By ruling out what not to take photographs of, you are limiting your experiences. What if you show up at that location to take the photograph thousands have before and you meet someone who changes your life? Run into a long lost friend in a strange land? Are there to help someone? Are discovered by a movie casting agent?

Why limit one’s experience? Why not try to learn to take the kind of photograph you posted so your photography skills improve?

I do not understand limiting one’s experiences just because someone else had the experience first.

Congratulations on choosing a beautiful picture to represent your future experience!

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If you ever need a break from travel to Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, Australia — let me know, I’ll stand in for you and take LOTS of good photos!

Will it was great seeing on the airplane from Tokyo to Shanghai and nice chatting with you in the airport. Looking forward to the Learning 2.0 conference, it’s a busy set of speakers. Almost feels like BLC07, just a different setting.

Thanks for commenting on my blog, Will! Are you going to be a the NCTE Conference in NYC this year?

Ray
SUNY Cortland

[...] Shanghai is city split by a river. On one side is the old part of town where, in pockets at least, the architecture is a mix of European and what you would traditionally think of as Chinese. During our walks and rides around this absolutely massive city (Jeff tells me the ride to find green rolling hills takes two and a half hours), we’ve been referring to this as the “real China”. On the other side of the river is the Western face of China, a place where literally just more than a decade ago there was little more than rice paddies as far as the eye could see. (We bought photo books yesterday where the photographer found old photos from various parts of the city and then went back and took new pictures in the same spot…the contrast is breathtaking.) Now, tall, neon-lit buildings and concrete have replaced all of that rural history. Two of the five tallest buildings in the world stand right next to one another. A third, “The Pearl” is something right out of the Jetsons, a tall spire that holds a strand of three pinkish orbs, the smallest and highest being a revolving restaurant where you can take in the sites. (If you want to skip the textual attempts at describing it all, just see the picture I posted a couple of days ago.) And make no mistake; it is Western. There’s a Hooters along the river, all of the major chains of hotels are here, and you know where to go if you want coffee, right? (Apparently, the big buzz around town is the first Cold Stone Creamery that just opened.)  At night, the buildings themselves become billboards, and ships cruise down the river carrying these huge LCD screens that must be like 50 feet wide and 30 feet tall, flashing one advertisement after another for designer clothing or local restaurants and health clubs. Cars and bicycles and scooters and people are everywhere, and there is just a constant blur of activity and motion. [...]