May 30, Yanqi - Korla - Tarim River

We have to witness Neo separate from his son, I am sorry for them, it is a job that Neo has to move forward, a story of millions happen in many countries, particular China, with such population, fast growing economic.....we all look forward.
Soon, after leaving the downtown area of Yanqi 焉耆 the Landcruiser enter the highway leading us to endless sand, trees becomes very rare, Neo told us, we are entering into the desert area. We are driving towards Korla 庫爾勒 The boarder area of desert is not that pretty, far away from those beautiful image published, but we are getting there.
Fast moving on the highway, with both side endless sands, we have to admit that this is kind of boring, so we have to find topics to chat around, talk talk talk, and naps in between, eventually the target focus on we have to find something to eat, this idea gets everyone's attention - except my Pook who does not understand Chinese, so she is the last one to cheer. This is the first time Pook on a trip in Muslim world (sort of, in large part), even though there is really not much choice besides the Muslim meal, she actually quite enjoy the local food. Then began the hunt, so we stop a few times, checking out the kitchen - don't fancy the kitchen in this area, it is in the middle of nowhere, kitchen means a brick stove on open air, with beat up wok which you can't tell the color from the coal they use to fire the stove. But, Muslim people is very clean, I trust them with the food, and everyone seemed so. To give an idea what it is, shot by compact Canon G10.And like most of the Chinese family, a too-familiar scene, Mom cooking, and kids running around. The 2 cute boys of the cooking mom. In China, one baby system is still practiced, among Han people, but for minors in Xinjiang, they can have more. Canon G10.The house they live in.We don't have problem with her cooking, but we are looking for other choice, I made the proposal; "....let's find some noodle..", so noodle it is. We continue to drive ahead, looking for noodle.
And we found it. A nicely set up restaurant, and a busy - although dark, working kitchen. I grab a compact Sigma DP-1 for snap shot, and a Canon G10 - this time just for video clip, sneak into the kitchen, make a series of images and a full record of our meal making. This is an image took while I walk by the hall way (OK, to be frankly, to the restroom), with DP-1. I confess that I am a huge fan of Canon G10, but I will not lie that for pure image quality, DP-1 is by a mile a better photography camera. Get use to it, and it produce astonishing quality image, something I don't understand why others don't follow suit. At the time of this writing, Leica has its offering in name of X1. something to look forward to.The waiter, and helper in the kitchen, unlike many Han Chinese, is not camera shy. He pose for me with 2 bowls on his head!The cook and his wife, working on our Xinjiang noodle. And the secret of such delicious noodle, it really took efforts to work on the flour to get the taste that let us remember forever!One proof that the food is so good is that I simply could not stop to take time to make shots on what we ate, each of us took 2 big bowls, including my Pook.
Time to move on, now we are goting to Tarim 塔里木, and to see the Tarim River 塔里木河.

May 30, Hejing - Yangi

It is a more relaxed day. With much warmer last night, a good hotel, we met each other at the breakfast hall, given such a small city Hejing 和靜 is, it is a large selection, something you can always expect in when travel in China, even in Xinjiang. I must although overall there is a large difference between the quality of living in cities in more developed area and small cities in Xinjiang, the public infrastructure is well built, except the sanitation area still left much to be desired. Hejing is Neo home town, for the first night of the trip so far, he is not with us, and we started to miss him. But Neo did not let us wait, he came by the breakfast hall. We are ready to move.
It is going to be a long ride, with not much landscape diversity, because we are moving toward the desert area. We will be stopping by a small city, Yanqi 焉耆, where his son is there, and we are all going to see him!
We stop by a gas station, a truck also parked along our car, I saw the sheep packed in the cargo bay, jump onto the truck, took the picture! "Sheep for trade!" It is a mixed of emotion, these people live on these sheep, depend on them, little choice of not to, we called ourselves human being, atop on the food chain and somehow claim right to do so. These sheep are not depend on human, they depend on nature! May be in more ways than we do, because we took advantage of other species, or so-call command of food-chain, so we are less direct rely on nature. I am not so sure if these sheep felt their and saw their fate. May be, may be not.
Continue on our journey, moving slowly! In Xinjiang, the traffic rule is very strict, it allow often only 30-40km/hr when cruising on the city road, Neo told us, "....because Xinjiang is so big, they cannot allow the driver to drive faster than what seemingly a slow limit, to avoid serious tragic...", there is a logic there, but the logic makes people asleep as well, and so we stop to take some pictures. This one, shot on the road side, with a Canon G10, fill with the built-in flash. After extended use, one has to give Canon a credit to develop a compact yet powerful camera like G10. It delivers almost the same quality of those compact film camera could, such as those gems like Contax T2 and T3, there were my favorite, and should I still use that much film, for sure to still keep them. Anyway, entering into digital, Contax in fact also introduce a digital compact, the TV-S which without doubt I also have it and did great image with it, a pity such a beautiful camera discontinued by a discontinued camera brand. What a shame on Kyocera. But of course Kyocera will say "this is business", and it proved that Kyocera is not wrong, should they continue on the Contax line, they may be in greater trouble, so this is more sad than shame. May be it is just bad fortune. In the history of camera making and optical developing, Contax as a whole did more right than wrong, praise by those not even use them, envied by those who did not own them, but this is not enough to keep a good brand name today. Enough camera talk!
Back on to highway, we finally arrive Yanqi, Neo met his son, we all met his son, and we all share the joy!
This is Neo and his son!We are sorry for Neo! His duty made his time with his son so short, and we are the reason this time. For what may be just 5 minutes, Neo took us on road again, moving toward our destination today, Tarim 塔里木, and the famous river runs by - Tarim River 塔里木河.

May 29 Leaving Bayanbulak to Baluntai to Hejing

Finally got what we want, and it is time to move on. Bayanbulak is a beautiful place, actually a little sad when we finally have to move on. But surely, the expectation to look for new scenery ahead of us soon overcame the sadness, besides, we got up early this morning, it is time to eat! Taken this image just in front of the small restaurant we stopped to eat our breakfast, weather is getting better and warmer. Using my compact Sigma DP-1, processed the raw file using Adobe Lightroom 2.1, one of my favorite editing software, and the platform I use whenever Capture One Pro did not support, for example the Sigma DP-1 and the DP-2.
And this image, also with the Sigma DP-1, took seconds before we move on the long and straight Xinjiang highway, toward Baluntai 巴侖台.This one, Neo on the driving seat, as always, moving toward to what seemed to be an endless highway. I could not resist, took a nap.And then this is the most important tip I will give to all - "Before you delete and format your compact flash or SD card, check and check again, and before you hit the enter key, check again." I can now advise anyone how important it is to double check and triple check, because I did not. And I lost some great image here, not only the beautiful landscapes, but also the feast Neo prepare for us, a whole roast sheep! For what it worth, Neo is treating us a meal of a lifetime. As fast as Chinese development is, not everyone benefit the same. Neo makes his living giving travel guide, often on the driving seat of his Landcrusier, hours and hours drive, stop whenever we want to take a picture, on or off-road. And this meal, cost him a good portion of the money he could make from this trip, too good to take, but Neo insist. I felt particular sorry because I lost the image of this wonderful meal, the video of the roasting process. We all eat, drink, and eat more, drink more.
Finally, we will have a good hotel to stay tonight, and after the wonderful meal, we are moving to Hejing 和靜, Neo's home town. We stay at a nice hotel, and before entering into the hotel, we saw a small desert storm, we quickly ran into the hotel, and needless to say, I lost the image of the desert storm, it was gone along with the "empty trash" command on my mac, stupid me. Good news is the hotel does have cable for high speed internet, bad news is even though I am able to download the image rescue software to try to retrieve the lost images, some came back, many did not.
No more image to entertain for this day and I will be careful for next, this is the location map of Hejing and its relation with other Xinjiang cities. Map Here.

May 29 Morning, Bayanbulak 巴音布魯克

And we got an early wake up, remain half sleep in the car, 2 hours later we arrived the spot we came in the first day, cold, but we are ready to enter the field!
Bayanbulak morning presents a different beauty. Serene, tranquil, somewhat cold, but it was the kind of cold before warmth. I took 2 Nikon with me, a D3X with 24-70 zoom and a D3 with 70-200 zoom, walked on the frost covered grassland, composing the scenery surrounded me. And by the way, a compact Canon G10 in my pocket.
This image, taken with Nikon D3X + AF-S 24-70/2.8G ED. Quiet early morning allows the water in this small pond a total stillness.

Thin ice on the water, although this is in early summer, Bayanbulak can still get quite cold during the night. I snap this image using the Canon G10 inside my pocket, although a small camera, it is capable of capturing nice detail image. As I have repeat perhaps too many times, keep a pocket camera such as Canon G10 in your pocket when traveling, or whenever you go, is not a bad idea. My Canon G10 has proved its value over and over, at least it is to me. I have absolutely no problem shooting with it side by side with larger DSLR or even medium format digital cameras. And speaking of pocket size, without question, the Sigma Dp-1 that I also bring along, or the DP-2 I bought after this trip, is even a better option.
A buffalo crossing the pond. Shot with Nikon D3X and AF-S VR 70-200/2.8G IF-ED.Also shot with Nikon D3X with the 70-200/2.8 zoom, capture this pair of duck cruising on the river.With the temperature getting warmer, the clear and bright view in front of us is a majestically display of high mountain ranges, Xinjiang, such beautiful, and in such grand scale, also shot with Nikon D3X and 70-200/2.8 zoom.Frosted grasses under the warm morning sun. Shot with Canon G10.A wild dog crossing the water, this image shot with Nikon D3X with AF-S VR 70-200/2.8G IF-ED.Thin ice remained on the surface of small stream. Canon G10.A lonely yak looking over the horizon. Capture with Canon G10.My lovely wife, Pook, climbed on the steep hill to try to get a better point of image making, with her G10.spring just on the road side, clear, I drank it, nice!

May 28, Bayanbulak 巴音布魯克

Finally reach our destination, one of the highlight of this trip - Bayanbulak 巴音布魯克. Our ultimate goal , the sunset shot over the winding rivers 九曲十八灣. After a few days of poor weather, we arrived Bayanbulak city last night, along the way witnessed greatly improved weather, beautiful sky, and of course lots of pictures.
We left our hotel early afternoon, saw the clear sky, and the formation of clouds starts to worry us again. Debates begun as our location, where we projected the sun will set, the clouds, uncertainty develped in our mind if we will get the sunset shot we want, or more specifically, Wanbing 萬兵 wanted, this will be where he produce his master piece, as he planed.
We won't know until we get there! And we won't know when sunset eventually happened!
Wondering, our minds still struggle between doubts of the sunset Wanbing dreamed about, and we all wish it to come true; but the beautiful scenery appears in front our eye, one after another, still caught us and too often we stop and take pictures.
While planning the shot with Huang Zhen, my lovely wife took this picture for us from the other spot, by the cliff, with a compact Canon G10. I am the one in the front, closer to the cliff, with Huang Zhen behind me. I was training the Nikon D3X with AF-S 24-70/2.8G ED, on my shoulder was the D3 + AF-S VR 70-200/2.8G. And this is the shot took one hour later, a little further away, using a Nikon D3X with AF-S VR 70-200/2.8G IF-ED, original file size is 10,975X2,775pixels, stitched of 4 captures, using Photoshop CS4 photomerge. During this Xinjiang trip I made use lots of CS4 photomerge for my panoramic works. In comparison to my medium format camera, P45+, although it produced larger and sharper image file, but still, a single shot of 39-million pixels image still cannot compare to the impact of multiple-shot stitch panoramic image using camera such as Nikon D3X.

And shooting sunset picture in Xinjiang is a great pleasure for photographers, big challenge for the drivers, and tiring wait for those who travel with the photographers, in this case, my wife, but luckily, she does enjoy great view, and the process of creativity. Shooting in late May for sunset in Xinjiang, and in Banyanbulak where the spot we are shooting is away from the nearest city hotel we stayed about 2.5 hours. Considering we are waiting for the last light of day, we are well into 10pm of the day, and our dinner time well past 12. Nevertheless, a great image worth every second of getting it done.
This one shot with D3X, with AF-S VR 70-200/2.8G IF-ED.

And this one a 7-shot stitch by Nikon D3X + PC-E Macro 45/2.8.
From the other side of vintage point, with D3X + AF-S VR 70-200/2.8G IF-ED.
Observing the mounting snow storm, Nikon D3X + AF-S VR 70-200/2.8G IF-ED.
And the sunset shot, D3X with PC-E Nikkor 45/2.8ED
And this one, took by my wife while I was training the camera, my beloved Contax 645 and Phase One P45+, mounted with the beautiful Carl Zeiss Super-APO TPP 300/2.8. One of my rare picture.
And this one, the image I was taking while the image above was taken. With the Carl Zeiss Super-APO TPP 300/2.8, with Contax 645 using MAM-1 adapter, Phase One P45+.
Perhaps not the best sunset view today, but we cannot say we were unlucky. We had great time watching the beautiful sunset over the beautiful winding river, may be not picture perfect, but it really does not matter, at least it is to me. We are the last group left the hill, Neo still have 2 hours ride to take us back to the hotel, it is already 10pm, another late dinner. We did not realize how hungry we were, the joyfulness still keep our focus around the show the great nature just presented to us a moment ago. Huangzhen reminded us the Xinjiang bread kept in the car, a small highlight in the journey back to hotel, through darkness.
It was almost 1am when we arrived at our hotel, settled ourselves on the dinner table to realize it is Dragon Boat Festival 端午節, we all enjoy some Zongzi 粽子, a tradition for all Chinese dated back to 278 BC, in memory of Qu Yuan, a poet and stateman of the Chu Kingdom during the Warring States period - tens of years before China became an empire, the Qin Dynasty.
Enough of history, and we have ourselves a nice feast. By what we all agreed during the ride back, we are going to have an early wake up, go back to the location we stopped the first evening in, for possible sunrise pictures, and we better rest soon!

May 28 Destination - Bayabulak 巴音布魯克草原

After a good night rest, we have a rare late wake up in the morning. After a good breakfast, we have some time to retire back to our room to prepare our gears, memory cards, and took some time working on the computer to organize those images took earlier in the trip, and to back up them to a removable hard drive.
I have never been to Bayanbulak, but from the varies pictures, I gathered what it is like. And from where we stay, it is around 2.5 hours away from the viewpoint. We have decided to leave around 3pm, and may be we should have a late lunch, because by the time pf sunset and to drive all the way back to hotel, the dinner will be midnight again, and so we all took a little nap, wake up to lunch, 3pm, it is time to go.
The weather looks good, but we are expecting to also have some clouds to reflect the last light of the sun to capture more dramatic reflection on the winding river. We hope! Moving toward Bayanbulak, we started to comprehend how beautiful it is, we drove thru this area last night in total darkness, so the view along the highway to view point is a pleasure ride, and long ride, because we stop so often.
An image took by using tiny but mighty Canon G10.These two, with Nikon D3X and AF-S VR 70-200/2.8G IF-ED. A shephard on horse tends his sheep.Continue to move on the highway cut thru the beautiful grassland, we took more picture along the way, while a little worry brew in our mind as we can see the clouds reappear again after 2 days clear sky, but on the other hand, the sky might as well reflect the color from the setting sun to bring more vibrancy to our sunset shot. Leave such worry for now, with Nikon D3, few more images here.Nikon D3 and AF-S VR 70-200/2.8G IF-ED, clouds.Snow starts to fall in nearby mountain, Nikon D3.Vista, Nikon D3 again with AF-S VR 70-200/2.8G IF-ED.Imminent snow storm?

Midnight, May 27, Bayanulak

Nobody in the car as happy as Wanbing 萬兵, after all, Bayanbulak is for him the highlight of the entire trip, and against all odds, we finally made it here and just finished a short session of shoot. Driving in almost total darkness heading to hotel, the plan for tomorrow is finally set - we will have a good ight rest, easy morning so that Neo can get a maintenance for his car, we charge up ourselves, cameras and computers or whatever, then we will go to Bayanbulak for sunset shot. It is a clear night, discussion moved to what we wish tomorrow weather will be, and hope for the best. And I suggested to Wanbing may be to do some shooting for star, to test the Nikon D3 for long time exposure, as well as Wanbing's Canon 5D2.
We arrived at the hotel at midnight, while Huang Zheng, Neo and Pook went to restaurant to order our dinner, Wanbing and I gather our gear and ran to the roof of the 4 storey hotel building to set up our cameras for the stars. We will leave the camera expose and run to restaurant for dinner, I use the shutter released cable to lock shutter B, take a look at my watch, and go to dinner.
On our dinner table, I found the lavish dishes, and a bottle of white wine contributed fromWanbing, finally here in Bayanbulak, we congratulate ourselves, cheer to each other. Pook told me while waiting for the dish and Wanbing and myself to return to table, Neo gave her a tutorial of what we have journey so far and what we will be going to, and using the Canon G10 to record our route.

Between dinner and removing bags to hotel room, and preparing the gear for tomorrow shoot, I made a ew exposures of the night sky, uisng variest set up to try to get the best night image. It was cold, battery drains quickly. I made a succession of captures using Nikon D3 and AF-S 24-70/2.8G ED and AF-S 14-24/2.8G ED, between around 15-30 minutes. Some pictures here for reference, strong wind and the cooking smoke or turbine steam from the hotel we stay and probably the other restaurant clound the sky, not as clear as I hope it will be, but it is late and I ran thru 2 batteies, it was almost 2am and I told myself, time to go to bed!