A Thinking Street Photography Site
There’s a blindness to the streets we need to learn to see.
There’s the individual, and there’s society.
The street looks back.
We negotiate the streets.
We work the streets.
We refresh the streets.
The street is at rest.
Thanks for reading!
Camera: Olympus XA2
Film: Ilford XP2 400
Camera: Olympus XA2
Film: Ilford XP2 400
Never turn your back on the street.
Some streets are for sale.
Other streets are for friends.
Streets are for hanging around.
There’s a street attitude to tease out.
You’ll never know who is looking from the street.
Some streets are nicer.
Some streets are more equal than others.
Thanks for reading!
Camera: Olympus XA2
Film: Ilford XP2 400
There’re no real aims to street photography.
You walk, you see, you shoot and hope it makes visual sense.
It gives one something to do – one could be a tourist in a way as to avoid a degree of manufactured experience.
Go to all the tourist spots – but go at it from a tangent.
Sometimes you wonder why there’s so much of sitting around.
At other times you see there’s another way of seeing – capturing the London Eye without capturing the London Eye.
One could pretend to be a tourist and not stand out from the crowd.
Perhaps there’s such a thing as visual addiction.
By doing street photography, one commits to a certain way of being in the world.
Thanks for reading!
Camera: Olympus XA2
Film: Ilford XP2 400
In general, there’re two approaches available for the street photographer who uses both digital and film cameras.
With a digital camera, you could take multiple shots of the same scene.
You could take a shot that you think might not work but do it just to see what happens.
In other words, you could AFFORD to experiment with a digital camera.
With a film camera, you’d tend to be more circumspect.
This means that film photography reveals your competency.
After all, even if you could afford it, a wasted shot is wasted film.
Thanks for reading.
Camera: Olympus XA2
Film: Ilford XP2 400
This is Ladies’ Market at Mongkok.
It’s a short stretch of market stalls popular with tourists and locals alike.
We were a bit early so we got to see the stalls being set up.
This is the ubiquitous red/white/blue canvas.
The material has been used to make awnings, bags, covers, etc.
It was a hot day.
The goods were arriving.
People were doing all these calculations.
Hong Kong, of course, is defined by numbers.
I was using my Olympus XA2.
The 35mm lens was great for tight situations.
I was worried about the shutter speed in the shade and hence was using the Fuji Superia 800 film.
The film has a “powdery” painterly effect sometimes.
Wonderful colours.
Seasoned tourist.
I like the (faux?) leather notebooks.
Hong Kong’s street markets are literally full of colours.
A bit of heartfelt advertising.
I especially like the above image because the slight blur as a result of the camera shake adds to the sense of urgency in the way we look.
A bit of effort.
For collectors: open-edition prints are available at my Saatchi Art page.
My previous post was of Shanghai in monochrome, using my Minolta AF-C with Ilford XP2 400 film.
This is my Olympus XA2 talking, speaking the language of Fuji Superia 800.
These 2 cameras with the respective films are my favorite double combo.
We’re still at Huashan Street and its vicinity.
I’m quite proud of this, with the reds at the bottom left as a counterweight to the rest of the image.
The papers fell off and he basically made a U-turn and stopped to pick them up.
Yes, a feisty lauwai (aka gweilo/angmoh/expat/foreigner) who has adapted to Shanghai and its traffic.
Taking a break.
He glared at me.
I said “ni hao” (hello/how are you) and smiled and he rolled his eyes and looked away.
Yay! Three modes of transport in a single image.
I can’t decide whether it’s a small scooter or an electric bicycle…
She glared at me for a bit. So I bowed slightly, smiled and hastened off.
Children being children.
Fashionable Shanghai.
Hard at work.
Waiting.
Yummy street food! (Resist I must.)
I like the redness of the car and his T-shirt.
A security kiosk with my reflection.
The other side of the kiosk (and my reflection).
An alleyway – I like this a lot as it looks rather painterly to me.
Some of the images here are available at my Saatchi Art page as affordable open edition prints. Do check it out.
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.
Shenzhen is fascinating, if you know how to navigate and where to go.
My wife and I decided to head over the Hong Kong border for a day trip, partly to buy some phone cases for a few friends.
So naturally, I brought along my stealthy Olympus XA2 loaded with Fuji Venus 800.
This is Luohu Commercial City, a warren of shops you could get lost in. We normally go to the restaurant at the top floor.
Once in a while, there is a bit of mild harassment.
On a previous trip, someone followed us for a bit and kept saying “cheap DVDs, cheap DVDs, just follow me” and she got hauled off by 2 policemen.
Some images are rather blurry because of the limitations (indoors, ISO 800 capability of the XA2, need for stealth in narrow places).
Yet it does drive home the furtive, unpredictable and artless aspect of street photography.
We took the subway – 2 stops to Laojie, a shopping district, where, if you know where you are going, you would find yet another warren of shops with even lower prices.
We got our phone covers there for about RMB20 each.
This guy took out a knife and started stabbing at his plastic phone screen cover.
He was trying to tell me it’s a scratch (and stab) proof cover that will really protect my phone’s screen.
I was convinced. That’s my phone he’s working on.
It really is a labyrinth.
Quick, quick, before I’m spotted.
My wife did tell me to choose my photographic subjects wisely.
“Our kids still need a father,” she said.
And, yay, food street!
Street food!
Yummy pig trotters!
Yummy Taiwan-style sausages!
Green chilli with rolled bacon!
Grilled spicy cuttlefish!
He dances as he cooks.
There’s a warning sign next to him saying he sells cuttlefish only and please do not be taken in by his charm …
He winked at my wife!
How dare he.
For collectors: some images from this post are available here as open edition prints.
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.
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 
