Things are winding down this semester in Beijing. The first of what is definitely going to be several long nights studying began last night. With all that in mind, I still have two photoshoots crammed into the busiest week of the semester. Why? I’m sadistic like that I suppose

Some of you will know from reading The Ricetrail that I’ve been studying Shaolin kung fu here. A few weeks back, I interviewed my sifu, who grew up in the Shaolin Temple. He’s since left and decided to make his fortune in the world, now teaching kung fu in Beijing. His life is something out of a fairytale, and I decided to write about him in my final paper (in Chinese!) for my Chinese culture class. For extra brownie points (I hope) I’m going to be shooting him this afternoon in Tsinghua. The locations have been scouted, high-end lenses have been loaned (thanks, Ade!!!!) and I have to say that I’m really, really excited. Tsinghua’s grounds are a photographers’ dream come true. I don’t want to give anything away, but there may or may not be a bamboo garden. Yeah.

The only thing I’m praying for is for the sun to come out this evening. It’s been uncharacteristically rainy here, but hopefully luck will be on our side. Otherwise I will have a seriously drenched Nikon, and that’s just not good for anyone.

The other shoot I have scheduled this week is with my friend Marta. I have a part time job doing voice recordings for English schools (what?) – you know those annoying tapes that feature superfake English speakers? Yeah, that would be me. Somewhere in the Middle Kingdom are a bunch of tapes of my voice reading childrens’ stories and business English books. It may or may not devolve to Chingrish. Anyway. My boss owns a sweet sweet studio, in every sense of the word. Along with all this audio reording equipment, he also has a full set up of lights, backdrops, and yes.. lenses. He’s interested in shooting together, trading techniques etc. I’m interested in getting my paws on the gear. I bring the model, he supplies the location. The model gets double the pictures from one session, and everyone goes home happy. SWEET.

I have yet to blog about my plans this summer, but they are pretty off the wall. Suffice to say, if I have my way, we really WILL be hitting The Ricetrail.

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