She is an award-winning photographer and artist based in New York City, and built an impressive reputation for her rituals, rites of passage, festivals, celebrations and portraits from all over the world.

Her infrared photographs of Rajasthan and Gujarat as an audio slideshow have now been added to her ongoing personal project “Still Points in a Turning World” which focuses on Asia’s vanishing tribal heritage.

With her acknowledged expertise in infrared photography and its intricate post-processing, Terri provides personalized hands-on tutorship to photographers who are interested in the craft. So visit her website, and email her to learn this exciting photographic technique that is growing in popularity.

A previous post on Terri’s photography is here.

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I chanced upon this Chinese Acrobatic Opera performance near the Performing Arts Centre. It was really colourful and entertaining.

Exotic Thai dancers at the entrance to the Thai Pavilion.

A Sound and Puppet show outside the Poland Pavilion.

An excellent jazz band performing at the Australian Pavilion.

A Japanese Choir made up of mostly senior citizens.

Remember – the Expo is not just about buildings and exhibits, but also about people and culture. So don’t forget to catch some of these great performances while you are there.

The timber structures are quite beautiful.

Once you enter the pavilion you can see the whole big canopy-covered space. It is quite impressive. As for the exhibitions, there wasn’t much to look at, so it was another disappointment as far as contents is concerned.

Visitors are quite intrigued by this block of ice with animal paw prints imported all the way from Norway.

The restaurant at the Pavilion.

Fresh off an extensive tour of Canada–the largest Commonwealth nation (and one that she has visited over 20 times)–Her Majesty is in New York today to give a speech at the United Nations. She has addressed the General Assembly only once before, in 1957. However, as the official head of state of 16 UN member nations, the queen has long been considered a source of valuable insight.

Her personal dedication to interacting with the world and the relative ease of modern-day transportation have made her the most widely traveled head of state in history. In the early 1950s, she undertook an ambitious six-month world tour and became the first monarch to circumnavigate the globe.

By the way, she does all this without a passport! Because British passports are issued in the name of Her Majesty, it has been deemed wholly unnecessary for her to use one.

Modes of transportation employed by the queen throughout the years have
been as diverse and fascinating as the places she’s visited. She and Prince Philip have, in the past, famously ridden on the backs of elephants into Jaipur, India, and the pair took a spin on a Royal Canadian Naval vessel (HMCS St. John’s) just last Tuesday. In the summer of 2009, I was fortunate enough to photograph Her Majesty’s official birthday celebration, during which she makes use of Queen Victoria’s 1842 ivory-mounted phaeton to get from Whitehall to Buckingham Palace. Pulled along by horses and flanked by guards, she is truly a sight to behold.

It’s not always as glamorous as all that, however. Each December, the queen travels with the commoners from London to Norfolk for her annual Christmas holiday via ordinary, scheduled train service.

All of Her Majesty’s journeys, both casual and formal, are bound to be met
with public curiosity–oftentimes, outright affection. It’s easy to
take an interest in the places Queen Elizabeth visits, but some critics are more
intrigued by those she hasn’t. Notably absent from her otherwise impressive resume is her neighbor, the Republic of Ireland. Also, she has never visited Israel and has yet to venture to the newly added Commonwealth country of Cameroon, which joined in 1995, making it the only corner of the Commonwealth that has never been visited by the monarch.

Check out the map below to see how you compare to the most well-traveled royal of all time! Darker shades of blue indicate more visits, with the darkest shade representing seven or more and the lightest only one. Trips where no official engagements were carried out are not included.
Map: Ibagli via Wikimedia Commons

Photo: Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip on the royal train at Central Railway Station, Sydney, Australia from State Records NSW via Flickr

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom – Monarchy – History – Canada – State visit

From a distance the building looks solid - as if clad in metal panels. When you go close-up, you realize that actually the cladding is not solid at all, but a kind of architectural fabric stretched like a skin over the metal skeleton of the building. I find this the most interesting feature of the building, as it points towards a possible new direction of creating form in architecture.

The line was too long so I didn't bother to go inside. The cafe is cleverly placed on one side of the pavilion, and here I could see many Chinese visitors enjoying the famous German pork knuckle and beer.

The pavilion at night.

Germany actually put up one of the most architecturally influential Pavilions at the 1929 Expo in Barcelona, Spain. Designed by renowned architect Mies Van der Rohe, it is commonly know as the Barcelona Pavilion. It was a building so radical for its time, it inspired a whole generation of architects. Somehow I didn't see anything at this Expo that would be as influential.

As far as emotional resonance is concerned, this Pavilion has heaps of it. Everybody loves a big fur ball, and this is exactly that – a large cube covered in glass spikes which move in the wind. It looks kind of like Sulley of Monster Inc, don’t you think ?

The Chinese have given this Pavilion the nick name – The Dandelion. It is certainly an apt name, for it does look like some strange seed from an alien planet. It is a very long wait if you want to get in to take a closer look.

Night view of “The Dandelion”.

I was quite intrigued by a restaurant at the Expo – C. Straits Café, which is a homegrown chain of Western cafés making quite good inroads in China. They have countless outlets in China, and is even planning to expanding overseas. China is repackaging Western food and re-exporting it back ! Watch out – McDonald’s and KFC.

The interior of the café is quite nice and modern. There are some oriental touches here and there, but otherwise it is quite “International” in design profile.

I ordered the Steak Set Lunch which came with coffee, a soup, salad and sirloin steak. I am happy to say the coffee was very good ! The mushroom soup was quite obviously batch produced in a central kitchen, maybe even from a can. It was quite bland and watery. The salad looked very fresh, but the dressing was too light. The steak, surprisingly, was quite good. Tender and cooked to the correct doneness that I had ordered. Unfortunately the accompanying sauce was not the best quality and was a bit too salty.

I must say the food standard was similar to other Western chain restaurants I have tried overseas. Perhaps they had used them as a model for their operation. If they can bring the food standard up a few notches and maintain the pricing structure, then they have a potent formula to compete with the World. The lunch bill came to RMB 98, which was quite reasonable.

This is one of the weirdest pavilions at the Expo – the Luxembourg Pavilion.

The Switzerland Pavilion – this looks like an entry for the “Ugliest Contest”. The main structures are a few concrete cylinders in various sizes which open up at the top to support a large platform. To it looks a bit like a missile silo or a deep sea oil rig. The little circular discs hanging down the side of the structure didn’t help much. Right at the top visitors can take a ride on ski lifts. That’s probably why it was so popular and there were thousands of people waiting in line.

The Spanish Pavilion – one of the most interesting looking pavilions at the Expo. The exterior is covered in wicker panels which was an attempt at using a sustainable material, but I felt that the effect was not entirely successful. The wicker were not very resilient to the elements and are beginning to show signs of heavy weathering just after a few months. The form though is very evocative of the Spanish spirit – proud, strong, and flamboyant. Reminds me of flags flying in the wind, and bull fights. Strange ?

The Finland Pavilion – another drum-shaped design that seems to be quite popular here. The entire building exterior is covered in fish-scale shaped panels made from recycled paper and plastic. It has a nice matte texture. This is a much more successful example of sustainable material, unfortunately the architecture was rather uninspiring. However, in some strange way it does evoke the quietness and loneliness that I imagine Finland to be.

The Austrian Pavilion. It looked like something starchitect Zaha Hadid would have done, albiet at a much smaller scale. This was actually by some relatively unknown young architects SPAN and Zeytinoglu from Austria. Like many of Zaha Hadid’s work – the form is interesting in a sculptural way but lack soul or emotional resonance. Great sculpture must have the ability to connect with the viewer, but I don’t feel any connection here. Would be great for a night club ?

The Czech Republic Pavilion – just a box.

The Bosnia and Herzegovina Pavilion.

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The Italian Pavilion. Like many other pavilions, this is essentially a decorated box. The entrance area is clad in glass, but the rest of the structure is in covered in stone. Architecturally there isn’t much to talk about.

The French Pavilion. Another decorated box – this time clad in a structural external screen which is a popular architectural devide in the past decade. The screen has a curved lattice which makes it a little bit different, but other then that nothing too exciting.

Only through the screen can you see the scale of this huge structure. Look at the size of the figures !

The Polish Pavilion is also a decorated box – but what a beautiful box ! The skin is based on paper cut patterns which is a Polish folk tradition, and creates a cultural link to the Chinese who also have a strong paper cut tradition. I like the simple folded form and the ingenuity of using the beautiful patterns on the skin which would be familiar to any Chinese visitor. Based on some photos I’ve seen on the Net, these patterns are also reflected in the interior design and looks really beautiful. This pavilion is worth a visit if you can make time for it.

The Portugal Pavilion – clad in cork. It looks a bit like the Canadian Pavilion.

Wait for Part II of the European Pavilions.

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