Note from Jonah: Some big improvements on image viewing on this post. Click on images and they will appear larger in your screen. The images are also scrollable if you mouse over on the left or right sides of the photos.

Last week I spent three days shooting in Tianjin in preperation for the 2010 Summer Davos.

The annual meeting held by the World Economic Forum brings business leaders together from around the world to help coordinate sustainable and responsible economic growth.

Driving growth through sustainability is fundamental for global, national and business competitiveness in the 21st century. This year’s programme will focus on how to increase energy efficiency, lower carbon emissions, develop green technology and rebuild basic infrastructure.

It will also provide a systemic overview of key economic, industry and technological developments that will reshape business and society for the foreseeable future.

I was brought in to photograph downtown Tianjin (not the Binhai new area) for an 8 page advertisement on the forum. The goal here was to show varying cityscapes and some general “life” images throughout the city of over 10 million people. Although they were looking for mostly what I would call generic images, some strange weather ended up allowing me to get some fun images, that will surely not be used for the advertisement.

On arrival in Tianjin, I was greeted with fog, rain and a thick cloud of pollution. This essentially killed most day time shooting; however, trying to salvage the shoot, I shot at night, hoping the lights from Tianjin’s skyscrapers and bridges would texturize the fog.

Sure enough, two nights of night shooting throughout the city, with some indoor shooting during the days created some interesting landscapes that almost make Tianjin look evil — or, someplace out of a horror movie. Hence my point: You won’t see these images in any brochure for the forum, but they are quite fun.

When shooting landscapes and cityscapes there’s a lot of pressure to create “perfect” or “iconic” images. Your subjects are not moving and you can really control your frame; however, you can’t control the weather. With a deadline, this can be a problem. These long exposures highlighted the fog and created some really interesting colors in the sky, as well as some big issues with white balance.

Impressions on Tianjin: While most Beijingers will constantly make fun of our neighboring city, the small village of 10 million is actually visually very impressive. A bullet train from Beijing’s South Railway station will put you in Tianjin in just under 40 minutes — this is an easy day trip from Beijing. Although the Italian city has a bit of an Epcot Center feel to it — the area actually has a little but of a Shanghai Bund feeling to it. Lots of European restaurants around — as well as the always amusing Chinese waitress dressed up as a St. Pauli Girs can make for a fine evening of entertainment.

Also worth a visit, is Tianjin’s food street (which I would describe as better than Beijing’s) as well as some pretty excellent antique markets (also better than Beijings — and significantly cheaper for the same fake antiques).

Although most of the images above won’t be used for the advertisement, I did get some blue sky my last day. I created some wide landscapes and stitched some photos together (the photo immediately above is a simple 2 photo stitch taken with a 14mm. See more images form last week’s shoot in the slideshow below.