About a decade ago, I had a chance to go to Botswana on safari.  I bought an intermediate camera with the longest optical zoom then available. Although I didn’t see all of the Big Five, the photos of the animals are great memories of that trip.

 

The camera also had manual controls, so I decided I should learn how to use them.  After reading Photography for Dummies and taking a workshop with Arizona Highways magazine, I was hooked.  Now in my retirement after a career in higher education, photography is my full-time passion.

 

In this presentation, I will share some of my images from my May 2016 trip to Yunnan Province in China.  Most people who visit this area in southwestern China go to Kunming, Dali, and Lijiang, all wonderful places.  But for some years now I’ve

been eager to photograph the extensive rice terraces of the Honghe region with the sky reflecting in the water of the rice paddies that extend down the mountainsides. On this photo tour in May with William Yu, we visited this UNESCO World Heritage site at planting time, so there were people working in the fields which added interest to the abstract patterns of the terraces themselves.  Many of the people from the Yi and Hani minority groups still wear their traditional clothing, even when working.

 

We also visited another terraced agricultural area called the Dongchuan Red Land.  In this case the fields are dry farming of barley, buckwheat, and various oil-producing seed flowers.  Less well known than the rice terraces, this area is also very photogenic with the contrasts of red soil, newly planted green shoots, and mature grain ready for harvest.  Many of the people here still live in traditional villages so we experienced a way of life that is rapidly disappearing.

 

I look forward to sharing my images with you.