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Mandalay is the second-largest city and the last royal capital of Burma. Located 445 miles (716 km) north of Yangon on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River, the city has a population of one million, and is the capital of Mandalay Region. Mandalay is the economic hub of Upper Burma and considered the center of Burmese culture. Mandalay is also known for its monks. Half of the country’s monks reside in Mandalay and surrounding areas. After our flight from Yangoon, we went directly to “Marble Street”. It’s a street where most marble buddha statues are made. They are made by men with drills and angle grinders and then polished by hand by the women. The entire street is filled with marble dust, it’s everywhere. We stayed for about 1 hour...

Friday evening, my wife and I went to see the exhibit of Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz island. We choose the evening tour because it let us combine the exhibit and an a photoshoot of the city with the Christmas light from Alcatraz. The tour boat left at 3:20pm with plenty of time for looking at the exhibit before the sunset at 4:51pm. December is the best month to go to Alcatraz to photograph the city’s christmas lights. It’s a unique vintage point and relatively close. I love doing panorama of the city while there. You need to sign up for an evening tour otherwise you have to leave the island before 5pm. Only evening tour people can stay and take the last boat of the day at 6:40pm. One of the side benefit of seeing the @Large exhibit is the fact that it is...

A common question I get is: What is Burning Man? It’s a very difficult question to answer because everyone has a different answer of what Burning Man is for him or her (even if he/she has never been to Burning Man). So rather than trying to describe Burning Man in general, I’m going to answer a couple of common questions I get every time. Disclaimer: this is my view of Burning Man. Why do I go to Burning Man? If you search or read news articles about Burning Man, you will find that it is a festival in the Nevada desert where young people are doing drugs and are naked. Ok I’m over simplifying it but raunchy pictures and drug use seems to sell paper much more than taking about the incredible art pieces that are built and burned. For me, Burning...

If you don’t know, my family comes from the Pyrenees region. A small town on the road to the Tourmalet pass (for you cyclists). A couple weeks ago, I spent a week there to see my family and I took a couple pictures. I did not take that many pictures because I was, one, busy visiting my family and two, the weather was not cooperating and three my brother, who lives there and is a professional photographer, has better images anyway. Lourdes is a town known for the apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1858. Since that time, pilgrims comes to Lourdes to pray. One of the great moment, is the night time procession with candles. This year, one of the largest procession happened to coincide with the full moon. When the full moon was rising, I framed it...

Tonight I went out to take pictures of the full moon. I have always wanted an image of the Hoover tower that is on Stanford campus. After studying the campus map, I came up with only one potential good location but there was no parking nearby and if you know the Stanford campus, it’s pretty hard to park. I found a parking spot almost 1 mile away but I figured that with enough time I would be able to walk to my location in time. I did not know that the path I was planning on using is closed for renovation and the bridge over the San Francisquito creek is also closed. After going around (even cutting thru the golf course) and not finding any options, time was running out. Moon rise happens at a very precise time and it does not wait. When all your plans fail,...

This blog is now 2 years old. Time flies when you are having fun. Honestly it started as an experience for sharing some of my images more quickly. I’m not a writer at all, but somehow I kept updating my blog. Thanks in no small part to my wife, who is spellchecking each and every one of my posts. Overall it’s a success, I wrote 78 (including this one) posts which is way more than I had even dreamed of. As a thank to you my reader, I would like to give you my favorite image of 2014 in high resolution (3440×1280) for your own computer wallpaper: Among the most popular posts, if you have missed one:   Short Trip Series: Antelope Canyon (Las Vegas to Page, AZ) San Francisco Photo Spot series: The Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco Photo Spot...