The Yenshuei Fireworks Festival (Yenshuei Fong Pao) is a festival held in the Yenshuei township in Southern Taiwan every year.  During the festival millions of fireworks are shot out of large hives into crowds of revelers dressed in heavy clothing and full-face motorcycle helmets.  Each hive may contain as many as sixty thousand fireworks.  If proper safety precautions are taken, the activity is not very dangerous.  However, each year some people are injured.  To learn more about this festival, read my post Standing in the Fireworks.

Below is a gallery of pictures from the 2010 Yenshuei Fireworks Festival.  You can navigate the gallery using the thumbnails, by clicking on the image, or by using the arrow keys on your keyboard.

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Click a thumbnail to view a larger version of the picture.  To navigate the full-size picture gallery click on the arrow icons, the picture itself, or use the arrow keys on your keyboard.

Recently I've been working on a series of articles about paragliding in Taiwan.  I've been learning how to paraglide, and about the evolution of paragliding in Taiwan, from Malcom Vargas who is, as far as I know, the only certified foreign paragliding instructor in the country.  These are some photos from one of my first outings with Malcom taken while he taught two other students: Tim Hillebran and Paul Wesson.

If you're an editor interested in a story about, or photographs of, paragliding in Taiwan contact me at xpatmatt (at) gmail.com.

To navigate the gallery below just mouse over the picture and use the arrows that appear on either side of it.

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The Wang Yeh boat burning festival occurs once every three years.  Disease spreading ghosts, or Wang Yeh, are lead onto the boats by priests and mediums.  The boat, sitting atop a mountain of ghost money (money burned by locals for the benefit of their dead ancestors) is then burned, sending the spirits back to their world, hopefully taking their plagues with them.  This year, I believe, there was a special focus on H1N1 (the Swine Flu).

To navigate the gallery below, simply click on the picture to progress to the next, or use the arrows that appear on either side of it.

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A photo essay I shot on a trip to the Madou Crocodile King farm, a small private zoo in Tainan County, Taiwan, that features various exotic and mutated animals and one gigantic crocodile.  The crocodile, stuck in a tiny pen for several years, has become extremely fat.  Seriously.  The largest crocodile ever recorded was 8.6 m long and weighed 1,350 kg.  This croc, according to the sign, was 5.2 m long and 1250 kg, which puts it in the running for the fattest croc in the world.  It's so fat and slow that you can walk up behind it and sit on it.  We did.  Check it out.

To navigate the gallery below, simply click on the picture to progress to the next, or use the arrows that appear on either side of it.

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A short photo essay that I shot on a trip to the the world renowned National Museum of Marine Biology & Aquarium in Pingtung County, Southern Taiwan.  Unfortunately, the light in the aquarium is very low, and flash photography is prohibited, so was a tough shoot, but I got some good pretty good pictures including some manta rays, penguins, and a massive whale shark.

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Yenshui Fireworks Festival

Below are three galleries of Tainan Lantern Festival and the Yenshui Fireworks Festival photographs by Richard Matheson posted as part of a magazine query.

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Click on the picture on the right or left side of the picture to move forwards and backwards through the gallery, or use the thumbnails below.

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Below is a short photo essay that I shot one afternoon depicting the Mayan Village San Pedro La Laguna, on the shores of the beautiful Lake Atitlan in the Guatemalan Highlands.

I spent five months studying and working in San Pedro.

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To navigate the gallery below, simply click on the picture to progress to the next, or use the arrows that appear on either side of it.

This page has an image gallery on it. Click here to open the post in your browser to see the gallery.