Mt. Sixty-Stone

[molested_cow]

Ok I will start with the location. Taiwan, Hualien County, Fuli township. It's a mountain top of "golden needle" flowers.
These flowers look like orange needles before they bloom. It is edible when harvested in the needle form and the mountain top had been cleared decades ago to plant these flowers. The plant can grow for as long as 50 years, but needs to be above a certain altitude to bloom.

Since the plant is valuable only when harvested before the bloom, what's up with the flowers? The local government used to hold an annual weekend long event for the tourists and end up spending a lot of money hosting the event. So they decided to use the same amount of money, pay a fraction of the farmers to let the flowers bloom, and everyone gets a 2-month season to see these beauties.

Each flower bloom for one day only. So technically, the farmers only have one chance to harvest each needle before it's too late. They say if you are hired as a picker, your performance will be judged by how many flowers bloom the next day.

I visited this place about two months ago before the flower bloom season, and it was beautiful already.
Mt_Sixty-Stones pictures by molested_cow - Photobucket

Sunrise

Sunset that didn't show up.

Drying the harvest

 

[JAC526]

These are awesome. What a beautiful region.

 

[jowensphoto]

Holy photobomb, Batman!

All kidding aside, the colors in these are amazing. I particularly like the panoramas. There is quite a bit of ghosting in the first one, even without viewing the full sized image.

ETA: the "ghosts" could also be rays of light/haze. Now I can't tell!

 

[Fred Berg]

Numbers 7, 10 and 11 are the ones I like best (especially 7), but all are super.

 

[molested_cow]

Those are light rays exaggerated by HDR. The rest were taken this past weekend, and I limited HDRs only to sunrise or sunset shots to deal with the high contrast. Need to lay off from excessive tone mapping!

 

[molested_cow]

Thanks Fred. Yes it's one thing to get a nice shot of landscape but absolutely something else to capture the local lifestyle.

BTW the mountain was packed with people, and photographers... you know, there were sooooo many photographers crowded on the peak where I took the sunrise shot that it totally ruined the mood of enjoying the scenery for me. I basically took the shots and was the first to get off the mountain.

 

[jowensphoto]

Those are light rays exaggerated by HDR. The rest were taken this past weekend, and I limited HDRs only to sunrise or sunset shots to deal with the high contrast. Need to lay off from excessive tone mapping!

Ahhh okay. I couldn't put my finger on it exactly. The sunsets are really nice!

 

[Photographiend]

Pictures are nice... your screen name on the other hand...

 

[myko5]

Wow, nice work! I really enjoyed these, thanks for sharing.

 

[invisible]

Numbers 6 and 10 steal the show for me – both would likely work very well as fine-art images and also stock photos.

 

[bala4567]

Wow, amazing pictures. Pics 3, 4, 5, 6 are the best.

 

[FanBoy]

Stunning landscape photography. #20--I think--the one with the pagoda or temple, could use some color enhancement and would be perfect.