A Thinking Street Photography Site
Lots of street shots to do with construction workers.
Quite literally, these are the people who built Singapore.
I grew up in Singapore, and even to me, the heat is too much at times.
So yes, this is hard work.
These were taken at various places.
The scenes are ubiquitous.
Singapore depends a lot on foreign labour.
Working behind the scenes.
So we have these.
Camera: Olympus XA 2
Film: Agfa Vista 400
Here’s a mishmash of images of Singapore, significant to myself.
Though the underlying theme here is about how we try to snatch something beautiful out of what is essentially functional.
Form follows function in much of Singapore.
Life, too, follows function: poetry is a luxury we cannot afford.
There is one way only. The rest is barred.
If you live with it long enough, it becomes beautiful.
Draw the curtains.
Poetry delayed is poetry denied.
We are at the zoo.
The helpful tram driver and a passenger.
After the animal show – poetry is found after the event.
Reflections in the MRT.
The tree is obedient, bent in the wind.
Perhaps something is poetry after all…
Thanks for reading.
Camera: Leica M6
Lens: Voigtlander 35mm f 1.4 Nokton SC
Film: Ilford XP2
At the zoo in Singapore with my son.
We did a double photo combo, with my 10-year-old son holding the Canon 600D with a 40mm f 2.8 STM lens and I holding my Leica M6. I’ll post my photographs another day.
All photos here, except for the elephant shot, were by my son.
On the way to the zoo, he found the water droplets at the back of a bus interesting.
He’s developing a good visual sense, I must say.
Nice monkey.
Nice erm … plant thingey.
Looking up to see itself.
Nice fishes.
A very charming gentleman.
Nice big mole.
I waited for a while before everything came together in this shot.
I told my son to wait till all the necks were parallel with one another.
Would have been better if they were between the trees in contrast with the background.
A horse (pony?) sticking its neck out.
Feed the goats!
My son was fascinated by the polar bear show.
It’s a powerful looking bear. We were told polar bears weigh only about 350 grams at birth.
This is grace.
Power.
Determination.
When I grow up I want to be a polar bear.
I’ve lived in Hong Kong long enough such that I could see Singapore with a fresh set of eyes.
Some of the buildings have become rather futuristic.
And public housing flats are beginning to look very homely.
Singapore is home, a comfortable grid.
We’re all fitted into grids.
Nice looking public housing.
Was at Hard Rock Café with my family.
An amazing acoustic set – it’s nice to listen to local acts with my wife… while trying to get our children to eat their broccoli.
The HRC I know were Saturday clubbing nights, 2 decades ago.
As I looked around at the various tables, I saw expat families with kids, tourists and middle-class locals out for dinner.
Times have changed – or perhaps I have changed.
Once upon a time, I wanted to be a rock star with my acoustic guitar.
The lyric he’s singing: “I’m all about that bass, about that bass, about that bass…”
Subsequent serious research (Google and Wikipedia) tells me it’s really a very cool song.
Now, I see HRC as an F&B outlet using rock music as a marketing tool, reaching out to customers like me who’ve come of age with the likes of GnR, Bon Jovi and Skid Row.
Perhaps I’m getting older and more cynical.
Still – it’s good to be young and idealistic.
HRC still looks impressive.
The colour is wonderful.
Orchard Road is gearing up for Christmas.
Hilton façade with a dash of nature.
A Martian landscape in full colour.
Equally interesting in monochrome.
It’s nice to be young…
An empty bus looks somewhat disturbing, like an unfulfilled promise.
This looks better – all blurry and full of promise.
Thanks for reading!
Camera: Canon 600D
Legacy Lens: Meyer-Optik Gorlitz Lydith 30mm f. 3.5
Let’s say you’re standing in a long queue – the longer, the better.
You’ll have an excuse to loiter and try different compositions as you move closer…
There’s a rhythm you’re trying to capture.
You try for a kind of harmony, a convergence of human actions.
You don’t know when to stop looking.
You go on trying one shot after another.
Would the stack of bowls add to the composition, you wonder.
Or is it better with the person out of focus but framed by the hanging chickens?
Would it work better in landscape or portrait?
Landscape is better – I think … but here the person is hidden.
There’s a potential statement here to be made about how human relations are obscured by commodities.
Maybe having him framed after all is better.
Is it better with the bowls partly showing?
Or not? Maybe my next shot would be better.
Maybe it’s better with the spoon container fully captured.
Would it be better like this? Probably not. If only she’d turn around.
Or this, after all? Nice, clean and simple. And the composition is busy enough to be interesting.
Or perhaps this?
Check out my Saatchi Art page!
Singapore is a work in progress, and the physical landscape never fails to remind you of this.
There could be cranes in the sky in built-up areas, and there could be views like the one below.
Occasionally, it gets a bit postmodern, like this:
The inside wants to be outside.
Our desires/appetites/wants/needs are very well structured and catered to.
Everything is for sale.
Cities are places where appetites are met.
Appetites transcend national boundaries …
Pig organ soup, anyone? It’s actually quite yummy.
Waiting.
Doing.
Working.
Cooking.
Buildings are structures of desires.
There’s ambition in the architecture.
These are homely desires.
There’s an architecture of modernity.
An architecture of nationhood.
And space in which we simply do nothing at all.
Thanks for reading!
Open-edition prints are available at my Saatchi Art page.
Various scenes in Singapore – some iconic, others a little whimsical.
Singapore the Garden City.
Executives waiting for a bus. This was taken while I was in a bus.
For the love of country.
Country loving fashion.
Looking up.
He posed for me.
The above and below few images are of workers who are maintaining a playground.
They saw what I was doing, smiled, and gamely went on with their work.
They were very thorough.
They were tightening all the screws.
And checking to see if everything is in order.
That’s a chicken rice stall – the kind of food I go for whenever I am in Singapore.
This is part of the everyday Singaporean culture often take for granted.
A sack of something on the pavement.
It makes for a wonderful art installation idea.
Barrier – though I wonder what the triangular cut-outs are for.
The durian.
Lamp shade.
That’s a partial rendering of the Marina Bay Sands, a tourist destination.
It reminds me of a Star Trek phaser.
Rooftop facade of the Esplanade – also known as the durian.
Swissotel the Stamford, designed by I.M. Pei.
A construction worker taking a break at a public housing void deck.
For collectors: open-edition prints are available here.
I’ve been reading Alexander Nehamas’ Only a Promise of Happiness and some of his words jumped out at me:
Beauty always remains a bit of a mystery, forever a step beyond anything I can say about it, more like something calling me without showing exactly what it is calling me to. Since no words are enough to convince me that something is beautiful (or its opposite), it is a call I can only hear on my own, beyond what anyone can say to show that making it part of my life might be worthwhile. (pg. 78)
We’re in the end looking at and listening to that innermost voice calling out to us … I suppose that’s a good description for anyone who knows what it means to be an artist, poet and/or street photographer.
Again, from Nehamas:
Even the narrowest judgment of beauty has far-reaching consequences and makes a difference to one’s mode of life. What such a life will bring is impossible to predict and, once it has brought it, difficult to evaluate. You can’t know in advance the sort of person it will make you and you can’t ever be sure of the worth of the person you have become. You can’t even be certain that you will eventually consider what you find through the pursuit of beauty to have been worth your while. (pg. 129)
I suppose all we could do is wait and see and hope to grow into the sort of person we’d want to be…
Sometimes it is tempting to fall into that path of least resistance, choosing a course of action simply because it is there and it is a well-worn path.
Go into a shop, buy a thing, any thing.
And sometimes it is after exhausting a particular option that one begins to want more…
What does it mean to flourish?
How may one begin to understand how one path leads to another?
Are we caught in a web of our own making?
Is there room to maneuver?
Or perhaps the grid is comfortable, after all.
A sort of ready-made architecture of success beckons.
We see.
We try to make sense out of this.
We look into ourselves and hope we find something significant…
Open-edition prints available here.
We’re on Sentosa, an island theme park.
The Merlion – Singapore’s tourist icon which is an allusion to the 13th-century myth of a prince spotting a lion on an island which he later named Singapura (“Lion City” in Sanskrit).
The fish tail is supposed to remind Singapore of its origins as a fishing village.
It looked more menacing than usual on that day under a harsh sun.
The Sky Ride!
Woohoo!
It’s definitely not for those with a fear of heights.
That’s the luge ride – the other reason we were in Sentosa.
This looks rather poetic …
Another poetic shot … what can I say – I’m a street photography genius!
Tourism in a bus.
Much needed on a scorching hot day.
An even better idea on a hot day (every day) in Singapore.
That’s what it says…
The view is nice.
There’re still quiet corners on Sentosa.
No kidding! Or is this a trick?
It’s not a trick. *wink*
Waiting in a quiet corner.
Yes, there’re many scenic moments.
This is definitely not a stealthy camera…
Thanks for reading and check out my Saatchi Art page!
Singapore has a fantastic zoo.
We visit once a year each time we’re back.
I had a simple set-up that day – it’s a 40mm prime lens.
The challenge here is not so much to become the next National Geographic photographer, but simply to impart a bit of character onto the subjects.
That’s my favourite animal, totally at home in its tropical paradise – I was born in the year of the tiger.
A turtle flying through the water.
A dreamy iguana.
An enigmatic bicycle … (the kids had to pry their weird daddy and his camera away from this animal.)
We’re that sea lion, trained to perform.
See how hard it spins for its food.
The chimpanzees are high above, lording over us…
Check out that animal of a camera!
It’s a full frame Sony RX1r.
It’s a f/2 Carl Zeiss Sonnar lens!
It’s a full frame digital camera with a fixed lens, a challenge to a Leica fixed with a 35mm lens.
I could be Garry Winogrand with that camera! (I should say Winogrand’s book The Animals was on my mind that day.)
With that camera, I could become the next Daido Moriyama… look at that lens hood!
Okay … back to the main plot.
Once upon a time, Singapore was a small fishing village.
Then the elephants came.
We’re all looking out for our next orange squash.
Capitalism is fun!
All lined up and waiting to be splashed on by the sea lion … what fun!
Would you like to meet a capitalist snake, anyone?
That’s a white capitalist peacock giving us a rear view…
A charging polar bear!
Up close and personal with a polar bear.
There’re lines we cannot cross.
No worries – no one is going to eat us.
My daughter was impressed by this bird and followed it for a bit.
My son got real close and took the above shot.
“What’s that, daddy?”
“It’s a nice furry raccoon-like monkey animal creature.”
Children love the horse-carriage ride.
Nice pony!
A pony is not a baby horse.
It’s a small horse.
My son decided this particular otter was cute and took 16 identical pictures.
(That’s partly why I don’t let him use my film cameras.)
Bye bye! See you again next year!
For collectors: check out the prints!
Hong Kong Lucida 