lomography – Hong Kong Lucida

Fuji Superia Venus 800

Posted on June 12, 2014June 17, 2014 by eddietay in Colour

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.

The Snapshot Aesthetic

Posted on April 2, 2014April 30, 2014 by eddietay in Colour

I’ve been using Olympus XA2 for quite some time now and have been mulling over how zone focusing allows me to compose more quickly.

I happened to come across the lesser-known Minolta AF-C and yes, it’s auto-focus.

Load it with Kodak UltraMax 400 and it’s pure joy if you’re pursuing a snapshot aesthetic.

You could focus really quickly and the saturated colours would work for those with a taste for lomography.

The word “snapshot” hints of amateurism, and I suppose it goes against the conventional rules of professional photography concerning proper framing and lighting, etc.

There’s a scholarly article here on how the snapshot aesthetic is being used to persuade in advertising photography.

You could say that commercial photographers have appropriated the style of the amateurs.

The entire style (and persona) of Terry Richardson, right down to his use of non-professional cameras, is based on this approach.

On the other hand, it also has also allowed the work of folks like Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand to be taken seriously by the establishment.

Me, I like the reds and greens.

I suppose there’s something covert about street photography in that it is aligned with the transgressions of street art.

It’s true that I tend to take photographs of people in candid moments.

When I’m in the zone, I’ve become quite adept at reading body language and tracking eye movements…

Though sometimes, non-humans are fascinating too.

So are serendipitous arrangements of objects that “make sense” and cohere.

I’m making a point to look for “found exhibitions”.

After all, the entire world is an exhibition if you know how to look.

At Tsim Sha Tsui

Posted on December 23, 2013March 10, 2014 by eddietay in Colour

Again, at Tsim Sha Tsui.

There’s so much happening here.

I don’t mean shopping and eating, though there’s lots of it too.

Sometimes we’re bored while waiting for the bus…

But there’s so much to see …

I suppose it’s about framing and movement…

There’re so many people at work.

I figured I could fire off two clicks before they notice me …

I simply love the lomography effect with Fuji Superia 800 film.

Thanks for reading today.

Beautiful Mistakes

Posted on November 28, 2013March 10, 2014 by eddietay in Colour

Sometimes, mistakes can be surprising.

The focus is off, but the colours are there. There’s some kind of neon lighting that is projected onto the ceiling which changes every 10 seconds or so.

The above and below are taken in a shopping mall at TST near my church. No prizes for guessing which.

I was on an ascending escalator, trying to focus on those buildings outside the glass window and the gentleman entered the frame, descending from top left. It’s underexposed so we can’t really see the person, but the repetitions of the grid and the colours are there. The metal fasteners (is that what they’re called?) look like flying seagulls.

I’m not sure what went wrong with the photograph below. I think there’s motion blur and it’s overexposed… I don’t remember making this mistake…

I do this every Sunday on my way to church, to the taxi driver when he’s paying the toll at the Lion Rock tunnel.

In all honesty, I’ve done a bit of post-processing to heighten the colours. But I’ve spend no more than 3-5 minutes on each, simply going along with what the images are telling me, and only with levels and curves with the generic software that came with my scanner.

I suspect they’ll look gorgeous when printed with textured paper and mounted on non-glare glass.

Now I’m beginning to see the appeal of lomography, which is essentially about creating something beautiful from intuition, serendipity and “errors”. That’s the kind of artlessness in photography I’m drawn to…

Thanks for reading.

Grids, lines and colours

Posted on September 11, 2013March 10, 2014 by eddietay in Colour

I’m now convinced that Hong Kong is a street photographer’s paradise.

I’ve been paying attention to grids, lines and colours and it seems to me that all I have to do is wait a little bit and the composition would fall into place after a while.

Mongkok is rather good for that sort of thing.

For example, the rectangular green grids of this candy store window has a lomography edge to it, and all I had to do was to memorise where the framelines of my beloved Leica M6 would be and wait until someone walks into the frame. Check out the reflections and the Chinese characters – they’re there and yet not so overwhelming:

The diagonal lines were calling out to me as I was on a bridge:

And finally, I like the grungy and yet contemplative mood this evokes:

And I’m keeping a close watch on my diminishing supply of Kodak Portra 400 film with which these were taken…

Thanks for coming by today.

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