Photographer By Night | Behind the scenes with Tomasz Wagner
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  • January6th

    The Floating Garden Observatory is situated in Osaka and offers a full 360 view of the city. Because the subway was just minutes away from my hotel, I decided to make this my first stop of the morning. At Osaka’s main terminal (which is in conjunction with the JR line) I loaded up a locker with all my luggage and took only what was essential for my quick trip.

    The futuristic observatory located 557ft above Osaka floated seamlessly between two towers of the Umeda Sky Building. A super fast glass elevator separated you and the outside by a thin layer of glass and transported any individual from the 3rd floor to the 32nd within seconds. You then take a enclosed escalator which bridges the two buildings before reaching a restaurant look-out and then finally the extravagant 360 open view of Osaka. The city was covered by a dense layer of cloud, making any landscape photos boring and washed out. I think it was my timing, but just as I was taking photos I got a lucky moment where the sun made it’s way from behind the cloud and showered the city with some colour and contrast. This gave my shooting subject some more colour and light to play with. From the picture below you can see how the patches of light affected the overall image.

    For more about the Observatory I leave you with this link: http://www.skybldg.co.jp/garden/index.html

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  • January3rd

    I only reserved two days in Beijing, but I found that it was an adequate amount of time to see all the main attractions like Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall, Summer Palace, and the Birds Nest. It was much too cold to stay longer anyways! The morning called for a stroll over to Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City as the hotel was only a 5 minutes’ walk. The day couldn’t have gotten any better; the sun layered itself behind the misty clouds to create a nice even light. I decide to fit them both into the day as I knew photo ops were going to present themselves throughout the day.

    When I arrived, for a while I just slowly paced around the guards at Tiananmen Square hoping to catch one of them yawning. I will give them this: I definetly don’t have the discipline to stand in the cold in the same spot for hours! After managing to snap a couple of shots, the guards started noticing the real reason why I was hanging around the area for so long, and concentrated even harder to stay composed and not yawn.

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