Fire Insurance

Camera	Sony DSC-F828
Exposure Mode	auto
Focal Length	36.5mm
Aperture	f/8
Exposure	1/640 sec.
ISO Speed	64
Flash	off

On my recent work trip to Beijing I had two days to see the sights before returning home (it was cheaper to wait two days than to fly straight back). I spent a good portion of one of those days walking around the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is a huge palace covering an unbelievable 720,000 square metres and over 8000 rooms! This gave me lots of opportunities for taking photos.

On most of buildings the roof lines are decorated by a number of glazed porcelain figures, which my guidebook claims are associated with water and are meant to protect the buildings from fire. Wikipedia has a slightly more believable description of each of the figures, but for now I'm sticking with the fire insurance idea! To give you a better idea of the figures here is another photo I took (actually of a different building, but you get the idea).

The terrible air quality in central Beijing allowed me to shoot directly into the sun without a filter to produce some interesting images. Whilst I was relatively happy with the photo straight from the camera I have done a little post-processing. Firstly I used the object removal tool in Paint Shop Pro to remove a smear from the top left of the image (I must have caught the lens at some point). I then used the smart photo fix tool to darken the shadows slightly in order to enhance the silhouette feel of the image.

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