By the Second Ring Road at Dusk

July 28, 2014

6s, f/20, ISO 200, 24mm

The second ring road in Beijing (more or less) runs the parameter of the old city wall. The Beijing city wall stood for more than 500 years until most of it was torn down beginning in the 1960s to make room for Subway Line 2 and the second ring road. The Beijing Ancient Observatory, which formed part of the city wall, is visible on the left.

I shot the picture just after sunset on a hot July summer night on a pedestrian bridge. The exposure is six seconds long at the lens' minimum aperture at f/22. Taking long exposures on Beijing's pedestrian bridges can be tricky because the bridges to to shake a little large vehicles pass below. If the platform had been a bit steadier, I would have gone for a slightly longer exposure to make the light trails a bit stronger.

Behind Every Single Window

January 06, 2013

2s, f/4.0, ISO 800, 24mm

Yesterday I got the chance to check out a rooftop in the Nyboder neighborhood in central Copenhagen. What a treat. I'm always excited at the chance of getting to the top of buildings--especially in the center of a city. The views usually reveal something interesting that you won't experience from just walking the streets. This time I got to see a multicolored, magnificently-lit courtyard. A sort of behind-the-scenes-look. And it got me thinking of Dan Turèll's old poem "Behind Every Single Window" (”Bag hvert eneste vindue"). Here's an excerpt:

"…You walk down through a long street

which you know or maybe don't know

in your own city or an unknown one

and you raise your eyes and look at those thousands

of shining lit-up windows

and you know that behind every single window people live

and that simple thought everytime is so new and strange"
behind every single window people live
people with real live problems
as concrete as a fist in the kisser
behind every single window men and women are breathing
easy or with trouble
each in his own rhythm..."

Dan Turèll, (1979)

Poem for a Weekend Night

June 02, 2012

10s, f/5.6, ISO 800, 24mm

I wonder how many people in this city
live in furnished rooms.
Late at night when i look out at the buildings
I swear I see a face in every window
looking back at me
and when I turn away
I wonder how many go back to their desks
and write this down.

- Leonard Cohen

In a Crowded Place

May 16, 2012

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.