This is China’s equivalent of Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. The Ming Tombs was my first stop on my very first trip to Beijing. I’m itching to return here with a proper camera. This was with a little Canon point and shoot. I was trying to zoom on that temple on top of the mountain, and with a small camera you don’t get much zoom so it turned out being a full landscape shot instead…which works for me. I actually like the grain on this instead of realism, plus when I tried to clean it up I lost all detail in the trees and the temple on top of the mountain so it stays just as I first shot it.

Ming Tomb atop a mountain in Vally of the Kings
If I were in this same spot again I think I would photograph it the same way. The vastness of the mountain range that the tomb is sitting on top of makes it even more isolated, small and serene. Yeah, a mountaintop tomb that’s isolated and serene is the way I’d choose to go too.