monochrome – Page 6 – Hong Kong Lucida

Mostly Monochrome Singapore

Posted on December 3, 2014December 3, 2014 by eddietay in About Singapore, Colour, Monochrome

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

What Hong Kong Wants

Posted on October 21, 2014October 21, 2014 by eddietay in Monochrome

I’ve been to the various protest sites over the past three weeks at various times.

They keep changing.

They keep changing simply because it is the nature of the protests.

They require a constant infusion of people, energy and creativity, of which Hong Kong has in abundance.

Hence, I kept raising my camera to my eye.

These were taken at Mong Kok about three weeks ago.

There is a need to see, understand and document.

What Hong Kong wants – that’s not very difficult to understand.

The writing is very clear.

What Hong Kong will get, no one knows at this point.

We don’t really have a bird’s eye view.

All one could do is to keep asking.

And be willing to do the hard work.

Sacrifice, toil and labour.

And pray that something good will come out of it.

The work of waiting and keeping watch goes on.

And there’s always hope.

History will be the judge.

All images were taken with the Contax TVS street camera and converted into monochrome from a single roll of Fuji Superia 800 film.

Occupy Central: A Festivity

Posted on October 8, 2014October 8, 2014 by eddietay in Monochrome

Occupy Central is, of course, a political protest.

But more than that – it is a festival.

A celebration of a city becoming itself.

A joyful gathering of sorts.

Everyone has a message to share.

The world is here – judging from the different languages.

So many dreams and hopes, so much energy.

The children are here.

There is music. This is a celebration.

Though there’re reminders of how serious this is, as a protest.

Remember what the umbrellas are for.

Marx: “Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”

The students, the future, have spoken.

Now it’s time to figure things out.

Camera: Leica M6;

Lens: Voigtlander Nokton Classic 35mm F/1.4;

Film: Ilford XP2 400.

Inexhaustible Hong Kong

Posted on September 26, 2014September 25, 2014 by eddietay in Monochrome

The range of imagery in Hong Kong is breathtaking.

You look.

You think about things.

There’s a mental itch you can’t get to and a glimmer you’re aiming at.

When will Godot arrive? You look again.

At things we do.

At how we live.

Our ambitions.

The road not taken.

We have an apparatus for looking.

They look back.

This is something we look for.

Sincerity.

Attitude.

A kind of mental space.

We work and rework.

And hope everything comes together at the end.

Some images are available here as open-edition prints at my Saatchi Art page.

Street Photography with my Leica M6

Posted on September 21, 2014September 19, 2014 by eddietay in Monochrome

Street photography is to some extent about the art of making do.

I tend to think that street photographers are in the same category as street musicians, street performers and street hawkers.

There is technique but it’s the kind of technique shaped by being immersed in a specific environment, rather than one accrued by looking at charts, manuals, and pixels on computer screens.

I am in many ways reassured by David Gibson’s comments in his book The Street Photographer’s Manual, in which he says: “My technique is to get technique out of the way so that I can take pictures” (pg. 36).

He talks about respected street photographers who use the P mode (and cracked a photographer’s joke about “P” being the professional mode).

This is the view from my office window – what I like about it is the contrast between nature (the hill) and the man-made (the air-conditioning whatchamacallit box-thing sticking out).

I pay attention to composition, once I get the thing with the aperture/shutter speed and focus out of the way.

So, buying a new lens for my Leica M6 provokes a crucial question about technique: what could a 35mm lens do that my 50mm Summicron couldn’t?

If you have a 50mm lens, take 2 steps back and you have a 35mm lens… that’s street wisdom.

But a 50mm lens gives me that reach, as when I’m trying to capture part of a building, as in above.

Or when I’m taking a picture like the one above. (Could you guess where I was?)

All photos above are taken with my 50mm Summicron Type II lens.

The rest below are with my newly acquired used Voigtlander 35mm f/1.4 Nokton Classic SC, which I think of as a budget (relatively speaking in Leica land) “old-school” lens for Leica film shooters.

All images from this post are from the same roll of film: Fuji Neopan 400CN.

Was it money well spent?

Well … I couldn’t have taken the above shot otherwise, unless I take 2 steps back, which would have placed me in the path of traffic at Nathan Road at Tsim Sha Tsui during rush hour.

I would have captured a smaller portion of the building above.

Ditto.

Ditto at Shamshuipo.

There’s a hard-edged feel to the above that I like.

I was trying to capture both people and buildings. The light wasn’t so good that day.

This was on another day, with better light.

Hmm… this brings me back to 1960s newsprint…

Somehow the composition looks complete.

The f 1.4 aperture means I could do some indoors street photography…

Can you guess how the above was done?

Hint: it’s not double-exposure, and I don’t use Photoshop.

So anyway, I hope I’ve convinced you (and myself) why that 35mm Voigtlander lens was necessary.

Now that I have 2 lenses, what’s missing of course is another Leica body.

Perhaps a Leica M4 body might be a good backup/variant for the M6… which means I could do a double Leica combo on the streets…

Thanks for reading, and check out my Saatchi Art page!

Tai Tong Valley Organic Ecopark

Posted on September 19, 2014September 19, 2014 by eddietay in Colour, Monochrome

I’ve been reading David Gibson’s The Street Photographer’s Manual and he really has good advice to give.

Referring to Geoff Dyer’s books The Ongoing Moment (on photography) and But Beautiful (on jazz), Gibson makes the connection between street photography and jazz:

I identify an empathy with the mindset of jazz musicians. They get lost; they have an idea where they are going, they are in control but they are open to chance and what feels right in the moment. That alternative name for street photography could be ‘lost photography’ – street photographers need to get lost. (pg. 8)

That’s my thing with writing poetry as well – you start somewhere … you have an idea of what to do but do not know what will happen or what you’re really going to say until you’ve written it all out.

Writing for me is (improvisatory) thinking that reaches for something that wasn’t there before.

Perhaps the same might be said of jazz and street photography. How else would you reach something fresh/new/innovative if you already know what you’re aiming for right from the beginning?

Have an idea of A; do A; attain A, and you will still get A. That’s not quite satisfactory.

We’re always in search of that breakthrough, that gap which broadens.

Following David Gibson’s advice on looking through layers, I’ve been looking through glass, windows, mesh, etc.

I can’t decide whether the monochrome or colour version is better.

Both are equally valid, I think.

Here.

Here again. There’s a filmic quality to the color.

The photographs here were taken during a family trip to Tai Tong Valley Organic Ecopark.

It’s a study in what we’ve made of animals…

We’ve domesticated many animals.

They are tame, chained and obedient.

Perhaps they’re the external manifestations of ourselves as well.

Perhaps we need to learn to look through animals at ourselves.

We’re all tamed, chained and obedient to one thing/idea or another.

The above is a playground that looks like a roped enclosure … actually, it is a roped enclosure.

You could allegorize and say the human playground is at the same time a roped enclosure of sorts.

We’re all “(m)echanical beetles never quite warm” (Wallace Stevens, “The Man with the Blue Guitar”).

That I suppose, is the seed of cultivation…

Check out my open-edition prints!

Chicken Rice Stall Series

Posted on September 14, 2014September 12, 2014 by eddietay in About Singapore, Monochrome

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 Speaks Monochrome

Posted on September 12, 2014September 12, 2014 by eddietay in About Singapore, Monochrome

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.

Singapore as Comfortable Grid

Posted on September 6, 2014September 6, 2014 by eddietay in About Singapore, Monochrome

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.

Sentosa Monochrome

Posted on September 3, 2014September 3, 2014 by eddietay in About Singapore, Monochrome

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!

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