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We arrived at Manzhoulli late in the day. We had travelled the last miles of China through the night. The train crossed the border to the Russian side and was pulled into a large shed where I recall it took almost eight hours to lift each car off of the wheels that had carried us from China and place the cars on bogies that would fit the width of the rails in Russia.

The place had the feel of a frontier town... aside from the endless grasslands that spanned from horizon to horizon on the way in to the town itself...it had that gritty, dusty, shitty feel of someplace that existed only because of some circumstance that mandated its existence. I got the feeling that Manzhoulli was the place that they threatened to send misbehaving Siberians to. You'd know you pissed someone off bigtime if you got stationed here.

Tumbleweeds wouldn't have been out of place in Manzhoulli.

Inside the station was a restaraunt where the 'smugglers' who I shared a cabin with treated me to the first real western meal I had eaten in so many months.

Beef Stroganoff... sweet delight... the creamy stroganoff and the wide noodles were like a beautiful angel dancing a dance of joy on my vagabond tongue... a culinary massage to my homesick taste buds...except for the fact that the heavy metal silverware... something I had not used in many months... it really imparted a sharp metallic taste in my mouth.

I finished off the extraordinary meal with chopsticks I had retrieved from my bag... the ones Masami gave to me in Osaka Japan.

That I missed Masami I already knew... but eating the stroganoff there in Manzhoulli with the chopsticks she had given me... I felt guilty that I had not been able to give her a proper goodbye. She really deserved it. She was never anything but good to me. She always gave more than she took and it always made me want to give her back. I had planned to travel with her during my last week in Japan and talk about the future.

When I left the university and had my student visa pulled I wasn't given very much time to get my affairs in order... I wasn't even given twenty four hours to leave... the officials pretty much wanted me at the airport immediately.

I had different plans.

I slipped away quietly and told no one.

There was no way I was going to tell my parents I had left school and that I needed money for a plane ticket right away. I spent most of the next day coming up with a plan to have my roommate forward mail to me and from me while I hung out in Australia for the rest of the semester that I was supposed to be a student in Japan. And I didn't feel like seeing the officials change their mind about letting me go... that's why I slept under the bridge in Kyoto that last night and hightailed it out of the port at Osaka.

That was all behind me now... the heartbreak, everything really. I had made it this far... why look back? The only regrets I had were that a wonderful woman and I parted ways with a phone call.

Now I stood at the doorstep of the hyphenated land of Eur-Asia... and if it didn't have a hyphen it was at least a hybrid. It was a middle ground between two worlds. I felt so ready to make passage there.

I had to laugh when I recalled running into his accomplice in Beijing. Actually I didn't run into him at all. I was riding the bus when I saw that mother fucker standing on the sidewalk looking like a lost dog. I jumped off the bus at the next stop and followed him. It was Elan. I was sure of it.He never saw me and I followed him for awhile. Only an idiot couldn't tell he was being tailed by a westerner in China. For one... I didn't have black hair and secondly... I was about a foot taller than everyone else. Elan was an idiot.

I found out where he was staying. There was a tiny cafe right there... I think it was called 'The Pink House.' I sat there and drank a beer or two and tried to figure out the best way to nail him. That prick was gonna get a smackdown.

In a lot of ways it wasn't even my battle or my anger that made me want to do it. It was what he and his buddy did to my friend Joel... who was there for me at the Pig & The Whistle when I was in a backroom with the sharp edge of a Yakuza's knife pushing into my throat... we took turns saving each others asses it seemed. Not only did Joel extricate me from a situation where a very sharp knife was pressed into my jugular... he had the steadiness and presence of mind to grab my passport off of the table after he pushed those guys off of me.

I didn't know a lot of Japanese at the time... certainly not enough to beg for my life... but that shit was serious... when the guy with a blade pressed in your throat tells his buddy to find a mop... well... that shit's serious. I felt bad that my mom would be getting a call from some low level State Department official asking where she wanted my body shipped to. I couldn't move the way that guy had that knife on me.

That I got out of that one with my life was a blessing. That Joel grabbed my pass

This small alley in Cervo (Imperia, Liguria - Italy), named "Via XI Febbraio", is on the East side of the Corallini church.
The house on the right is yellow.
The main light comes from the yellow sodium lampposts in the main square, and the end of the alley is totally dark, so I decided to give it a pinch of light with the flash.
Here is an acrobatic exercise in white balance... of course the original shot was saved as RAW (are there other modes?).
If I balance the white to have a good background the foreground becomes too yellow, while if I balance for the foreground the background becomes blue, as you can see in the small details.
Some hours in post-production, using RawTherapee and GIMP, with half a dozen of masked layers, gave me an almost decent result.
If I had to pay myself (and not even at photographer tariffs, but at the wage of an unskilled "deputy bricklayer", maybe clandestine) the cost of the manpower to fix this photo will be far higher than that of a set of gel filters for the flash, to give the flash light the same color of the main one.
Conclusion: if you have to shoot with different light sources and some strobes, it is faster and cheaper to use gels.
Who want the XCF GIMP image with all the masked layers (148 Mb) can mail me.

Lens: SMC Pentax-M 28mm F2.8" "28/2.8 @ f:8
Camera tripod: Manfrotto 190XPROB
Flash: Pentax AF400T at full power, hankie as diffuser
Trigger: cactus like
Flash tripod: myself
Camera trigger: my wife


Questo vicoletto a Cervo (IM), chiamato Via XI Febbraio, si trova sul lato a levante della Chiesa dei Corallini.
La casa a destra e gialla.
La luce principale e quella dei fari gialli al sodio della piazza principale, e la fine del vicolo e completamente buia, quindi ho deciso di aggiungere una pennellata di luce con il flash.
Ecco un esercizio acrobatico nel bilanciamento del bianco... naturalmente lo scatto originale e stato salvato in RAW (ci sono altri modi?).
Se io bilancio il bianco per avere un buon sfondo il primo piano diventa troppo giallo, mentre se bilancio per il primo piano lo sfondo diventa blu, come si puo vedere nei dettagli.
Alcune ore in post-produzione, usando RawTherapee e GIMP, con una mezza dozzina di livelli mascherati, mi ha fornito un risultato abbastanza decente.
Se avessi dovuto pagare la mia manodopera (e non a tariffa da fotografo, ma al salario di un vice-manovale, magari clandestino) il costo per sistemare la foto sarebbe stato di molto superiore al prezzo di un set di gelatine per il flash, da usare per avere la luce del flash dello stesso colore della luce principale.
Conclusione: se dovete fare una foto con diverse sorgenti luminose ed alcuni flash, e piu rapido ed economico usare le gelatine.
Chi volesse l'immagine XCF di GIMP con tutti i livelli mascherati (148 Mb) puo mandarmi una mail.

Ottica: SMC Pentax-M 28mm F2.8" "28/2.8 a f:8
Cavalletto macchina: Manfrotto 190XPROB
Flash: Pentax AF400T a piena potenza, fazzoletto come diffusore
Trigger: tipo cactus
Cavalletto flash: io
Trigger macchina: mia moglie