Photos

This is perhaps the most famous view of Guiyang city centre and yet nobody has uploaded a photo of it yet, so I though I would.

Guiyang is my home for the next 6 months, and in my opinion it's the nicest city in China. Those of you who've visited China you will know that might not mean very much as Chinese cities are in general pretty ugly, industrial and dirty, but Guiyang is in fact a very pleasant city with a lot of interesting areas, things to see and do with a thriving night life. It's also surrounded by lovely countryside which can be seen from within the city. If you get up high you can see the city is surrounded by forested hills which are within walking distance of the centre.

It's home to about 3.5million people, and the capital city of Guizhou province in southern China. Guizhou is one of the poorest provinces in China, though the city itself isn't. The name itself tells you something about the weather in the city. Guiyang means 'expensive sunshine' which refers to the fact that it rains so much here. It rains almost every day for 10 months of the year but in September and October the weather is mild and clear and it's perhaps the best time to visit.

Chinese people love this city though for the climate and it's almost always the first thing people from anywhere in China will mention if you say Guiyang. It's seemingly an important thing in Chinese peoples perceptions of a place. 'Beijing is too hot in summer, too cold in winter - Xi'an the same, Hong Kong is too Humid - Harbin too cold - Xiamen too hot and humid', etc etc. Guiyang they think is perfect!

The Photo:

The shot is actually 6 photos. It's a HDR consisting of 3 exposures of 2 perspectives, stitched together. Shots were taken at -3, -1, +1EV and I'm pretty happy with the result because there are no disco colours or nasty halos. Obviously taken using a tripod, I used 'live view' manual focusing and manually set the exposure to make sure it didn't adjust for the 2 perspectives.

More importantly, let me know what you think!

Thanks for looking! :)