street photography – Page 25

Slow Day

Posted on January 20, 2014March 10, 2014 by eddietay in Colour

The usual media depiction of Hong Kong revolves around skyscrapers, the Peak, and the excellent dim sum, of course.

But there is also another pace of life which you can see on weekends.

All photographs are taken at Ma On Shan, New Territories.

You’ll see people cycling, fishing and taking leisurely walks.

There are fast-paced days and there are slow-paced days.

Today, we’ll go slow.

The cycling route can be rather scenic.

There’s an often-mentioned creative writing strategy: when writing a poem about love, never use the word “love”.

This entry is about cycling with my son, without photographs of us cycling.

You can see our bikes in the background though.

At moments like this, we slip into another time. You’ll see people enjoying being alone, in their own space-time bubbles.

This is the bike shop we go to when there’s something to the bikes I can’t fix. They’re really friendly and will actually tell me I don’t need that pair of fancy bike gloves when a generic one would do as well.

My cynical self would think about the way they are setting up their profit margins. But they sometimes do minor repairs and maintenance for free as well.

The boss will just tell you it’s free of charge and please buy your next bicycle from him.

She was shielding her eyes from the sun, so naturally I brought my camera to my eye.

That’s at the end of Wu Kai Sha beach. You’ll see quite a number of village houses.

An open door.

You could see the contrast between village life and high rise living here.

Hong Kong is a city of sharp juxtapositions.

Thanks for reading!

Singapore Zoo

Posted on January 9, 2014March 10, 2014 by eddietay in About Singapore, Monochrome

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!

Village Life in Hong Kong

Posted on January 5, 2014March 10, 2014 by eddietay in Colour

This is the dilemma I face whenever we have a family outing.

Should I bring along my Leica M6, my Olympus XA2, Canonet or Yashica? Do the kids look like they’re going to give trouble? Are we going shopping which means I need a high ISO film?

At this point I would once again settle on my Canon G11 over the 600D. With a family in tow, I’ll go for a compact auto focus auto exposure digital everything because there’s usually no time to focus (in both senses of the word) if you’re looking to do a bit of street photography at in-between moments. I’ll bring along my Leica when the kids are older…

My daughter’s kindergarten organised an outing last Saturday for their students and their families. There was a huge turnout. Five gigantic bus loads.

Here’s our guide:

She sings very well.

Here’s our driver:

I was 2 seats behind and this is a reflection of him from the driver’s rear-view mirror between two curtains.

We were at a farm at Sha Tau Kok. It was a 20-minute walk to the farm and there were fascinating ruins.

I think some of these are occupied.

There’s a certain socio-political economic situation to village houses in Hong Kong.

In land-scarce Hong Kong, villagers are given a plot of land to build a three-storey house in recognition of their indigenous status. They could remain as they are but a three-storey set-up means you could lease out two floors and live on the rent alone.

Usually the villagers in a single village are related and have the same surname.

And they would set up small businesses. This area for example is a cycling, fishing, kite-flying and bbq area combined with a vegetable farm.

When we say Hong Kong is short of land, we are thinking of built-up areas like Kowloon or Hong Kong island.

Sha Tau Kok where we were is huge and relatively sparsely populated. But it takes a certain character to enjoy life here I suppose.

Here’s another village. I was told it’s a traditional Hakka village. Because these are popular sites for local excursions, the villagers have set up small stalls selling traditional snacks.

The black blobs are called errr… “tiny chicken poop” in Cantonese. Yummy! I was told it’s good for my sore throat.

Thanks for reading!

Sentosa Snapshots

Posted on January 3, 2014March 10, 2014 by eddietay in About Singapore, Monochrome

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.

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.

Slightly Pink and Orangey and Red

Posted on November 22, 2013March 10, 2014 by eddietay in Colour

Sometimes things get slightly pink and orange with a dash of metallic red …

The Art of Life

Posted on October 24, 2013March 10, 2014 by eddietay in Monochrome

I’m planning to use the following quote for a talk on poetry and photography for fellow writers.

It’s from Zygmunt Bauman, a sociologist who has written on what he calls “liquid modernity”. This passage from his book The Art of Life is relevant to those who are on the quest for meaning:

To practise the art of life, to make one’s life a “work of art”, amounts … to being in a state of permanent transformation, to perpetually self-redefine through becoming … someone other than one has been thus far. (The Art of Life 73)

I now have the habit of bringing along one or two film cameras wherever I go. It’s usually a Leica M6, paired with either a Yashica GX, Canonet QL 17 Giii or more recently, the Olympus XA2.

The Olympus XA2 is really stealthy because of zone-focusing. And it’s really quiet too. For example, I could do this in a cab without the driver noticing:

Try that with a Canon 5D Mark III.

Part of my fascination with film cameras has to do with their longevity – digital cameras either go out of fashion or break down after 3-5 years (though it has to be said that my Canon G11 is still going strong). The Olympus XA2 was made in the 1980s, which means the thing in my hand is about 30 years old.

I guess I am now using my cameras as a sketchbook of sorts, storing material for writing and thinking. This is probably a little too deliberate, but I think of this as pushing myself beyond what I am, “becoming someone other than one has been thus far”, asking street photography to teach me to be a better writer and thinker.

For now, the art of life for me is about storing moments which might otherwise seem artless.

Lately, I have begun to take pictures with only my eyes, imagining what a scene would look like on a photograph… click… click…

And I like this quote from William Todd Schultz, who wrote An Emergency in Slow Motion: The Inner Life of Diane Arbus, a wonderful psychobiography of Arbus:

Artists aren’t always in complete command of their material. Sometimes it commands them and they let it; they get out of the way, the subject matter comes unbidden, it compels them and they follow its lead.

This might be a careless comparison, but Arbus is to photography what Sylvia Plath is to poetry.

And as for material for the street photographer, there’s often poetry to be found in places you least expect, which is why that tiny Olympus XA2 is so handy:

The above is just next to where I live, a plot of land on which a small shopping mall is being built. *sigh*

I’m always fascinated by how one could be in a built-up area in Hong Kong, and after walking for 20 minutes, be in the midst of idyllic village houses where clothes are hung in open air and kitchens are next to public walkways:

And then, 10 minutes later, one is at the beach.

And you would come across scenes like this:

This is Wu Kai Sha beach, and there’re now plans for land reclamation in the area which would mean the beach would be no more… *another sigh*

Thanks for reading.

Street Market and Printing

Posted on October 17, 2013March 10, 2014 by eddietay in Colour

Though all the images here are created with film cameras, they are of course scanned from negatives and ultimately, on display here are digitised images on a computer monitor.

I’ve been experimenting with colours lately, having bought a dedicated pigment ink photo printer and various Ilford and Harman papers.

It really does make a difference whether the image is printed on glossy or on matte, etc. And of course, I am going to frame them up, now that I’ve finally gotten my hands on photo-safe tape.

Images like the one below work on both matte and gloss. On matte, there is a gritty look which fits in with the grungy seat-of-the-pants attitude of street photography.

A colleague who used to paint commented that the matte print looks more like a painting than a photograph. He said there’s a Caravaggio framed-by-darkness quality to it.

On the other hand, the glossy print has what I think of as a “Nirvana in Carnegie Hall” effect… a refined “fine art” treatment to street photography.

I suppose glossy is good for portraying drama in ordinary scenes.

And now that I’ve got all of these, I’m now thinking of what I should do next. Where is this taking me?

Direction 1: Teaching and Research

A fascination with photography (and film cameras, I must admit) is now changing the way I work. I find myself making connections between photography and creative writing, between the history of art and literary history. Is there a homology between creative writers and photographers?

What would a university course on the connections between photography and literature look like?

I am now thinking of creating a course that is practice-based, one that encourages students to go out and explore HK culture using literary and non-literary writing and photography, and getting them to think about what constitutes valuable cultural knowledge.

I’ll probably throw social media (such as a WordPress blog like this) into the mix, getting them to think about the use of social media for sharing one’s work. And what is meant by “sharing”? What, really, is being shared? And what is “work”?

Direction 2:

This has all to do with the situation of one’s work, I suppose. Digital images live in one’s hard disks or are displayed on sites like this. Now that I have the physical prints on hand, perhaps the next step is to work towards a gallery exhibition.

It’s a kind of curating, I suppose, setting up one’s work for viewing …

What kind of logistics and various other considerations would this involve? There’s a learning curve ahead of me …

What is becoming clear to me now though, is that this blog is like a thinking-in-progress technology, a depository of raw ideas… much like a building under construction …

Thanks for reading.

	Ashlee Moody on Shanghai Digital Monochrome: P…
	QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ… on Cheung Chau Village Vehicles
	Bradley R on Chicken Rice Stall Series
	eddietay on Ruins and Formations II
	eddietay on Ruins and Formations II