Oh Hey!
A big, big thanks to everyone who has offered words of encouragement so far. I’m flattered by each and every visit to the site, and humbled by the all the kind comments. I will always find photography intrinsically satisfying, but having external support doesn’t hurt : )
Also, an update on the site format:
-I think I am going to scale back my update rate a bit, from seven days a week to a regular Monday-through-Friday workweek. I’m afraid that continuing to need seven good pictures a week will hang over my head as more of a burden than anything. If that becomes the case then I worry my enjoyment of photography, the aforementioned intrinsic value, and also quite possibly the quality of the pictures will decline. So, expect fresh updates every morning of the workweek and I promise they’ll be good!
-As for I.E. compatibility, I still don’t think we’re there yet, so hold tight. (As a side question, are any of you users/viewers having any other problems in accessing parts of the site?)
-There’s been an inquiry or two into getting prints of photos. Give me a week and I’ll try to have something figured out. (Thanks for your interest! Again, quite the humbling experience.)
One last note– I don’t usually comment on the stories behind my own photos here, but in anticipation of questions as to the title of ‘Double Meaning’, I will explain.
In the Chinese Mandarin language, there are relatively few sounds. The result is that a single given sound can be shared between several characters, yet each character can have quite different meanings. For example, ‘Fei’ (with the first tone- a higher-pitched, sustained tone) could be found in 非常 ‘Feichang’, literally ‘not + usual’ but meaning ‘extremely’, or 飛機 ‘Feiji’, literally ‘to fly + machine’ but meaning airplane. With this example, there isn’t (to my knowledge) a lot of room for ambiguity. A speaker wouldn’t hear ‘Feiji’ and mistake the ‘fei’ for the one in ‘feichang’, and thus conclude that someone had said ‘not + machine’.
However, when you employ the entire (vast) language, some great puns or double-entendres can be achieved. Take the ‘Double Meaning’ picture for example. The hotel is called ‘Yi Gan’ (both fourth tone, a sharply falling tone); the characters literally translate (more or less) to ‘Leisurely River’. This is in itself, an innocent, if not a bit bland, name for a hotel. EXCEPT, ‘Yi Gan’ with the same tones (but different characters) can mean ‘A place to [have sex]’. In the spirit of keeping this website family-friendly, I’ll let you use your imagination on what ‘Gan’ actually means, but here’s a hint: it’s a very common four-letter word in English, starting with ‘F’.
You’ll have to excuse the crudeness of my example in illustrating the great intricacies and subtleties of the Chinese language. In my defense, I took the picture long before my roommate helped me with the translation. Yet as the building’s facade suggests, it doesn’t take a dirty mind to imagine what goes on there. So if you’re going to be concerned about the corruption of anybody, let it be toward the hotel owner who chose such a blatant pun with which to christen his hotel.
And on that note, I’m off to the Taizhong harbor! Crossing fingers for a pretty sunset.
High fives all around,
-Daniel