The final day of work here in Beijing. Tomorrow morning we’re flying out to the new place near North Korea. Heard it’s terribly cold there, but will be nice to be back on a mountain. For today’s final practice we still had some productivity. Really slowing down the fundamentals and showing the girls the proper technique for take-offs.  Always happy to see some progression from the kids. 

This afternoon we had off to finish packing before dropping our ski luggage off for a transport vehicle to take it to our new location. This worked out perfect for the last afternoon and an idea I had for some photos. Yesterday I talked to Asen about if he would be down to take some photos at the Summer Palace with him wearing his karate gi. After dropping off my luggage, I hit up Asen to let him know I was free and that we should head on over quickly for golden hour. At first, I thought we were a bit late, but we ended up being right on time. I had an absolute blast taking photos of him. Was still a bit chilly with the wind on the lake. As I started to check out the area we found a good location on this mini island looking out at the palace. Asen changed quickly into his karate gi, and I started snapping away. It was so cold that I was only was able to take photos for 6 mins before he was too cold. Although limited in our time, we still got some of my personal favorite’s. As we continued walking around the park, we went to see the bridge area for more photos. 

One of the more hilarious parts of the evening was the number of random people that stopped Asen to take photos of him. Wonder if they thought he was a movie star or something. I can recall at least 3-4 times when people wanted to take photos of or with him. 

When we arrived at the island we continued to keep on shooting until the light faded. The light was absolutely perfect this evening & was a great test to see how this lens works. I had snapped so many pics of Asen, that he insisted that I get in-front of the lens as well. Think the girlfriend will like a couple of these. Insanely fun time and again so happy he was down with the idea. It would have been amazing if we got more photos with him wearing his karate gi, but it really was so freezing that my own hands were hardly working from those 6 mins of shooting. 

Off to the next location!