China trip: Chinese windows in Shanghai

On my first full day in Shanghai, I spent all day walking around the city with my good friend Joyce, who was born and raised in the city. And, yes, I did take a lot of photos of downtown and surrounding areas, but before I post those (in the next couple of blog entries) I wanted to share something different with you. As we walked around some of the older buildings, I noticed that there were some really cool patterns in the old Chinese windows.

I started by shooting an image of this window, and then noticed so many more that I thought that it would make an interesting blog post in itself. So sit back and enjoy some ancient Chinese patterns.

This was one of my favorite window patterns, with the intersecting circular shapes. You will notice that I shot all of the images (at f4.0) making sure that the patterns were in focus, but the background was blurred. I also tried to get in close to avoid any other distractions.

I did take some photos of the individual windows in this grouping, but chose this image because it is different. Most of the windows that I photographed were single panes and not grouped like this.

The simplicity of this particular window is what drew my attention. Very clean lines, and so perfectly balanced.

This last window was totally different from the rest since it looked to be made of Jade. I was attracted to the the vibrant free colors and the shiny texture.

There...something totally different for you. There are times in my travels when I try to push myself out of my comfort zone. This was a case where I gave myself an assignment and shot images with one subject in mind. My next couple of posts will show you some views of downtown Shanghai and a very special town an hour outside of the city.