Taipei 101

So while I was working in the Taipei office, which happens to be located in Taipei 101, I wanted to take off early one day and hike up 象山, a near by mountain that offers an amazing view of Taipei 101 and the entire Taipei Basin. I've seen some AMAZING pictures taken from there (see http://www.pbase.com/albertjou/g20) which is why I'm so interested in going there to try my hand at taking some pictures. All I needed was a nice clear afternoon and a perfect sunset... Unfortunately there was a thunderstorm EVERY afternoon at about 1:30 sharp... and it'd rain until 5:30 or so which unfortunately killed any chance of me going up the mountain. My last chance was on Friday... but the forecast is the same... rain in the afternoon... Lucky for me, it stayed beautiful all afternoon so I left work a bit early, grabbed my gear and found my way up the mountain. Unfortunately the clouds rolled in as I was hiking up (perfectly clear overhead, but cloudy in the west for the sunset). While the sunset itself wasn't amazing, but it wasn't too bad :).

Days before typhoon...

The days before typhoons typically results in the best weather as the clouds are swept away. I didn't want to let this opportunity to slip by so I had a friend of mine take me on a road trip into the mountains to the south of Taipei near Taoyuan... The weather was indeed spectacular with clear blue skies and scatter clouds that were pure white. It was really breath taking views but I found it really difficult to compose a good photograph to do the view justice... All the pictures I took felt flat and didn't evoke any emotions for the viewer... well, take a look:



With such beautiful weather I then dragged my friend to DaDaoCheng (大稻程) for sunset. The sunset started off great and the place was packed with photographers (people just kept coming on their mopeds one after another, each with a nice SLR and some expensive tripod among other equipment...). But as the sun actually fell below the horizon, the storm clouds gathered and soon was drizzling... Originally I really wanted to get to 象山, a popular mountain near Taipei 101 to photograph all of Taipei basin but that was too far out of the way. From pictures that I've seen, it stayed clear and beautiful for the entire sunset there. Oh well.



Finally on the day that typhoon was suppose to make landfall in southern Taiwan, I decided to sneak out in the morning for some quick photograph (really scouting) at the water museum (自來水博物館). It has become a popular place for portrait (especially engagement/wedding photos).