Myanmar: Mandalay

U Bein Bridge Mandalay

U Bein Bridge Mandalay

From Heho airport we headed to Mandalay, the second largest city in Myanmar and another old bygone Burmese capital.  It is the economic hub of upper Myanmar with a population of over 1 million and on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River.  It is a relatively young city being founded in 1857 by King Mindon, from 1885-1948 it was under British Colonial control and it was devastated during World War II and invaded by the Japenese.  Subsequently it deteriorated and indeed destroyed by extensive fires in the 1980s which significantly changed the physical and ethnic make up of the city with a large Chinese influx. So it has a quite modern if run down feel to its architecture. There was still some great sights for us to visit.  We visited a nunnery where we were served lunch by the nuns, some amazing pagodas, monasteries, markets, lacquer and other workshops and small local villages.  One interesting trip involved a very short boat trip across a river where we were met by a few horse and small carriages to take us through the country side. While we sat waiting on the carriage to take off a little girl came up to us and tried to sell us some local trinkets.  She was a lovely little girl, quite insistent and with her few words of English would say "you remember me, I remember you!" which sounded very funny and nearly like a threat.

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But we thought "aw well we will be on our way soon, and she will be gone, and can't pester us again!".  Eventually the drivers mount up and we head off and we wave bye-bye to our little selling girl.  Only for about 2 minutes later we hear a bicycle bell and the now familiar chant "Hi, you remember me, I remember you!", and she followed us all the way to the wooden Bagaya Monastery.  Fortunately, she wasn't allowed in the grounds of the monastery, but after our visit and we mounted up, and each carriage was again chaperoned by our own personal persistent trinket sellers!

While we were in Mandalay there was one of the regular religious lunar festivals.  The Buddhist religious communities rely on alms and during these festivals thousands of monks come to some of the more religious pagodas and the local communities give alms and gifts which can vary from small amounts of food, to money to electrical appliances and in one case we saw a decorated car being driven for donation at one of the festivals.  Mike and Keith got up very early and our guide brought them along and it apparently it was an amazing sight to see.

One of the greatest sights of Mandalay is the legendary U Bein bridge, built in 1782, and it spans for 1.2 km across he shallow Taungthaman Lake and it is said to be the longest teak bridge in the world.  We were taken out by boat on the water at sunset and it is an amazing sight to see as the son sets down behind it.

Our final destination was Bagan, but this time it was a minibus drive of 250km to our next destination.

New Blurb Book

I've created, ordered and received my new Blurb book.  I've gone again for the large format and included some of my favourite images at the moment.  Which comes to over 150 pages.  I have to say that Blurb has a great product, the quality is very good and it's a great way to get some of your images off the PC and onto paper so that people can actually see them. Blurb

Preview here.

On our own doorstep - Malahide

Sometimes you don't realise the great facilities you have in your own area, usually you don't discover these until you have a visitor to bring around.  But today Sharon decided to take her mum around the Castle Gardens in Malahide Castle.  I tagged along and we had a great afternoon finished off with a great lunch in Avoca they certainly know how to do food! The gardens themselves are kept beautifully and so much larger than I thought they would be.  With the sun occasionally peeking out we wandered around the peaceful and tranquillity that are the gardens.  Unfortunately my camera battery ran out but here are some of the photos:

Bilbao photography trip

It's been a very busy period the last 6 weeks and I haven't had a chance to say a few words about our trip to Bilbao at the start of June. Seven members from Malahide Camera Club joined Iñaki Hernandez-Lasa for a very successful architectural photography workshop in his home town of Bilbao, Northern Spain. Unfortunately the weather didn't play ball with us and the sun didn't shine for as often or as long as we would have liked. In fact due to lightening on the runway we had to have two goes at landing. However, once we made it there we had a fantastic time. Bilbao has amazing architecture and it is a beautiful city which is easy to get around. On top of that the food is world class. It was great to have Iñaki who knew all the best places to go. He had arranged a great itinerary although the rain did manage to upset a couple of outings! But the gang were determined to make the best of it and they did, but what happens on tour stays on tour!

So here are a few shots from the trip.

Portrait Shoots

A few of us from the club had a couple of sessions for portrait shoots and here are some of the images that I took.

Still Life competition

This month the club competition was still life and I had some fun taking a few table top shots:

Photography Gadgets - Portable Photo Storage

As photographers we are always enticed to buy more and more gadgets, be they lenses, flashes, lights, modifiers, filters, software, triggers, tripods, bags etc etc and of course they all make our photography better, even though they usually get left in the bag if they even make it that far! Well here is one gadget that I'm glad I bought, and it's a few years now since I got it, December 2010 to be exact, and with cameras like the D800 producing files of over 36mb it's proving more valuable.  nextodi ND2700

It's a Portable Photo/Video Storage device.  Mine is the Nexto ND2700, also referred to as eXtreme, see here for details.  An old link at this stage but it gives you all the details of how it works.  It is really useful when travelling and answers the question of how will I store my images while I'm away from home.  Will I bring numerous cards, or a laptop/netbook, and additional external storage or all three.  When I travel I like to make it light and bring as little as possible and this device weights only 240g and measures 127mm x 76mm x 22mm, barely bigger than the 160gb 2.5" SATA hard drive I have in it.  Of course you can put in a bigger drive if you wish.  To back up your card all you need to do is insert your card into one of the two slots.  One slot for CF cards and another for SD/SDHC/MMC/MS/xD devices.   Via the USB port you can also connect your Card Reader, Video or Camera.   You simply either copy or move your files across which the system will verify and it is very fast,  my 16gb CF card takes about 5-7 minutes to copy and verify.  You cannot see the images but the LCD panel will show you the file structures and what files are on it.

To get your images off the storage device on to your computer you connect via the USB or eSATA port.  I also use it to back up my video files.  The ND2700 cost me about €210 from Amazon but it has now been superseded by the ND2700 on which you can see your images on the colour LCD as well as other technical updates.  Nexto also provide professional solutions for video backup.  Their websites are not the greatest but that is probably due to translation from Korean, their American web site is http://www.nextodi.com/ and their UK website: http://nextodi.co.uk/.

There are different devices out there try Adorama or B&H Video Photo.