Craig November 21st, 2008
Just a few days to go now until you get a chance to win something. So this is a good time to explain what’s happening.
Starting Monday November 24th, I’ll be posting 5-6 photos per week - 1 a day with Sunday and sometimes Saturday off. Each photo will be a part of a theme, and they will all be posted to the category of the same name.
The only catch is that I’m not going to tell you what the theme is. And that’s how you can win. The first person to correctly guess the theme will win the photograph of their choice from the photos posted. The photo will be at it’s native resolution or slightly larger, depending on the photo. To put that in English, it’ll be 8 by 12 or bigger. The winner will be the first to guess the theme based on the time stamp in the comments, which is set on Taiwan time (GMT +8).
The rules are simple. You are allowed one guess per photo. Leave your guess in the comments below the photo. I will not announce the winner or the correct answer until the close of the competition. This particular competition will run for about a month, with the winner announced around January 1st.
The included photos will have short descriptions - anything from a few words to a paragraph or two. Guessing won’t be easy. You’ll need to think a bit, sometimes laterally, to get the correct answer.
So on that note, I’ll wish you all good luck. Remember to check back on Monday for the first photo as well as another little surprise.

Tags: Competition, Theme
Craig November 17th, 2008
After a very busy few months doing a lot of photographic work for various agencies and clients, I now have a little more time to dedicate to this blog. So with that, let me make a little pre-announcement.
I have a couple of things in the works that are new, fresh, exciting and possibly a little different. The first of these projects will begin in the next week or two - I’m just finalising a few of the details. I won’t give any details about it now, except to say it will be interactive, and it will involve prizes. Yes, you heard me - I’ll be giving something away to some lucky person or people.
So stay tuned, check back over the next week or so, more details are on the way.

Tags: announcement, Competition
Craig November 14th, 2008
Arambol Beach, Goa, 1997. Low-res film scan.

Tags: Arambol, Goa, India
Craig October 29th, 2008
11km from Mandalay, on the western bank of the Ayeyarwady river lies the town of Mingun. It’s main attraction is the unfinished Buddhist stupa, Mingun Paya.
Construction of the Mingun Paya began in 1790. The unfinished stupa is known as “Bodawpaya’s Folly” because, some say, the king (1782-1819) built it too large to be completed. Other stories state that the temple was not completed, due to an astrologer claiming that, once the temple was finished, the king would die. At any rate, an army of thousands (slaves and prisoners) labored to erect the monument. Work stopped in 1819, when the king died. A further alternate theory is that this may actually be a finished structure, with the top deliberately left flat. This seems unlikely, however, since there would be no precedent for such a design.

A giant bell was also cast, weighing 90 tons and taking 2 years to create. The outer diameter of the rim of the bell is 16 feet and 3 inches. The height of the Bell is 12 feet on the exterior and 11.5 feet in the interior. The outside circumference at the rim is 50.75 feet. The Bell is 6 inches to 12 inches thick and stands 20.7 feet high from the rim to the top. It is still today the largest ringing bell in the world.

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Tags: Burma
Craig October 16th, 2008
Meinong, Kaohsiung county.

Craig October 3rd, 2008
The final flashpoint of the Chinese civil war between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and Mao Zedong’s Communists, Kinmen is a small island under Taiwanese control but located 2km off the coast of Fujian province, China.
From 1949, throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, Chinese cannons pounded Kinmen with over one million rounds. The earliest fighting took place on the Kuningtou battlefield, where, in a battle lasting 56 hours, 15000 lives were lost. A later major battle was the 823 artillery barrage, which lasted 44 days and had the US Air Force preparing for a nuclear strike against the People’s Republic of China.
Today, with easing of tensions between the Taiwan (ROC) and China (PRC), Kinmen has become a popular tourist destination. It is still home to a substantial number of Taiwanese soldiers, but there are also a lot of unused and abandoned miltary sites. Here a few abandoned, eroded bunkers and tunnels.





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Tags: Kinmen, Photoessay