A visit to Macau, the Las Vegas of Hong Kong (about an hour away by ferry)

It was our last night in Asia and we decided to head to Macau to shoot pictures of their annual fireworks competition (with 10 countries competing for the top award). I was excited to find out that we were in the area for this once a year occurrence.

We had another smoggy day in the city, but it made for one heck of a sunset.

 

We took the one hour ferry ride from Hong Kong Island to Macau and made it through customs with a couple of hours to spare. (Yep, you actually have to bring your passport and go through customs to get into Macau and back to Hong Kong.) On the Internet, I had seen some images of previous fireworks shows in Macau and searched hard to find the spot that I liked best. We found the location and fired off some test shots. Even though this was taken before the fireworks show, it is still one of my favorites since it was taken at my favorite time of night, just after sunset.

And then...after a couple hours of waiting around in the heat and humidity (and a McDonalds run) the show began. We were hoping to get the fireworks closer to the tower, but the show was lower and more to the left than we expected. But, with that said, we still got some cool shots.

After the show, we had 45 minutes before our ferry ride back to Hong Kong so we checked out some of the city.

 

Macau is like a mini version of Las Vegas with many of the same hotels and over-the-top lighting and casinos. 

 

For this last shot of the trip to Asia, I leave you with a mug shot of me. This was taken from Kowloon, looking over the city of Hong Kong. I stood in this spot and we filmed a video segment of me teaching some night photography tricks. I think that we ended up shooting 8 different video segments during the trip. Stay tuned, as these will be edited and posted to YouTube in the coming months. I hope you enjoyed all the images from Korea and China.