Village Life in Shunde, China

[plchung]

This is another one that I have taken in Shunde, Guangdong Province of China. People are chitchating under the tree. On the whole the village's houses are old and not well-maintained, but amazingly there are many modern vehicles, showing the accumulated wealth and pollution.

Please let me know your thought so that I can improve myself. Thanks a lot.

[Chunk]

This is another one that I have taken in Shunde, Guangdong Province of China. People are chitchating under the tree. On the whole the village's houses are old and not well-maintained, but amazingly there are many modern vehicles, showing the accumulated wealth and pollution.

Please let me know your thought so that I can improve myself. Thanks a lot.

Thanks for posting these. They are well composed and the subjects are quite interesting to me. I really like the textures in the buldings too.
They seem a bit dark in the areas that have the people so I have trouble seeing them. A slight curves adjustment of the darker values opens them up I think.
Nice work. Please post some more.

[Todd Patten]

plchung -- These images are not bad at all. The one with the tree needs something. I don't know exactly what it is. Maybe crop in a bit from the top. The upper 30% of the photo does not lend much to the bottom 70%.

The alley is good. I would burn the sky a bit and increase the contrast.

You have mentioned the contrast of sub-par living conditions, yet people have nice cars. I would love to see that captured on film. It's tells a story of contrast and irony. You have the opportunity to document an area of the world that many here, including myself, simply have not had a chance to observe.

China is on the top of my list of places to visit when my boys get to an age where they can travel -- and not drive me insane. You are fortunate! Can you travel pretty much unabated through China now?

[plchung]

Thanks Todd Patten and Chunk for your valuable comments. Yeah the contrast is great at day time and I guess I need to be more attentive to details and also people (what people are doing). The one on tree is not a very good one actually, and I too think there is something missing here. I was attracted by the big big tree AND the people at the same time. When I took this picture I wanna show the contrast between big (tree) and small (people). But at the same time I also want to catch the kind of feeling that I have when seeing people chitchating under the tree - here I think I need more details and hence closer look at what the people are doing. With too much things to day the picture ends up with nothing unfortunately.

As for China, I rarely go beyong city or urban area. Honestly I have bad impression about Shenzhen, the city close to Hong Kong. There I see chaos, materialism and ambition. That may be superficial, I don't know.

Shunde is a small city when compare with Guangzhou and Shenzhen. ANd the place that I have visited is actually a village. In the past 10 years or so there are only bicycles running on the poorly maintained "road". Now everyone aspire to a car, even though they look like a poor peasant - by using the modernised / western standard.

Yes, we are free to travel around in China, except to certain restricted border area. Come to China and then Hong Kong and you will find more.