A Thinking Street Photography Site
Was at the HK Food Festival at the Convention and Exhibition Centre, because sonny boy is interested in food prep and stuff.
We tried the squid.
Were tempted by those.
Can’t carry those back.
A pensive moment.
Sonny boy had those rolled ice cream.
Peking duck!
We didn’t try those beef cubes either…
I’m still walking around…
The streets are exhibitions waiting to speak.
What would the stall say?
What’s he thinking about?
We’re all concealed by what we buy and sell.
We all buy and sell.
We’re all waiting.
Until it’s all meat…
Camera: Olympus XA2
Film: Ilford XP2 400
These are various snapshots in Singapore, with no particular order or theme in mind.
Though I must confess a significant number of images have to do with food…
He’s eating.
He’s texting.
He’s working really hard.
He’s buying.
I’m buying.
I’m buying some more.
These, I suppose, make up part of what Singapore is.
Camera: Olympus XA2
Film: Ilford XP2
I was in Penang recently with my family and many of the street pictures were taken with my Olympus XA 2, in-between vacation shots taken with my Canon 600D.
The above was taken while riding a trishaw.
Another shot, taken from a trishaw.
The Gurney Drive street food market was where we found ourselves on most days.
Fried oyster!
Yummy!
Lok lok!
Laksa!
That’s the “Chinese rojak” stall.
That’s the Indian rojak stall.
Sotong kangkong!
So yes, street food was on the top of our list at Penang.
Camera: Olympus XA 2
Film: Agfa Vista 400
So, my ten-year-old son is into Geocaching.
It’s basically a game where you hunt for hidden caches – you could then sign your name in the booklet in those canisters/boxes hidden or buried in various places in Hong Kong and the rest of the world.
We’ve found magnetic canisters stuck behind signposts, or hidden under piled-up logs full of ants and spiders.
You could then announce your success to the whole world and leave a few clues via the Geocache app.
So you see, it’s killing two birds with one stone.
I get to do a spot of street photography, and my son gets to do a bit of geocaching.
That’s what I call father-son bonding.
It doesn’t matter where I go as long as I’m on the streets.
We could meander and come back to the same place – it doesn’t matter.
Some people fish, others are into street photography, and of course, some are into geocaching.
And we’ll have a late lunch after a morning of running back and forth.
I suppose it’s another day in Hong Kong.
We do what we can to preserve our sanity…
Camera: Leica M6
Lens: Voigtlander Nokton Classic 35mm 1.4 SC
Film: Kodak BW400CN
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?
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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.
For the images here, I’ve done a B/W conversion from Fuji Venus 800 film loaded on Olympus XA2.
I’ve done a minimal bit of tweaking for some high contrast.
To my eyes, they look somewhat raw and harassed.
Here’s another one of Luohu Commercial City, viewed at a lower level.
You could see this is a popular place for bargains.
The above composition looks quirky – though it looks strangely apt.
This is how we see things – artlessly.
I’m up close, and they’re too busy negotiating prices to notice.
Why is it that yummy food is always unhealthy food?
That’s the way we see things sometimes – blurred and hurried.
You could see I lingered for a bit at this stall…
Check out those food on the skewers …
And yes, let’s not forget the man who winked at my wife…
Some images from this post are available here as affordable prints, in case you haven’t checked out my Saatchi Art page yet.
Hong Kong Lucida 