April 25, 2004
Yangtze River Bridge, Nanjing, China
I spent 19 days travelling around China, from mid-September to early October 2002. Even with nearly three weeks, I barely scratched the surface of modern China, let alone its past.
One of our stops was Nanjing, a city whose name some of you may recognize. For those who don't, you may find it interesting to google upon the Nanjing Massacre or the rape of Nanjing.
The city lies along the 3900 mile river Yangtze, one of the siltiest rivers in the world. It's so silty that in the '50s, foreign engineers said building a bridge spanning its mile width would be impossible — the riverbed was just too soft. (It's also so silty that the new Yangtze Dam we've all heard about has a maximum lifespan of 100 years, but that's a post for another day.)
The Chinese, being who they are, built one on their own anyway, which opened on a proud day for them in '68. Though it spans a mile of water, it's four miles long, leaving quite a bit over land. Looking landward from underneath the bridge underscores modern China's architectural fascination with artificially long, straight lines.
Click the link below to read details about the photo itself.
Lies, damned lies, and photography.
I almost feel guilty about this one. But, I don't think I've stepped over the line of falsifying anything, so I shouldn't feel too bad.
There were two changes to the original, and both are subtle enough that it'd be hard to pick out from just this shot. First, the greenery was underexposed, so the scene was 'flash-filled' to bring out those elements. The second is both more subtle and more invasive. The arches you see above are very tall, check out the man in distance get the sense of scale. They're so tall, in fact, that in the original photo they appear angle inward at the top, very slightly, due to perspective. I wanted to maintain a rectangular feel throughout the entire photo (to help contrast the organics), so I removed the perspective and barrel distortion introduced by the camera. (I tried to at least; there's still a bit left in there.)
This is a standard technique for architectural photos, and can be done with a special (and quite expensive!) camera setup, so I think I'm still on the side of reality. But this is about as far as I feel comfortable treading, I think.
You can see the original here to get a feel for what I did to it.
Posted by Ray at April 25, 2004 05:31 PM | TrackBack
wonderful