Things I am shooting....a photography blog by Taipei based photographer Duncan Longden.

Slowly slowly as they say...

It has been a week spent mostly in front of my PC organising the shots to go onto my new website and finally sorting out my phone.

I have had a couple of meetings this week, it is nice to meet people face to face and hopefully it leads to getting shooting soon.

Having treated myself to a new monitor, I realised it would be a good idea to invest in a calibration tool. Well thanks to one of the great and friendly photographic community peeps I heard about the Photo show and guess what Camille is working at an education show right next door.

Taking the opportunity of a cab with her, I headed in to Taipei, helped her set up shop then grabbed a coffee with a fellow photographer. Leaving him to go take photographs of the LGBT Pride march, the largest pride march in Asia according to the press, I headed back to the photo show to grab the device I had got my eye on and check out what else was there.

As I am here with minimal kit (my Bowens are in freight somewhere on the ocean) I was interested in looking at modifiers for speedlights and possible wireless triggers with ttl adjustment capabilities. Obviously the Pocketwizard system is well known, what caught my eye was a neat looking bit of kit by a company called Pixel King Pro, I must say it looked very tidy system, I would sure like to get my hands on that and run it through its paces on set.

The other bit of kit that I was looking at is the Rogue Lightbender speedlight modifiers. I have looked at the speedlight softboxes etc and thought I may as well just use my Bowens pro travel pack. From what I have seen of the Rogue system of modifiers they are tidy and easy to carry in the bag for those times I like a little pop of off camera flash. I am always shooting with my speedlight on a stick or just held out in my hand and of course it is a small and fairly harsh light source. It is ok if I can bounce it off a wall or even a fat bloke in a white shirt. Sadly, hanging around for that guy isn't always practical and certainly isn't a consistent or reliable light modification option. That is when I could reach for the Lightbender to soften and broaden the speedlights flash and render a more reliable and usable modification system.

Obviously if either Pixel King Pro or The Rogue Lightbender companies wish to have their kit tested and seen being used by a professional photographer in Taipei and Asia then please contact me and send some my way.

So are you wondering if I went to the pride march? Well of course I did and with my trusty Fujifilm X100 I set about looking for the shots away from the obvious. Something with a bit of humour in it, after all how can you take yourself seriously at a Pride event.....

 I'm not sure what the Google connection is

 Not everyone was excited and ready to party......

 Proudly standing next to Taiwans tallest erection....

That isn't all, I had a "I should know better moment" on the way to the bus. I stopped to grab a sandwich and had put my camera away when the guy below with the bike comes past.

So what is so special about that? Well I'll tell you, when he came past he was riding the bike and his dog was being towed along on the skateboard which you can see hanging on the guys bike. Why did I put may camera away. Man I now have a mission to get that shot, guess I'll have to hang around Taipei a bit longer.

Remember as usual spread the word, share my blog and if you need a photographer out in Asia get in touch...