A window view of Shenzhen, China

As part of our business trip to mainland China, we made a visit to Shenzhen, China. This city was much more modern than Dongguan, where we had been for the last 3 nights. We only had one night here, but I wish that we had more time to see this place.

I shot this image from the car as we drove into the city. I wanted to make sure to show people at home how crowded this area is. All I could think was, "wow, my kids have to see this to appreciate what we have!"

We ended up in the Ritz Carlton for the one night, which was an unbelievable experience. For some reason, I was upgraded to a suite on the top floor. When I walked into my room, the first thing that I noticed was to amazing view outside of the window. I immediately sent a text message to my two co-workers who are also photographers and said "Get up here for sunset!"

And so, for two hours, as the light continued to change, the three of us took images out of the window. If anyone could have seen that scene, they would think that we were crazy. We turned out all the lights in the room, and even used our black jackets and shirts to tent the camera to block any ambient light reflections. We did shoot a video in this location (coming to YouTube in another month or so) explaining the best way to shoot in this environment.

One of the tips that I always give to aspiring photographers, is to really work the scene and look beyond the obvious. In this case, while we were shooting the entire view from the top of the Ritz, I noticed this really cool reflection on one of the buildings. So...I decided to use my 400mm lens to frame just this section of the building.

This was my favorite shot from the evening, taken about 20 minutes after sunset with the last of the deep blue color left in the sky. If you look closely at the well-lit building on the left, you will see the refection (mid way up) that I shot in the image above.