After an uneventful arrival on Friday night to Hong Kong, we headed out on Saturday morning. Luckily we had a daylong itinerary planned, thanks to Jack, a fellow Navy engineer who is from Hong Kong.
First stop was the Big Buddha. Yes, there is a big Buddha in mainland Japan. And China. And many other places in the world. But what makes this Buddha special is its the largest sitting Buddha. This Buddha rests on a lotus and it was the object of my photo essay. In my head, the photo looked wonderful. Nothing could stop me. Except for a dense fog. That completed mask the Buddha. And I had no idea how to shoot photos in the fog.
Regardless I pulled out the camera and pretended to know what I was doing as I took pictures. I pushed buttons and adjusted settings. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
Olivia fell asleep on the crazy bus ride up the hill and continued to snooze in the baby carrier up the 200 plus steps to the top.
She slept as we walked inside the Buddha and Benny read construction details about the giant statue (212 pieces, Michelle). And finally at the top, we stared at the illuminated display where a piece of Buddha lies (too small to see). From the top, we decided to take a family photo (maybe one for the Christmas card) when our first encounter with a Chinese tourist took place.
She looked repeatedly at my camera (and let me point out that she didn't pay extra to visit this part of the Buddha, so she shouldn't have even been in this location) and asked me to snap her picture. I did. And then she asked if she could take our photo. I stupidly hand her this EXTREMELY expensive camera that isn't mine. She takes the photo and then looks at the results on the display.
This is wrong, she says. Do you know how to work this camera? You should learn how to use this camera. This is a very expensive camera. The settings are wrong. This doesn't work. On and on and on.
I explained that I'm a student, studying photography and learning. Yet this tourist continues to ridicule my light settings. I kindly thanked her for her advice and climbed down the steps.
I run into her, near the statues at the bottom of Buddha. She AGAIN explains that I'm misusing my camera.
And this is the first of many times where I silently thank God that I live in Japan instead of China. Because even though the Chinese can speak English, they don't always say the nicest things.
3 comments:
Well did she at least fix the settings for you? Instead of just telling you were doing it wrong?!
She said my camera was too fancy, so she didn't know how to change the settings. But she did tell me that I needed to have A in the display. So I planned with the settings during lunch until I got A back again. The worst part was that she rattled my confidence and I didn't take a lot of photos and I regret it now.
Pooey on her! "A" is usually "automatic" and you won't learn from your mistakes if you're using it all the time. "A" can also stand for "aperture priority" which means the camera stays at one aperture (or f-stop) and adjusts the shutter speed accordingly to make what's known as "equivalent exposures." Do you have a good handbook that explains these things? I can recommend a few if you like ordering from amazon in japan...
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