I had dinner atop the Oriental Pearl Tower on my last night in China and hoped to finally get that dusk shot I’d been waiting for. Not only was it threatening rain, but I had learned the night before when trying to shoot the skyline that most of the buildings were not lit until about an hour and a half after sunset. So, no twilight skies with lit skyscrapers on this trip. After dinner, it was pouring rain. Buckets. But, as I made my dash out of the building with my gear bundled tightly under my raincoat, I looked up and saw the tower lit for the first time. I found a small overhang from a ticket window that provided enough shelter that I could get this shot. One of the last 5 of my trip — and the rest of those were primarily shots I took of my amazing hotel room to show friends.

Not the shot that I had envisioned, but I like it. If the lights couldn’t be on while there was some sky color, I’m actually glad to have had the cloud cover so that the spotlights had something to illuminate. I’ll just have to come back when that newest tallest-building-in-China is complete and get my skyline shot from across the river then.

I’ve been lazy the last two days and haven’t updated my Alamy files at all so I keyworded 36 images this morning to cover today’s goal as well as that of the past two. Now I’m all caught up — for the time being. Only 874 more images to prep to meet my May 1 goal of 2000 images.