A Thinking Street Photography Site
Every day, we do the same thing.
We wait.
We’re waiting for something to happen.
Or for someone to come along to give us the answer.
We wait for that big transcendental Other, that Godot, to come along.
We have a choice, we think.
We choose.
We consult.
And hope for the best.
And then we eat.
And after all that, we’ll be merry.
For collectors: some images from this post are available as open edition prints.
All images here are shot at Tsim Sha Tsui with the Contax TVS II loaded with Fuji Venus 800 film.
The Contax TVS series of film cameras are gorgeous, with titanium bodies, aperture priority and P modes.
There’s a 28-56 focal length zoom which is ideal for street photography.
For me, they are the more nimble younger siblings of the Contax T3.
Which explains why I went out the other day with the intention of not buying that Contaxt TVS II I had seen, complete with the databack.
This person saw what I was about to do, and smiled.
Check out that SLR camera-thing his buddy behind him was carrying.
Hong Kong people work really hard.
We keep saying that Hong Kong is a shopping paradise.
Of course, we need people to service the economy.
There are shoppers just as there are delivery people.
A salute to the people who keep things going.
Sometimes they are invisible to the shoppers, often faceless and anonymous.
We should make it a point to notice people more …
To see the difference between glamour and real people.
Otherwise, we’re nothing more than mannequins looking at other mannequins.
For collectors: open edition prints from this post are not available here.
I suppose that’s my (ironic) gesture of commitment to the push and pull of capitalist logic…
It’s been a while since I’ve given some love to my Leica M6.
The Minolta AF-C and Contax TVS point-and-shoot combo has pampered me.
The auto-focus and auto-exposure modes do allow me to get into the flow of things, to the point where I’ve come to think of manual focusing and exposure as distractions to stealth and composition.
So I was worried that I’ve lost touch with the Leica M6 routine.
All images here are from Leica M6, 50mm Summicron Type II lens, on Fuji Superia 400.
A little warm up was needed.
Testing testing. Got to be fast on the double-decker bus as the reflections are flitting past. Yes, I can rhyme pretty well.
A little practice on walls.
No prizes for guessing where this is for HK film photography people: that film lab (Dot-Well Photo Workshop) across the road develops your film in 15 mins during non-rush hours, for the princely sum of HK$20.
The people working there exemplify the HK way of doing things – somehow they manage to be gruff, direct, and friendly at the same time. And all those film cameras piled up in there …
And that building (Champagne Court at Kimberley Road) has a magnetic quality to it, given the vintage film camera shops.
I often go there with the intention of not buying a camera.
The prices could be a tad high, compared with the stalls at Shamshuipo.
But it’s really apples vs oranges, since many of the Champagne Court shops cater to collectors who would then place the cameras in their cabinets, whereas the cameras stalls at Shamshuipo are more for users.
Yes, I was spotted, so I did my silly-tourist-frowning-and-muttering-at-his-camera routine.
If they’re within earshot, I would mutter in my Klingon dialect.
I’m happy I’m still able to capture images the way we look at other people in crowded urban landscapes. We see through glimpses.
We glance at one another so as to be polite.
We learn not to look too directly at people.
For collectors: open edition prints from this post are available here.
I usually do very little post-editing, leaving the quality of the film to sort itself out.
But the colours can turn out to be so very different from one exposure to another.
All images here are done with my Contax TVS, with Fuji Superia Venus 800.
The above looks so lomography-ish.
I suppose lomography is point-and-shoot film photography write large.
Then you have this, which seems a bit warm.
And then this:
Greens and blues are rather saturated, with a gritty look to them.
I waited a bit for the green canvas to be spread out, and was spotted.
So I smiled and waved, trying very hard to look like a silly tourist befuddled by his camera.
Oh look – yummy lychees!
And here, the colours are muted.
I was hoping for a silhouette effect.
And then I switched off my camera, turned it on again, and forgot to de-activate the auto-flash function.
The flash went off less than 2 metres from him. He looked at my camera, and didn’t react…
I figured he must be deep in thought, or was he looking at something else…
For collectors: open edition prints from this post are available here.
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.)
I do have a routine, and go to the same few places time and again.
These are all taken within a week or so on the same roll of film, with my Minolta AF-C loaded with Kodak ColorPlus 200.
My usual haunts are Shamshuipo and Wu Kai Sha beach.
That’s a cooking stove by a village house along Wu Kai Sha beach.
They say the best camera is the one you have with you.
I have cult rangefinders such as the Canonet QL 17 GIII, Yashica GX and the Leica M6.
But nowadays I’m in a point-and-shoot and snapshot-aesthetics phase.
So it’s either a Contax TVS, Olympus XA2, or Minolta AF-C.
These are to me signs of life, these ropes and bricks, arranged as if for display.
Sometimes, I strike up a conversation with people with my broken Cantonese.
This gentleman runs a BBQ site at Wu Kai Sha beach. He was trying to convince me to book a BBQ pit for my family for the coming weekend and as a bonus, he would throw in a few complimentary pieces of cuttlefish.
At Shamshuipo. That’s one of my favorite pit stop. Whenever I walk past, I’d try to take a shot.
It seems we oscillate between desire and labour all the time.
We discipline ourselves to make sure the plumbing works.
I am reading Shop Class as Soul Craft by Matthew B. Crawford.
It’s a meditation on the value of manual work. I’m on page 79 at this point and it’s one of those books I’d like to read slowly, because there are so many wonderful insights that are conveyed in a very accessible manner which encourage me to stop and just think.
Take this sentence for example:
If different human types are attracted to different kinds of work, the converse is also true: the work a man does forms him.
I am a literature geek, pure and simple. That says a lot about who I am already. Neat, simple and a bit obsessive.
So I have chosen the kind of work that suits my temperament.
The work then further deepens my temperament.
I am sure many of us could say the same thing.
But I’m at a point where something else has come into play – my interest in street photography using quality compact film cameras.
Street photography relies on serendipity. It celebrates ordinary, everyday life, and it’s something to think about as to keep myself from going insane during banal moments (such as when I am at the back of a really long queue at a crowded supermarket checkout.)
And it introduces a kind of variety into my work I suppose. (The Chinese characters at this shop entrance means “anarchy”.)
I was standing outside the shop composing with my Contax TVS and a passerby saw what I was doing.
“All these crazy shops,” he muttered to me, and walked on. It looks like a Japanese ramen place as far as I could figure.
So, yes, I suppose it’s a little bit different from my day job. Here, I’m standing at the entrance, aiming my camera, waiting deliberately for the right moment.
What am I doing, and what am I looking for as a street photographer? I admit I live within myself too much.
Maybe part of the work of street photography has to do with getting away from myself.
Sometimes, it’s good not to be myself.
I look into the backs of trucks.
I look at other people at work.
I look at stuff.
I am intrigued by the strangeness of other people.
I imagine myself wearing their clothes. Then, I imagine myself wearing their skin.
And I look some more, and am sometimes not quite used to what I see.
We all need to walk.
I have done this walk so many times now, that some of these images are lodged in my mind.
We all know how our external environments organize our internal state.
In a crowded shopping mall, we’re all a bit tense.
Look at water and we relax.
We all need a depository of homely images in our mind.
So we feel at home even outside of home.
There’s a story of a family here waiting to be told.
Just a little narrative.
A little space.
A scattering of things telling us who we are.
Just a little window to the world. A little insight.
A safe harbor.
And we’re home.
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 suppose this theme is like a visual fixation for me.
This post is dedicated to those who know what it feels like to be doing street photography in your own neighbourhood.
In our own ways, we’re all searching for something, using our cameras as visual search engines.
What are we looking for? For another way to look, to turn everything into a work of art…
I suppose it’s about moments that surprise me.
That tree now looks like an explosion with the HDB flat facade as backdrop…
I keep coming back to HDB flats (public housing that 80-85% of Singaporeans live in), because it’s the cookie-cutter, middle-class, ideological environment I grew up in and which is part of who I am.
For those looking for general info concerning public housing in Singapore, this article from Wikipedia is a good general source. You could purchase these (highly-subsidised) flats through various schemes which are generally pro-marriage, pro-family, pro-heteronormative, etc.
It’s all very Bauhaus-influenced, with a rational/functional ethos to it.
Chua Beng-Huat, a sociologist at NUS, has a wonderful book called Political Legitimacy and Housing: Singapore’s Stakeholder Society. It looks at the ideological and social-engineering aspect of Singapore’s public housing policy.
I’m fascinated by how newness can emerge from familiar/regimental environments.
I have a thing with hawker centre food …
These are some people I’m learning to see again with my camera.
These were all taken on the same day I was due to go back to Hong Kong.
At the airport … back to Hong Kong…
Is Hong Kong any different?
In the end, it’s all about finding your place, moving up or down…
I should say all of images here are from the same roll of film: Ilford XP2 in an Olympus XA2.
The Leica M6 is now my back up camera (!!!)
Thanks for reading!
Hong Kong Lucida 