if you've followed my blog at all you know that I am blessed to work at Nikon and I've had the opportunity to see things that I am 99% sure I would never have seen otherwise. One of those things was the Great Wall of China. I had been fascinated by Gehghis Khan as a kid for some reason and that led to a fascination with the Great Wall. I visited Beijing with Nikon to support the IAAF World Championships. I managed to escape for a day and knew that I'd kick myself in the head forever if I didn't take the opportunity to go to the wall. After a few hours reading about it I knew I didn't want to visit Mutianyu as it was close to Beijing and had a rep for being a constant herd of humanity. The best bet on paper was Jinshanling which was 2 1/2 hours from Beijing and was half wild and and half restored. This appealed to me photo wise. I didn't want to clone people out. I didn't want to fight crowds to get great shots. 

I didn't end up with the best weather. I didn't end up with epic skies. I was too late in the day (i wasn't on my own schedule) to see the cloud lake they talk about in the morning. It didn't matter. The experience was epic. The rain kept moving closer and closer but I was only caught in a light drizzle for moments of the 3 hour hike up and down the stairs and walls. 

These images are stitched panoramas of 3 - 8 images captured with the D810 and 50 1.4 

Thanks