Brilliant Window on Brilliant Taiwan -- FotoZon and “Taiwan Photo of the Day”

By Christine Sun

Lush forests, rapid rivers, jagged blue cliffs along winding coastlines, fluffy white clouds around mountain tops, green wide plains dotted by red-tiled houses and hard-working farmers, skyscrapers surrounded by streets full of bustling crowds and vehicles, amazing flora and fauna, and robotic machines seen everywhere in industrial harbors and parks. These are some of the best subjects of photography one can find in Taiwan.

And people -- there are always people, their cultural and economic activities, their body languages, their faces and, in particular, their smiles. When viewers browse through the photographs displayed by FotoZon's “Taiwan Photo of the Day”, they are seeing the many brilliant faces of Taiwan. It is on these faces that Taiwan's beautiful and dynamic spirit as a multicultural society is best reflected.

When Joseph Gray first came to Taiwan in 1997, he was just one of the thousands of Western professionals who worked and lived here. However, originally from Seattle, Gray's experience of living in southern Taiwan's Tainan City must have left a deep impression in his heart. The American programmer was back in 2006, and in June 2007 he launched the “Taiwan Photo of the Day” service in his FotoZon web site to feature the beautiful island.

FotoZon displays photographs cleanly on its pages, without a lot of “junk” around them. This sets the site apart from other popular sites that overwhelm viewers with hundreds of flashing and self-promoting advertisements. Although Gray is clearly ambitious about building up FotoZon in the way that Flickr did, he remains customer-minded. “Our users can choose their own layouts and color schemes as well as customizing all the titles of every page. The plan is to make this complete customization one of the distinguishing features,” Gray said in a recent interview.

Indeed, one of the most extraordinary features of FotoZon is the site's daily photograph exhibition. The photos here and those displayed randomly everyday can be used by viewers as content outside the site. For example, thanks to Gray's generosity, other web sites interested in promoting Taiwanese people and culture can set up their own “Taiwan Photo of the Day” services, using images provided by FotoZon. In the near future, other web displaying and hosting services will be provided so that viewers all over the world can share excellent photography.

“Sharing photos is a personal passion of mine. Keeping your photos online is a great way to share yourself with the people you care about,” Gray said. Although the “Taiwan Photo of the Day” service was only launched in June 2007, it has attracted a significant number of viewers. Nearly 2,000 images are requested everyday and the figure is still growing rapidly. In the mean time, viewers are encouraged to contribute their own photographs about Taiwan. Provided that they are presentable and interesting to the others, these digital images may be highlighted not only on FotoZon but also on multiple web sites that subscribe to FotoZon's services.

When viewers use the “Taiwan Photo of the Day” service, they get to see a fresh and clear image about Taiwan everyday. The subjects vary dramatically -- from well-known landscapes and scenes both natural and mundane, to once-in-a-lifetime glimpses of common people and their daily lives. Thanks to their unique compositions, strong contrasts of light and shadow and brilliant colors, these images create a long-lasting impression about Taiwan as a vibrant society. The hundreds of images stored in FotoZon's well-designed archives further upgrade such impression to a desire and an inspiration to better understand Taiwan and its people.

When asked about the most interesting photographs ever contributed to FotoZon's “Taiwan Photo of the Day”, Gray found it hard to answer, because there are so many. For instance, one photograph features three women cutting grass in front of the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall (http://fotozon.com/fotoview.cgi?1024). Wearing straw hats, masks and long-sleeved protective clothing, their faces are hard to see. But their silent concentration on the tasks at hand makes the magnificent Main Gate in the distant background almost seem unreal, as if no celebrated heroes in the past, present and future can distract the three ordinary laboring ladies away from their work -- to make a patch of grass tidy.

In another photo, titled “Morning Rays” and taken along Taiwan's famous North Coast Scenic Area (http://fotozon.com/fotoview.cgi?559), a single fisherman steps onto the rocks to brace the cold waves. Exposed under the golden rays of sunlight shooting down from the heavens, the lonely figure stands still and is as silent as the time-frozen pale foams, between the dark coastal rocks below and the dark clouds in the sky above. It is a brilliant portrayal of a person fully intent on the pursuit of his goal.

“Taiwan Photo of the Day should continue to evolve. The immediate need is to gather more contributors,” Gray said. Apart from building it up as a web site that shows off photographs about Taiwan in their best light, Gray plans to offer domain hosting via FotoZon for those professional and amateur photographers who want a custom online photo album. “I may never turn a profit. [But] I keep telling myself…[that] it's just a wonderful hobby that has brought me into contact with many wonderful new people,” Gray said. Hopefully, through the brilliant “Taiwan Photo of the Day” service, viewers worldwide can get to see more brilliant images about Taiwan.