A modern city has its own history, culture and people.

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These pictures are taken using digital camera-- Nikon CP2100 with resolution of 2.0 mega pixels. It is just a camera for family use and is quite cheap. But the metreing system is incredibling good. Anyway, in order to get good visual effect, I did some modification on the level of the image using some image processing softwares. I was actually amazed by the pictures after the processing. I can not believe the pictures were originally taken by a very normal digital camera.

Those pictures were taken in the Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver. The weather was very good that day. It snowed for two days before that.

The park locates at a residential region. It is a small park, but because the region is high rise, you can overlook the city of Vancouver at the highest part of the park. Because of the good weather, the cloud and the light of the dawn was really incredibly beautiful.

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Those pictures were the first time I use positive films(slide). All the pictures were scanned by professional film scanner. The color and the definition of these pictures are really amazing. From then on I often use slides rather than normal films.

Of course, the color of Jiu Zhai Gou is really incredible. It is really like a legendary land. You can not imagine how pure of the colors, especially the color of the water. It locates at the central part of China, in Sichuan Province. There, all the lakes are called "Son of the Sea" because people there haven't seen the sea and do hope to see the sea some day. The color of those lakes are either pure blue or pure green. It was a pity that it rained when I was there. Also summer is not the best time to visit Jiu Zhai Gou. Fall is the best time because the trees will have different color rather than green then.

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I took the course of "Photography Technology" during the fall session of 2002 in my four year in university. The most interesting part of this class is to let the students experience the whole process to take a picture starting from shooting to developing and enlargement. Shoot with colored film and black&whie film is quite different. It is the light that matters in black&white films. I need to think twice before shooting becaues the direct visual image of the surroundings could not be directly reflected in the B&W film. Anyway, B&W film has its own charm. Unfortunately, it is difficult for me to use B&W film because the developing fee is too expensive and also I do not have the equipment to develop it myself.

After the experience of using SLR in August 2002, I am getting more and more familiar with Seagull DF300x. Especially, I know how to use meters. In Oct. I got my second SLR, which is Minolta 300X. Actually, the design of DF300x is adopted from Minolta 300X. So, I quickly get accostomed to the new equipment.

I start to take photos in the beautiful city I live--Hangzhou. Although I haven't been to many cities in China, I still believe that Hangzhou is the most beautiful city because of the "West Lake" and the mountains around it. It is an ideal city to study, to talk about love and to enjoy life. The city has quite unique scenaries in each season. It always rains in Spring, like the winter in Vancouver. The days are always sunny in fall and winter. Among the four seasons, I love fall the best. The weather and the scenary make me feel relaxed and joyful.

The best way to release my presure is by walking around the "West Lake". The winter also has good weather, but it is too cold because it is too humid. As I can recall, it did snow for years. But, luckily, in the winter of 2002, it snowed three times, which made me quite exited to go out to shoot. ^_^

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In the summer of 2002, I use SLR to take photos for the first time. The equipment I used was Seagull DF300X and the kit lens of 28-70mm. Actually, I was not familiar with SLR at all then. I even don't know how to use meters. So, when I took the pictures, I set all the exposure parameters according to my novice experience. Thanks to the sunny days in L.A., some pictures are still acceptable.^_^ When I saw the pictures when I was back to China, I was totally attracted by the definition, the color and the depth of field. From then on, I thought I could not shoot without SLR.

During that trip, I had been to New Orleans and L.A.. New Orleans is actually a small town. But it is a famous tour city.

The boat cruise on the Mississippi, the night bars in "French Quarter" and the fantastic Jazz music are the three most splendid thing in the city. Differ from New Orleans, L.A. is really a huge city. It spreads over on the west coast of USA. There are quite a lot place of interest to go. The "Disney Land", the "Universal Studio", the "Six Flag", the "Hollywood", the "Huntington Library"...

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