In the spring of 2006, I enjoyed a 15-day East Asian cruise on the Oceania Lines ship "M.S. Nautica" that started in Beijing, China, with visits to Seoul, Korea; Shanghai, China; Hiroshima, Kobe, Kyoto, Okinawa and Ishigaki Japan; Taipei, Taiwan; and ending in Hong Kong. We preceded this cruise with a three day stay in Beijing, and following the cruise, we travelled back into the interior of China for nine days, visiting Lijiang in Yunnan Province and Guilin.

I have prepared a separate Worldisround article on the Chinese segments of this trip. You can find it at http://www.worldisround.com/articles/291935/index.html .

This article is devoted to my impressions of a series of six brief one-day port stops in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. If you've viewed the previous articles of travel impressions I've posted on this site, you'll note that my photographic intentions are focused on interpretation, rather than description. I wanted to make more than just a record of the sights I saw in these Asian cities. I want my pictures to express my own feelings about them, rather than just describing the appearance of what I saw.

Aside from sharing these pictures with you on this website, I also am using many of them to teach the principles of expressive travel photography on my pbase website (http://www.pbase.com/pnd1) as well as in both my Sedona workshops for corporate photojournalists, and my tutorial workshops in Phoenix for newcomers to digital photography.

These 60 images were gleaned from the more than 2,000 digital pictures I shot during this portion of our trip. To view them properly, it is essential that you click on the link beneath the image marked "View full-size image -- 1000 x 750" This will allow you to see the picture in all of its detail.

I used an eight megapixel Panasonic FZ-30 to make all but five of these images. It features an amazing 36mm-420mm Leica lens with image stabilization, allowing me to use its long telephoto in low light situations with remarkable clarity. Its flip-out LCD viewfinder allows easy use at low and high angles, making it the single most useful tool for travel photography that I've used to date.

I made the other five images with a Leica D-Lux 2, a pocket camera offering a 28mm wideangle view within a 16x9 frame, a shape similar to a high definition TV screen. The subjects of each of these images were best defined within such a frame.

I've edited all of these images with Photoshop to correct and refine the hue, color, contrast and sharpness levels, hopefully making my pictures more vibrant and meaningful. Although all of these photographs were digitally enhanced to some degree, none of the content has been significantly manipulated. The facts are all here, as I captured them. I hope you will enjoy these photographic impressions. Please post any comments at the end of the article, or ask me any questions you might have via email. Phil Douglis Director, The Douglis Visual Workshops, Phoenix, Arizona, pnd1@cox.net