I'm Dongmai Ying, a museum photographer and a blogger
Up till now I've been to over two hundred museums
And took more than 470 thousand photos
Since 2012
And I created 15,000 posts on Weibo
Owning 3.27 million followers
In 2018 and 2019
I was awarded as one of the "Top 10 Bloggers" in my area
Photographing cultural relics is an out-of-office interest of mine
I work in finance
It all started at the new year of 2012
I went to Xi'an with a colleague
In Shaanxi History Museum there is a topic exhibition -- Treasures of the Great Tang Dynasty
I took a lot of photos and posted them online
The earliest one that was reposted a lot
Was a jade comb from Nanjing City Museum
And one from Nanjing Museum
A pink jade censer of Qing Dynasty
I'm just like any other visitors
Buy my own tickets and call my own cab
And stay in line when there is one
My camera is Canon 5D4, 100mm macro lens
Never used a tripod
Flashlight is strictly prohibited
I'm always the earliest to arrive at the museum
And stay in there until it closes and I am told to leave
The beauty of cultural relics is seamless
Such as this Buddha statue
I would walk around it
Standing, half squatting, squatting
Lying on my stomach, lying on my back, experimenting with every angle and position
That's part of the fun
There is a red-glazed vase in the National Museum of China
No one had ever been able to get a clear and undistorted picture of it
I just waited there
Until finally a man clad in dark green came across me
I pressed the shutter several times at that precious moment
This is a Boshan censer from Datong Museum
The usual pictures we see are upfront close-ups
While I decided to squat
And thought of the top of the censer as a mountain floating in the dark
In the upper right corner are the ceiling lights
Some collection in museums is not valuable in the usual sense
It can be just ultimately worldly
I would never forget that time I went to The Metropolitan Museum of Art
It opens at ten and I got in as soon as it opened
They won't even let you bring in water, can you believe it?
Not even water
So I went through a day without food and drinking water in the bathroom
I work or go on business trips during the day
And after I get back home or to my hotel
As a pastime I would process photos
Many of my followers are hidden talents
Such as museum staffs
And I would add captions
To those funny exhibits
Like this bronze ware
From The National Palace Museum In Taipei
The ear handle part resembles an animal sniffing for food
I didn't intend to become an influencer
I just really like to do this
So I spend so much time to look
To admire and to photograph