(The post you are about to read is part 5 and the last one of my Trips ’23 series that started with this post here. In essence, it’s a celebration of all my 2023 trips that took place following the relaxation of Covid restrictions).

Taiwan was a back-to-back trip following Vietnam. We had just returned and found ourselves unpacking from Vietnam and packing for Taiwan at the same time! It was two consecutive weekends flying out of Macau!

Why such arrangement?

The trip to Taiwan was planned way before: there was this cycling race that I’d decided to join, so I enrolled myself for the race, booked the flight tickets and the hotel.

Then all of a sudden there was this public holiday the week before. We realized we could spend it in a short trip somewhere else. Vietnam made sense to us. Plane tickets were cheap, so off we went.

We got back from Vietnam on a Saturday late evening and on Sunday morning I was actually joining a cycling race in Macau without much sleep!.. If it sounds crazy to you, it’s fine. Because it was a bit crazy to me as well.

Taichung

Back to our Taiwan trip. We took-off Friday morning to Taichung and arrived at lunch time. I had to start my high carb intake for the cycling race next day, so lunch and dinner was all about bread, noodles and rice – food you can find easily in Taiwan.

For this trip I took my Fuji X-Pro3 coupled to the Fujinon F 23mm F2 R WR. No special reason to take this camera, I just felt it was already some time since I took her out for a trip. Maybe I missed the hybrid OVF, maybe I missed playing with the film simulations.

After checking-in and leaving our stuff at the hotel, we headed to this place which is a decommissioned train station adjacent to a beautiful lake. We had lunch at a teahouse where you have to take off your shoes to get in. Funny.

I started shooting with my X-Pro3 in Classic Neg film simulation. I admit I’m a bit obsessed with Classic Neg because I like the feel it creates. It’s very cinematographic.

But checking the photos in the screen I noticed what I already knew from before: Classic Neg is not the best for skin colours. It’s a matter of personal taste, but I don’t like the brownish tones. Just not to my liking. So I took two more portraits with different film simulations and you can compare below.

Per Fujifilm’s advise, for the best skin colours you are supposed to use Astia. In the film days, Astia stock was mostly used for portraits. I’ve tried it before and what Astia does is to make every colour look soft and pastel like, which combined with the usual practice of over-exposing for portraits (for a smoother skin texture…), you get that dreamy look.

But I was never a big fan of Astia, so in the two shots above I used Provia and Velvia. I think it very much depends on the scene. In the case above, Velvia got the best results for my taste. As I’m writing these words, I recall how Fujifilm was praised for pleasant skin colours ever since they launched the first X100 back in 2010.

Race day

This is not a cycling blog, but I’m dedicating some space to cycling because it relates to photography. Just keep reading.

The race I joined was called Nantou 100K. Yes, a 100 Km ride or a century ride in cycling jargon. There were hundreds of cyclists involved, the atmosphere was great.

On race day, I was given a race number: a sticker you attach to your helmet. Race officials were quite stringent about it: put it in the wrong place and they will let you know. There is a reason for this, which is actually for your own benefit. I will explain below.

Photographers

There were photographers everywhere – trackside standing still or on the back seat of motorbikes, following the riders around. All holding DSLRs or DSLR styled mirrorless with long lenses. These guys were pros and making money out of this. How do I know, you ask?

Well, this is where I want to get. I was in the race and thinking “all these guys shooting, how am I going to get the photos?” I wanted some photos of myself to flex on social media and keep as souvenir.

A soon as the race ended, I asked this guy from the organization about the photos. His reply was simple: there’s a link in their website and you can access all the photos.

My immediate thought was “ok, thumbnails of a million photos, good luck finding myself…”.

Why this thought? Well, because this is how it works in weddings and other receptions that I attend.

But I was wrong.

Remember the race number?

This is where the race number comes in. Click the link to access the photos and it lead me to this website that is a general platform to sell event photos.

After selecting my event – Nantou 100K – the screen is immediately filled up by thumbnail photos of the race.

But then there’s this tab where you insert your race number: mine was 7539. And boom!, now it’s only photos of me in the race. That easy.

Call me ignorant, inexperienced, whatever. And yes, I know my iPhone does the same with the built-in search function in Photos app. It has the ability to find photos based on text contents, face recognition or other attributes. So this is not new technology.

Still, I was positively impressed by how practical and smart this thing was. I immediately found all my photos, which were over a hundred because most people were shooting high fps, machine-gun style. After selecting from the thumbnails with watermarks, I paid and got the good stuff. And best of all, files with EXIF data that I’m sharing here for your reference.

The two photos above were shot by the same guy. Analyzing the EXIF data, you can see the same settings except for the focal length. So most likely he was using a zoom lens.

More below from another photographer in a different location. EXIF data shows exposure compensation set to 0, but the photo looks overexposed to me. The guy was shooting full manual and high saturation setting.

And finally a Nikon shooter… Deliberately overexposed with EV set to +0.7. Hmmm…

I have more, but I think these are good enough to show what this was all about. It’s a personal preference, but the ones I like the most are the first 2 photos, which for me have a better exposure and colours. I’m not a fan of washed-out, bright and overexposed photos.

Race results?

I finished this 100km race in 3h26m, 17th in the overall standings out of over 200 finishers. Not a bad achievement for a first timer. Better still, in my age group I finished 4th.

I would be more than happy with this result, but later on by checking GPS data I realized the two riders that finished 2nd and 3rd in my age group, they actually cheated. They took a shortcut deviating from the official route, resulting in a 4.5km shorter ride and 8 minutes advantage.

The world would be a better place without these sub-standard human beings.

Post-race outing

I was actually in pretty good shape after the race. We went back to the hotel for a quick shower, then spent the afternoon visiting this beautiful place called Sun Moon Lake. It’s a scenic spot with a pleasant lakeside walk. Guess what, we actually hired a 2-seat bicycle and toured around the lake. Yup, my legs were good.

Well surely being a Fujifilm fanboy I had to play with the film simulations just for the sake of it, right? And now that I look at it, I’m amazed just how with a simple touch of a button – from Provia to Classic Neg – what was originally a pleasant sunny day with a golden cast morphed into this cloudy and grey weather look. Just compare the shot below with the ones above.

Which takes me to say what we already know: just how much of what we are exposed to nowadays is digitally transformed and faked?..

In any case, further down the walk we ended up in this place that was indeed grey, but not dull: the Xiangshan Visitor Center, designed by Japanese architect Norihiko Dan.

This was not the typical building and the first thing that struck me was not its unusual shape, but the grey paint on top of what I suspect was meant to be a bare concrete finishing. It looked horrible and I can say so because I’m an architect.

Some buildings like this one are meant to be exposed in bare concrete, together with the wood texture of the formworks. Why some people decide to paint it – normally for easier maintenance, I know – is something I fail to understand.

Now a few more below with Classic Neg:

And that’s it for 2023

This Taiwan trip ended up being our last one in 2023. In December I contemplated for a while a trip to Beijing, but eventually it didn’t happen. Hope you enjoyed my Trips ’23 series of posts as much as I did writing them, selecting the accompanied photos and recollecting all my good memories from these trips.