"Cheers!" or "Prost!" as they say in Germany.
So, myself, Beryl, Rudy, Joanne and Kai headed to Xi'an for the Oktoberfest held at the Sofitel hotel there. The Sofitel is a totally pimp hotel, and Rudy knows someone who works there, so we got hooked-up price wise, so kudos to him.
Beryl sitting on the bed in the hotel room.
The hotel room had this... interesting... feature. Behind this blind is the bathroom shower, so you can watch your partner shower from the comfort of your bed. Like I said; interesting.
The hotel is split into different buildings, this is the lobby of the 5 star section. We stayed in the slightly-less impressive 4 star section, but it was still great.
The exterior.
The whole thing was in collaboration with Paulaner
The interior of the festival tent. Blue-and-white Bavarian theme throughout.
Kai (who's German) toasts with Rudy (who's...not.)
and of course, one to call my own. :)
A very bad photo; but you get the idea.
Lederhosen!!!!!
There was LOTS of "cheers"ing and lots of clashing glasses while singing. For some reason "Alice, Alice who the **** is Alice?" is a theme of Oktoberfests. It was played about 5 times along with a few German songs which by the end of the night I could sing off by heart... but somehow forgot the next morning. Thank you beer. :)
Zee Germans!
The music was pretty cool. :)
Check out the beaut' on the tuba.
I want his hat.
Then this pretty lil' lady chugged a whole 2 pint glass in under 10 seconds. I was impressed.
Rudy being outnumbered by zee Germans. So many jokes, so little time.
Beryl and Joanne enjoying themselves!
Hat-swapping competitions. Awesome.
At the end of the night, things started going a little dark and blurry.
The last thing I remember seeing. :-P
The next day we woke up and wondered around Xi'an. I didn't really take any good snaps, until we got to a restaurant. The service was so poor, and the food wasn't much special. But we then noticed this in the menu, and things started to make sense.
Quantity assurance.
A typical sight at Xi'an bus station.
Then on the bus, Kai (who's tall, but not giant) displays that leg room on Chinese buses isn't great.
It was a blast, and I'll probably do it again next year! :D
So, back at the start of August I got wind of some sort of fashion show happening in the square. Unfortunately that night I had to teach, but I figured I'd go down after work and see what I could see. Armed with my camera; of course.
Anyway, when I got there, this is all I could see. The backs of heads. Now, Chinese aren't the tallest people ever, but they're not quite short enough to shoot over a thousand of them.
I tried moving to the other side; but still no luck.
So, I decided to pretty much write the night off, and grabbed a few photos of people in the crowd.
Then I met this group of dancers, that I'd met earlier in the day. Anyway, they saw I was armed with my camera and asked if I wanted to go take photos from the front of the stage. Sure enough, they took me up to the security, said some stuff in Chinese, and we were let through into the photographer pit. There were about 10 photographers there with semi-pro gear, and a few with AAA stuff.
The event was primarily to showcase wedding dresses from the Mona Lisa wedding company.
Some nice dresses.
The lighting was a bit too top-heavy making some nasty shadows on the face in most photos, but at least there were some interesting colours.
Interesting colours all round.
It wouldn't be a Chinese event without a bubble machine... ah... they love their bubbles.
Lots of shots ruined by the gash lighting. :(
Some interesting looking models
:)
I liked this hat :D
I love them bubbles!
I don't know what this pose means.
Not just white dresses!
Someone must have told this chick it was attractive to lean back.
Thinking of captions for these is tough...
Did I mention I liked this hat? :)
Not sure I'd wear this for my wedding.
Not that I'd wear any dress.
No, Really.
Interesting make-up
An idea of the crowd that we'd gotten in front of.
and yellow dresses!
Colour temperature was hard to lock down.
Some of the photogs.
More photogs.
Including this chick with £2500 of camera that was bigger than her.
This chick was Adam's family scary.
Between fashion segments there were various musical acts. These kids were hella-good dancers.
Dance, Dance, Dance!
:)
All the parents rushed in with their points-and-shoots.
Then this guy came on stage and started singing...
...and then the photogs decided we were more interesting than him. All of a sudden every photographer was taking photos of me and Tim, and asking us to pretend we were taking photos of the guy on stage, it was very surreal!
Bubbbbbles!
These two dudes were cool. A singing, dancing, ass-kicking performance.
Too manly for bubbles; they got smoke.
Rar!
Lookin' mean.
¬_¬
They were pretty good singers.
Although they did do some strange stuff...
...straaaaaange.
Then they kicked each other's asses.
and got airborne.
et voila.
Then lights up on another act.
Another kid's dance school.
All very good at what they did.
Dancing away
Then a three-piece band took to the stage and plugged in their own stuff. No roadies in China, apparently.
This girl cheered them on rather prematurely.
But they were very good
The lead singer / bassist trying to signal to the sound guy to turn down the bass.
Then a strange tradition of all Chinese rock shows. Someone comes on stage mid-song and tries to give the lead singer some flowers...while he's singing and playing. It's a very weird tradition, the song gets a bit trashed, but its very amusing.
The smoke made for some cool shots
This guy came back for some singing
This dude could jam
Slappin' da basssss
The whole thing taking place under a full moon
a few more wedding dresses.
This model looked like she'd had enough...
and this model looked like she'd had...well, you can finish this caption.
All the performers hit the stage to take a bow
The sound desk
Powered by Mac... boooooo!
Lights off...time to go home.
That concludes my first foray into fashion photography, it was pretty fun! Something I hope to try again. I need a 70-200 2.8 IS L though. ;-)
More soon!
