On day 3 of the Hong Kong trip, Yuling and I spent some time for the first half of the day visiting Ngong Ping, home of a famous “giant” Buddha, the Tian Tan Buddha I mentioned earlier.
The day started off with a cable car ride, which I refrained from shooting because I’m a stickler when it comes to getting the best shot with my lens. The way I figured, why would I take a picture out of some plexiglass that will ruin the quality of my (expensive) camera lens? Anyway, I did get this photo of these water droplets from condensation…
…interestingly, the place was a sort of Buddhist Disney World for the first part – as another blogger has mentioned. On one hand, I saw this as unfortunate… but then again, kind of fascinating. There were mascots (some kind of monkey thing) but no costumed performers. The entire area was new – the “village” of shops and Western and Asian restaurants reeked of being manufactured while the statue itself was only completed in 1993.
Nonetheless, it was all a fascinating experience… after climbing 200+ steps, the visitor is introduced to quite a few sights.
The above is an HDR of some statues built to worship the giant Buddha. All are also bronze and each has a different offering… I counted four of them, if I in fact remember correctly…
The above is a single-exposure of the view to the north… at the back side of the seated Buddha.
This was set up along the stairs to perhaps represent a pagoda or Joss chimney. I thought it made a good contrast with the background.
If you look closely here, you can see the cable cars to the top left.
I’m not sure what kind of plant this is, but it does show the power of my new 70-300mm lens, as I was quite far away from the flower.
The last photo here shows this location as a great spot to put this Buddha. Hong Kong’s mountains have this intermittent haze that really makes the place seem otherworldly – especially with a 150-foot Buddha seated on top of a mountain.
