Autumn

1/40s, f/1.2, ISO 3200, 85mm

[l(a]

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E. E. Cummings, 1958

Behind Qianmen (前门)

1/60s, f/1.8, ISO 3200, 50mm

Qianmen sits on the south end of Qiananmen Square.  Also known by it's official name, Zhengyangmen, it was once part of the Beijing's city wall (Qianmen means front gate).  Today, the city wall is long gone but the gate remains.  It's one of the landmarks of the city and a popular tourist spot.  Despite being in the middle of the Beijing, the neighborhood around Qianmen is home to several hutongs and traditional courtyard homes.  Walking around the hutongs' narrow streets, it's hard to believe that you're just a few blocks away from the political and cultural center of Beijing (and, indeed, of China).

I spent some times getting lost in the neighborhood a few weeks ago.  Continue below the fold for shots of Qianmen and Tiananmen.


1/400s, f/2.2, ISO 200, 50mm



1/2000s, f/4.5, ISO 400, 28mm


10s, f/18.0, ISO 200, 32mm

Stars

30s, f/4.0, ISO 1000, 24mm

It had been a while since I had experimented with shooting the night sky.  I've always been fascinated with astronomy.  I worked at a planetarium in high school and recall how frustrating taking pictures of stars would be with a film camera.  With the instant feedback of a digital camera, it's a lot easier to get a decent photo of the night sky without investing a lot of time in sorting out the right exposure.  Trial and error really go a long way here.

I took these two shots on a cold January night near Hornbæk in Denmark.  Hornbæk is about an hour north of Copenhagen and near the water.  It's a popular spot for summer houses but in the winter time it's pretty quiet.  And there is very little light at night.  On a clear, cold winter night, the night sky is absolutely breathtaking.  The first shot is a 30 second exposure, featuring most of the Orion constellation.  Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky is also visible on the left side behind the trees (or try following Orion's belt to the left).  In the second shot below, the exposure is about half an hour long.  It captures the stars as they appear to rotate around the North Star (of course the stars don't really move but we/Earth does).


33m, f/4.0, ISO 800, 25mm

A simple message for the new year

1/6400 secs, f/1.4, ISO 400, 50mm

Around the CCTV Headquarters

1/60s (bracketed HDR), f/7.1, ISO 800, 24mm

This week, when the smog loosened its grip on Beijing for a few days, I went to get some shots of the new CCTV Headquarters. The building was completed earlier this year and dominates the skyline of Beijing's Central Business District. The futuristic design features two leg-like towers leaning against each other, linked on top by a perpendicular extension. It occupies a giant block between the Guomao and Jintaixizhao subway stops, and inside there some sort of sloped plaza between the building's two legs.

The building is no doubt a bold and remarkable structure, though I'm not sure I like its bombastic presence. But at least it's not another bland, characterless skyscraper like those popping up around Beijing with predictable regularity. A disappointing feature of the building is its total lack of integration with nearby streets. The complex is set back far from the street and surrounding by a two-meter high fence (two of the adjacent streets are completely blacked off). Even if the inside is opened to the public some day, nothing seem to be designed to invite foot traffic, and access would be limited to one or two entrances.

Locals haven't been impressed, either, by the way, nicknaming it Big Boxer Shorts (大裤衩).

As for the shots, I used HDR processing on most of them.  This allowed me to bring out more details in the sky and the shadows and at the same time give the shots a slightly more space-age feel to match the look of the building.

More shots below the fold.


1/640s, f/2.8, ISO 2500, 46mm


+ 1/400s (bracketed HDR) f/3.5, ISO 2500, 24mm


0.4s (bracketed HDR), f/5.0, ISO 1600, 30mm


1/8s (bracketed HDR), f/6.3, ISO 1600, 24mm

In a Crowded Place

1/500s, f/1.2, ISO 1600, 50mm

This month, I am back in Hong Kong for a few weeks.  I've missed the city's grit, its narrow streets, its beat.  Beijing is such a sprawling city, and I still haven't figured out what to make of it.  As a result, I'm finding it more difficult to capture and portray Beijing adequately in my photos. But Hong Kong is different. Hopefully, I will be able to get in some shots this weekend.  (As an aside, I've been meaning to do fewer close-ups and bring in more of the surroundings in my street shots--more on that some other time.)

Being back here, I thought it would be a good time to revisit a brief photo essay I wrote for the spectacular Danish photo magazine, Fotorama (and turn it into English).  So without further ado...

I used to live in Hong Kong's Soho neigbohoord.  I was one of thousands who each day commute to work on a series of escalators.  Endless streams of lawyers, nannies, and tourists gather on a conveyer belt that leads to Hong Kong's financial center.  Here, more commuters join as jam-packed busses and underground trains let out floods of people into the city' streets.

Hong Kong's claustrophobic geography has forced the city to expand vertically.  With some 7,500 high-rise buildings, it's the world's tallest city.  And the Mong Kok neighborhood is the most densely populated on the planet.  It's a crowded place.

Despite the intense density, Hong Kong offers its citizens almost total anonymity. The physical closeness does not create any expectations among Hong Kongers that they relate to each other.  In fact, it's as if the crowds and the tight physical spaces allow people to create their own personal space.

When I take pictures in Hong Kong, I am often drawn to the moments where people are able to create their own spaces among the crowds--in particular the times when it's not clear if someone wants to be alone or if its the environment that forces the loneliness.  Are these people fighting loneliness or the crowds?  And then I wonder how many might wonder the same thing about me.

More pictures below the fold.


1/640s, f/2.5, ISO 400, 50mm



1/640s, f/1.4, ISO 800, 35mm



1/1250s, f/1.2, ISO 100, 50mm



1/8000 secs, f/1.2, ISO 200, 50mm



1/320s, f/1.2, ISO 4000, 50 mm

Thoughts on Black and White

1/4000 secs, f/1.2, ISO 400, 50mm

I often end up processing my street photography in black and white.  Especially when the composition is centered around a person or is an outright portrait, I find that subjects are likely to be more intense and dramatic in black and white and that the lack of color can make expressions stand out.  Besides, with Hong Kong's colorful streets, black and white processing can make other parts of the scene less distracting.  And when shooting at high ISO values or when the focus is not spot on, black and white tones tend to be more forgiving.  Of course, it's also a subjective call: sometimes a photo just looks better to me without colors.

I have collected a few more recent black and white shots from Hong Kong below the fold.  For a fullscreen slideshow of my collection of black and white Hong Kong photos see this set on flickr.


1/6400 secs, f/1.2, ISO 400, 50mm


1/2500 secs, f/1.2, ISO 800, 50mm


1/250s, f/1.4, ISO 1600, 35mm


1/200s, f/2.8, ISO 1000, 35mm


1/8000 secs, f/1.2, ISO 200, 50mm


1/500s, f/1.4, ISO 1600, 35mm


1/1250s, f/1.2, ISO 1600, 50mm

On the Streets of Mongkok

1/2000s, f/2.8, ISO 400, 50mm

I've been spending some time lately shooting street scenes using manual focus.  I pre-focus the camera to somewhere around two meters and chose a relatively forgiving aperture (usually something like f/2.8, which still generates a fairly narrow focal plane).  It's great for street photography since it's less obtrusive and allows you to compose the image without raising the camera.

Bird Cage

1/640s, f/2.8, ISO 400, 50mm

Here's a shot from near the entrance the bird market in Mongkok.  The cage was hanging by itself away from the center of the market, and none of the passersby seemed to give it much attention.  I waited around a bit to get the right amount of people in the shot to balance the composition.  I chose a somewhat narrow aperture of f/2.8, so that the background wouldn't be a complete blur.

'Tis the Season

1/80s, f/1.2, ISO 1600, 50mm

Happy new year to everyone!  My brother managed to get hold of a Danish Christmas Tree in Hong Kong this year, and it is a real beauty.  Above is a close-up of the tree.  True to Danish Christmas traditions, the tree is lid with real candles.  I used the 50mm f/1.2 lens wide-open with the ISO at 1600 and a shutter speed of 1/80s.

Hong Kong from the Peak

5s (bracketed), f/16.0, ISO 200, 28mm

I went up to the Peak yesterday to take some shots of Hong Kong's skyline.  It's difficult to do anything terribly creative with a view like that.  No doubt, on clear day the view from the Peak is stunning.  But since everyone shares the same vantage point, there's a good chance that someone else has a shot that looks exactly like yours.  It get's a little more interesting on some of the trails near the peak.  The view is still amazing and you can sometimes use trees and bushes to frame photo (I did something like this on a hike a few months ago looking over the southern part of the island).

To make my photos stand out at least a little bit, I bracketed my exposures and processed my images with Photoshop's High Dynamic Range (HDR) function.  The shot above was taken a few minutes after sunset.  HDR works well here to bring out the green color in the hillside (which otherwise would have been difficult to expose correctly).  I have included another shot below the fold taken about 30 minutes after the sunset.  I processed that image with more muted colors to give it more of a "Gotham" feel.

15s (bracketed), f/11.0, ISO 800, 27mm

Sparks (火花)

1/200s, f/2.0, ISO 200, 135 mm

Shooting with fast primes is a lot of fun.  For this shot, I used Canon's 135mm f/2.0 lens with the lens wide open.  The image quality is just superb and the auto-focus is fast and accurate.  And it's great to have a medium telephoto lens that's fairly light-weight and inconspicuous for street photography.  I used a fairly long shutter speed (1/200), so that the sparks would form light lines rather that just appear like tiny dots.

Sunday Afternoon

1/125s, f/6.3, ISO 800, 35mm

Here's a shot from a Sunday afternoon in Blake Garden in Sheung Wong, Hong Kong.  I'm with happy with the shot: the lines, the color, and the strange combination of the two characters.

Catty Town

1/100s, f/4.0, ISO 1600, 14 mm

Hong Kong is home to a lot of cats.  The smaller city streets are frequented by what looks like domesticated cats--or at least self-adopted cats (they seem well-fed and healthy).  There are also a lot of cats on the hiking trails--they are also pretty friendly though generally seem hungrier than the city-dwellers.

Above is a wide-angle shot (with the Canon 14mm prime) from a store on Hollywood Road.  Continue below the fold for another three.


1/125s, f/1.2, ISO 3200, 50mm


1/100s, f/3.2, ISO 320, 70mm


1/500s, f/1.4, ISO 800, 35mm

Broken

1/1000s, f/1.4, ISO 800, 35mm

The 35mm f/1.4 is just a stellar performer in low light.  Here's a shot on a 5d Mark II at 1/1000s, an ISO of 800 and the lens wide open.  This being a well-lit street in Hong Kong, I could easily have gone with a lower ISO, but it just didn't occur to me (and besides the 5d Mark II does pretty well at ISO 800).

 Overall, the lens still strikes me as a little too wide for my type of street photography.  Still, it has an amazing ability to turn a lot of eyesores into objects of art.

Tram Ride to Kennedy Town with the Canon 35mm f/1.4

1/200s, f/1.4, ISO 800, 35mm

I have been trying out Canon's 35mm f/1.4 recently.  It's an amazing lens and the wide apature opens up some interesting creative opportunities.  With such a shallow depth of field, you can really make the foreground stand out, and, shooting wide-open, the lens produces photos with a cinematic feel.  The 35mm focal length on a full frame camera makes the lens great for environmental portraits.  You can fit a lot of the surroundings in the frame but still make the subject stand out.  And compared to most wider lenses, it produces very limited distortion.  Still, the lens is a little on the wide side for my general shooting style, especially for street photography.  I feel that I'm too far from the action and that going closer would interfere with the scene I'm trying to capture.  As a result, I sometimes end up cropping my shots more than I'd like to.  On the other hand, it's a fun challenge to frame fairly wide angle street shots, and in that way I like the way the lens forces me to think about how to compose an image, rather than just find, say, an interesting person or object to focus on.

Today, I took the lens on a 5d Mark II for a tram tide to Kennedy Town on the west side of Hong Kong Island.  Continue below the fold, for more shots.


1/160s, f/1.4, ISO 800, 35mm


1/100s, f/1.4, ISO 800, 35mm

1/125s, f/1.4, ISO 800, 35mm

1/200s, f/1.4, ISO 800, 35mm

1/100s, f/1.4, ISO 800, 35mm

1/50s, f/1.4, ISO 800, 35mm

1/80s, f/1.4, ISO 800, 35mm

1/250s, f/1.4, ISO 800, 35mm

Messages Under the Moon

I went back to Victoria Park tonight with a friend. It was the last day to experience the full display of lanterns in various forms and shapes along with the make-shift carnival the city had put on in the park. Earlier this week, I had been fascinated with the time and care people put into writing messages on public "wish boards". Tonight, the sponsor of the Carnival (and the giant lantern fish), Lee Kum Kee Soy Sauce, handed out small paper "wish tags", and I went around and snapped some more shots of people writing down their wishes.

Again, the light was tricky.  Not feeling that color added much to the shots, I decided to process the photos in black and white. I shot most of the photos with the aperture wide open at f/1.4 or f/1.6 with the 50mm 1.4. The auto focus is downright horrible, and I manually focused about half the shots. Space constraints and the number of people made it difficult to create interesting compositions. Still, the appeal here was more in capturing the concentrated looks on the faces of writers. And in the end, I think that was enough to make the results at least somewhat interesting. 

Read on below the fold to see more shots. And please feel free to leave your thoughts.


   

Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節)

It's Mid-Autumn Festival and the parks and streets of Hong Kong are decked with paper lanterns. In Victoria Park in Causeway Park, the city celebrated by putting up a lantern so big it made it into the The Guinness Book of World Records. I went by to take some shots with my 5d and a few different lenses. The light was a bit tricky and I ended up shooting most of with the photos at ISO 1600 and above. My favorite shot is the one above. There was a public message board in the middle of the park, and I spotted this girl writing a message while her mother was watching. I was struck by the girl's concentrated look, and the picture shows well just how focused she was on leaving her message.

 I had hoped to get some more portraits of the crowds but the rain got in the way.

I've included a few more shots below the fold (including the big lantern processed with some subtle HDR).