When you go to meet your girlfriend's Family and her Dad looks like this.

So my girlfriend and I arrived in Shenzhen on the 4th of February 2016. After a forty-five minute taxi ride and eight flights of stairs with our suitcases (containing our overweight lives) we were in her brother's apartment and I was having dumpling with her dad. So here I am an American, with very limited chinese, eating with my girlfriend's father, a traditional man and a spendthrift.

Merry Christmas!

Well today is December 25, 2015 and officially my first Christmas spent in China. Sitting here with my girlfriend and eating Ferrero Rocher while writing this. Our plans for the day are simple, we are going to pick up my coat from the dry cleaners and out to eat with a few foreign teachers I know. It's my first Christmas so far from family so it is a bit strange. Christmas here in China is really just a buying holiday. Actually it seems in anything other than small villages all chinese holidays are just commercial. They don't really have the big celebrations I expected. They do a parade for spring festival and small towns get lively during various festivals.

If you are in a bigger city it seems that holidays are reduced to an opportunity to shop. My girlfriend has said the pressure of modern society and the stress is causes for young people has caused many to dislike or even hate all Chinese holidays. The villages are shrinking as students travel away for school and stay in larger cities, and those larger cities are so focused on consumerism that they have lost track of any part of Chinese culture other than shoving people out of the way because they always need to be first. The Chinese have a huge potential to be a culture filled society that other countries look up to, but the rush to match other countries has resulted in a loss of traditional values, a forgptten cultural heritage, and a society where being rude and obnoxious is covered up by the concept of face.

Its sad as a foreigner living in China to see that the development of chinese culture is killing every good and unique thing about chinese culture and leaving only the bad. To anyone that reads this I reccomend that you visit China, I reccomend you do it soon. I also say you should visit smaller towns and villages because that where the real China is, not the lousy North American knockoff that the larger cities are.

I also want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Joshua Son

Is Street Photography Ethical?

One of the debates you will here often surrounding street photography is about its moral nature.

Many street photographers publish or sell their work and find themselves and others questioning whether it is right or wrong to profit off of their subjects. This subject comes up even more often when photographing people who are considered "less fortunate".Of course these arguments often ignore the fact that many street photographers help the downtrodden by bringing attention to their plight and rallying support for them.

However the question remains, are we as street photographers exploiting people?

What are the rules of street photography?

Well really they are more like guidelines than rules.

So now you know what street photography is, vaguely anyways, and you have a camera. Now you will probably find yourself wondering what the rules of street photography are. Unfortunately other than actually making photographs there aren't any rules. Street photography is free flowing like the scenes you are trying to capture. However, here are 10 guidelines that can help you develop your style and produce more consistent quality photographs.