Revisiting the familiar

July 21, 2014 Tigerotor77Wboneyard, Botany Bay, Cove Inlet, moonrise, Mt. Pleasant, Pitt St., Ravenel bridge, Sunrise, Sunset, supermoon2 Comments

In my time here so far, my two favorite places to photograph in the Charleston area are the Ravenel Bridge and Botany Bay. The bridge is simply majestic, though I don’t feel like I’ve depicted its full grandeur yet. Botany Bay at sunrise is the closest definition of tranquility that I’ve found here. Naturally, it’s difficult to photograph the boneyard at Botany Bay from a place other than Botany Bay, but there’s plenty of vantage points for the bridge. One week ago, I decided to check out a new location to shoot the bridge at sunset.

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Everything under the sun

July 6, 2014July 20, 2014 Tigerotor77WFireworks, Fourth of July, July 4, Mt. Pleasant2 Comments

Early this weekend, I heard a car dealership advertise that it stocked “everything under the sun.” Overthinker that I am, I read into the statement and wondered how accurate it was. Turns out, this is an interesting pun because a) there is actually quite a lot to do in the Carolinas and b) the sun is out a lot here, making it possible to actually do a lot of the “quite a lot to do.”

Of course, for the July 4 Mt. Pleasant fireworks, neither analysis was particularly relevant, but the double entendre didn’t go unnoticed through the rest of the sunny weekend on a boat (!). There were a few times where red, white, and blue fireworks were in the air at the same time, but unpatriotically I managed to catch only one such explosion (detonation? I really have no idea how these incendiary terms work).

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Following the storm

July 4, 2014 Tigerotor77WDaniel Island, Fireworks, Sunset, Wando River, Wando River bridge4 Comments

The curious will note that a large number of my post titles are actually plays on words — water ways and waterways, “paw prints” as impressions of the Lion City, “essence of” vs. “a sense of” the Smokies, etc — and this one is no different. I didn’t actually follow Hurricane Arthur (thankfully hardly impacting Charleston) northward, but I was anxious to see if its aftermath would make for a decent sunset. After work on Independence Day-eve, I ventured out to see if there would be any color after the storm.

Although the forecast had called for only 30% cloud cover by sundown, clouds along the low horizon dampened my hopes for anything too impressive. The sun dropped into a clear zone before disappearing again above the trees, but then the sky started to turn. And kept turning. A photographer I respect wrote a post some time ago about the duality of sunsets: for colorful skies, there are actually two. From this same location earlier this year, I actually missed the second, more colorful one, so this time, between realizing I had a pretty decent vantage point of the Daniel Island fireworks and interested to see how the second colorburst would play out, I stayed for the second sunset.

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Water ways

June 22, 2014 Tigerotor77WBattery Park, Charleston harbor, Charleston skyline, Shem Creek, silhouette, The Battery2 Comments

Although there is a reassuring security about not needing to work against gravity, I enjoy traveling by air because it reveals a different perspective of the Earth — and, yes, because I get to experience some of the finest machinery running today. In over two years in Charleston, I’ve been in the waterways but had not yet been on the waterways. You might call that my oversight and my loss, because the view and the calm of being on the water can be breathtaking.

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Essence of the Smokies

June 3, 2014June 3, 2014 Tigerotor77WCharleston Hiking and Outdoors, Chimney Tops, elk, Elkmont, fireflies, glowworm, glowworm beetle, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Newfound Gap, synchronized fireflies3 Comments

It’s flat in Charleston, but 300 miles to the west-northwest is a string of mountains whose name I still haven’t fully figured out: the Great Blue Smoky Ridge Appalachian Mountains. Among them is one of the few fee-free National Parks: the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I have been there before, but never for watching synchronous fireflies; in fact, I had never even heard of the phenomenon until the Meetup event was posted.

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The Was-Is Conundrum

May 28, 2014 Tigerotor77WBukit Puaka, Central Business District, Gardens by the Bay, Gardens by the Bay East, Marina Bay Sands, Marina Bay skyline, Pulau Ubin, Singapore skyline, Singapore urban development3 Comments

This blog was originally intended to a virtual scrapbook, but in my photographic excursions I was increasingly caught off-guard by the emotions, struggles, and fate of actually taking a picture. Clicking the shutter is easy, but the journey to the spot where the shutter is clicked can be rewarding if only personally. Fortunately for me, a blog allows me to share those thoughts with my future self — unfortunately for brevity and pith, I now have a place to share the inner workings of my mind with whoever reads this globally.

It is perhaps then without much surprise that my trip to Singapore was not just impressions of a Tiger City. In hindsight, what attracts me to Singapore isn’t its national airline, delicious food, or status as a quasi-Westernized gateway to a very much non-Westernized Asia; rather, it’s the wonder that a country so efficient now had to start from something probably far less glamorous. However, in three days of walking around the city, I learned the lesson simply that wide-eyed intentions do not always beget erudition. I started off with the goal of capturing the entire Singapore Bayfront skyline in one photo: Gardens by the Bay, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore Flyer, Esplanade, the Central Business District — it’s all there. But what came before all this?

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Paw prints

May 11, 2014 Tigerotor77WArab Street, Bugis Street, Bugis Village, Flock Café, Masjid Sultan, Palawan Beach, population density, Satay by the Bay, Sentosa, Singapore Harbor, Sultan Mosque, Takashimaya, Tiong Bahru, Tiong Bahru Food CentreLeave a comment

I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but lingering after my first visit was a taste of Singapore that was almost intoxicating. Maybe it had something to do with places that begin with “S” — I’ve returned time and time again to Seattle and Switzerland. This year, I added Singapore to that list. But wait: there are no mountains here, and it’s just as (er, probably even more) humid than in Charleston! What was I thinking?

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A Tale of Tails

May 1, 2014 Tigerotor77W777-300ER, 787-8, All Nippon Airways, ANA, Boeing 777, Boeing 787, Charlotte Douglas, Dreamliner, GE90, JA808A, Sunrise, Tailcone, Tokyo Narita, United AirlinesLeave a comment

In the last year, I’ve been fortunate to fly on four planes I never figured I’d take: N777UA, the 747-8I, the 777-300ER, and, this year, the 787. Over a decade separates the first flight of the 777 from that of the 787, and although the two might look alike at first glance, it’s surprising how little the new plane seems to differ to the unsuspecting passenger. After all — a widebody is a widebody, right?

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