Shooting Hong Kong in 3.5 days

Images taken:  472
Images flagged:  157
Images developed:  95
Images selected for album:  50

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I had no plan and did no research on shooting Hong Kong.  The trip was occasioned by an invitation for a job interview and I expected to simply wander the streets for a couple of days apart from attending the interview itself.  The only bit of planning was to look for a photography museum (an account of my visit to which is reported here) and a suitable hotel.

On two previous visits to the city I stayed in Kowloon and so wanted this time to stay somewhere different.  I didn’t really want to stay on the island, as my impression from previous visits is that it is highly developed and in many regards similar to other large, over-developed cities.  I was looking for something more Chinese, something a little grungier and middle to working class.  I found it in the area around Ya Ma Tei.

Just next to the hotel was off-site horse betting; everyday there was a crowd of inebriated men, drunk on cheap alcohol from the corner convenience store, yelling at the TV screens.  In the streets around the hotel were a number of clubs and karaoke bars that are obvious fronts for prostitution, with young women hanging around outside or advertised in posters.  Just two streets over was Temple Street, which turns into a hawker’s night market of cheap clothing, phone accessories, junk jewelry, and sex toys.

 Apart from a bit of shopping and an appointment at the photography museum, both on the island, my wanderings were confined to a radius of a few blocks of my hotel, and always during daylight hours.  I found on reviewing my images that a great deal of my attention was directed toward architecture -- old buildings, buildings with unusual colors, buildings with unusual shapes, or buildings that seemed overwhelming when standing near them.  Once I had time to process the images, I found that in many the perspective could not be corrected without cutting off large parts of the building.  The problem seems to be the lack of physical space -- there is no room to back-up and get a proper shot, so you have to aim the camera at an angle.  What you produce are images that show buildings toppling over.  I suppose the best way -- maybe the only way -- to correct for this is a wide angle lens, or shooting in sections and creating a composite.

Many city blocks seem to be designed with an alley running between buildings facing opposite sides of the street.  Here you’ll find bins, bags of trash, piles of junk the owners want to be rid of, cleaning and maintenance materials (mops, brooms, buckets, ladders), exposed pipe, wiring, fuse boxes, and alarm switches, and plenty of graffiti that may last a bit longer than graffiti on storefronts.  All of this makes great material for still-lifes.

Trees are something that always grab my attention, but in Hong Kong there seem to be fewer than even in Dubai.  Those that can be found are more dramatic for being so much rarer.  All my tree images made it into the album, apart from one that was too underexposed to make right in post-processing.

I didn’t shoot a lot of people.  I don’t have much experience in Chinese streets and am not sure how people might react, it’s much more tiring work, and there were more than enough interesting non-human subjects in the environment to keep me occupied for three days.  In fact, I can see how I could spend a couple of years photographing in HK, and not just in the streets.  There are a number of small islands with fishing villages and hiking trails that would be equally interesting as photographic subjects.

I’m still waiting to hear about the interview, but if all goes well, a photographic life in Hong Kong could be a very real possibility.

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