A Thinking Street Photography Site
So many to choose from!
We follow our appetites.
We make the effort.
We are exasperated.
We lose ourselves.
Oh yes! A real decision!
We have the luxury of time.
We calculate.
We choose again.
All images here are from my trusty Minolta AF-C, loaded with Kodak Professional BW400CN film.
Some images from this post are available as affordable open edition prints at my Saatchi Art page for collectors.
Do drop by to have a look.
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.
These are images taken with the same camera (Minolta AF-C), with a single roll (Fuji Neopan 400CN), over a week or two.
There’re just so many environments, and so many stories waiting to be told.
There’s the early riser.
The joy of a youthful busker.
The necessities of life: public laundry.
There’s discipline and teamwork.
Political consciousness.
Work.
And work.
(For collectors: open edition prints from this post are available here.)
We’re still at Noah’s Ark.
Though this time, in contrast to my previous post, I figure I’ll go the monochrome high contrast way just to see the difference.
Did I mention there was a beach next to Noah’s Ark?
So we have a couple posing for wedding photographs, quite oblivious to the sun-bather who is enjoying the view.
The humor is gone from the photograph… instead it’s a kind of existential commentary on human aspiration…
A reflection on the ups and downs of everyday life…
For some reason the same photograph in high contrast monochrome looks grittier …
There’s plenty to keep the kids busy. Educational too.
The Last Supper.
The Last Supper, with the kids in front and gallery guide behind.
The giraffe looks overextended.
Park attendants sorting things out.
From behind a popcorn and bbq stand.
The village house is still beautiful.
Time to relax.
Thanks for reading!
I was just looking through a few images taken on an evening at Fa Yuen Street and on an afternoon in the vicinity of Shamshuipo.
There is that contrast that plays with visibility and lack thereof.
We see people emerging from darkness.
We see hands and appetites but not always faces.
We are reduced to silhouettes of ourselves.
What defines and frames our activities are appetites and things…
Our appetites and things have become substitutes for our selves … that is how a city becomes a kind of phantasmagoria….
Yet another set of street photographs taken at in-between moments during a family outing at the Singapore Zoo a few months ago.
That’s our friendly and helpful tram driver.
My son loves the pony ride.
I am a very talented photographer – through telepathy, I’ve managed to convince the person in the background to bend a little bit so as to be confluent to the pony handler’s face and shoulder outline.
Here’s the horse carriage driver.
Here’s the horse.
It’s interesting how high contrast monochrome changes things. The photographs look somewhat hard-edged and menacing at times …
Go to the zoo if you’re ever in Singapore. It’s really not so menacing …
The crowd at an animal performance show.
We go to the zoo every time we’re back in Singapore.
So, I’ve seen the performance many times.
Now, instead of looking at the performance, I look at the crowd and think about how to photograph the human exhibits.
I am a very talented photographer – using telepathy, I’ve managed to convince a stranger to stand up so as to create a contrasting element to the crowd.
That’s err… a bird animal creature with two legs and feathers…
I suppose that’s my nod to Gary Winogrand‘s The Animals.
Thanks for reading!
I’ve been looking though images taken a few months ago in Singapore with my trusty Canon G11. It went through an overhaul and is now good as new.
Generally, on family outings, I bring along my G11 for family snapshots.
Usually, I make a division between street photography (film cameras only) and family pics (digital only) just to keep things simple. But life is not always simple.
I find myself in street photography mode often at various moments during family outings.
These were taken at Sentosa.
I find the high-contrast Daido Moriyama style rather addictive.
The scene looked so good I can’t resist another:
I’m still waiting for my G11 to break down so as to have an excuse to get that Ricoh GR Digital.
More next time.
I guess this is a common sight in quite a few places in Hong Kong:
On the one hand, there are those who say this is unsightly, and that there should be awareness campaigns against airing/drying one’s laundry in public.
After all, it looks too much like a ghetto, and is offensive to middle-class tastes.
(It might bring down property prices.)
On the other hand, it speaks of the “can do” spirit of people, who make do with tiny living spaces in Hong Kong.
There is a kind of symphony here of public laundry.
There is a kind of charm in the way the clothes are being hung… perhaps there is a sense of community here in the way the space is being shared.
Not everyone has dryers at home… and after all, clothes dried in the sun has the smell of sunshine in them.
And sometimes, it can get a little creative:
There are public spaces. There are private spaces.
And perhaps there are in-between shared social spaces with streets that are peopled even if there are no people around…
Hong Kong Lucida 