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 Cats and Life

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

When I saw this guy in Hong Kong last week, I was reminded of Piet Hein's grook:

Little cat, little cat,
walking so alone;
tell me whose cat are you
– I’m damned well my own

Hong Kong is full of cats. Unfazed by the crowds, they stroll around in the hustle and bustle of this mega city's busy streets. Somehow they find a way to go about their feline business in their usual carefree way--eating, napping, pondering life and the other important things cats do. No matter they are in the middle of one of the world's financial centers, they live like most other cats.  City cats, country cats, it's all the same.  Their two-legged neighbors could probably take some lessons from this way of life.

Yellow Telephone

1/2500s,  f/1.4, ISO 800, 50mm

What's attractive about a dirty, old telephone?  Not much, generally.  But somehow this yellow phone found just the right place in the world.  At first, the phone and the yellow caps on the bottles caught my attention.  Then I noticed, the matching blues of the newsstand and the sign in the background.  I first shot the scene without any people any it, but the result struck me as a bit too desolate (and a bit dishonest given how busy the street was).  So I waited around and got a father and his daughter to talk walk into the frame

Ducks in the Snow (橡皮小鴨)

1/400s, f/1.2, ISO 400, 50mm

Las month, I visited Denmark for a few weeks.  It was the harshest winters in decades and sadly so cold that it was difficult to get out and shoot a lot.  I decided to do a winter version of a picture I shot this summer on my parents' lawn.  The shot has the same happy, whimsical feel as the pervious one, and I like the contrast between the yellow ducks and the white snow.  This time I used the 50mm f/1.2 with the lens wide-open.

Watch this Space

1/250s, f/6.3, ISO 400, 24mm

New photos and blog posts are coming soon.  Here's a shot of Zhengyang Men from a few weeks ago.  It's one of the gates in the old city wall that used to surround Beijing and sits at the south end of Tiananmen.  And yes, that's a blue sky in Beijing.  When the weather is nice, Beijing really charms.

On the Move

 

I've had to put my blogging on a brief hiatus. I moved to Beijing a few weeks ago and have yet to settle on a reliable VPN (blogger, which powers this site, is blocked in China). Until regular programing continues, you can keep up with my photography on my flickr stream. I've also begun using Instagram, so check out my stream there as well.

The instagram above is from an art installation at the 798 Art Zone in Beijing. It's a tree wrapped in red yarn and it's a pretty stunning site. Once spring comes around, I want to check how the tree looks with leaves on it.

9/11 Memorial

1/400s, f/1.2, ISO 1250, 50mm

Last week, I made a brief visit to the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center site. The design made me skeptical, mostly because it seemed too somber and not forward-looking enough. Designed by Michael Arad, the center piece of the memorial is a park with two square pools of falling water marking the footprints of the Twin Towers. The water in each pool flows into a square pit--a seemingly bottomless void. Large bronze plates surround the pools and carry the victims' names. The sound of the falling water is surprisingly loud and drowns out a good amount of the city noise.

Experiencing the memorial in person is truly moving. The scale, the darkness, and the roaring sound of the water invoke the destruction and the depth of the tragedy. It's a powerful combination that undoubtedly will lead most people to reflect on the event and what happened in its aftermath. Sadly, that's a depressing exercise, especially when watching night come on during a rigidly cold January afternoon. And it leads back to my concern that the memorial really doesn't look forward or communicate something hopeful about the future. I worry that the solemnness and scale will make it difficult for the memorial to integrate into the city and age well, and I wonder if more light and useable green space could have done a better job of balancing the past, present, and future.

In my photos, I have tried to provide as elegant a portrait of what are, despite the drawbacks, strikingly beautiful structures. Click on below the fold for two more shots, an iPhone panorama of the south pool, and a 360 degree view of the park made with Photosynth.


1/400s, f/1.2, ISO 800, 50mm


1/640s, f/1.2, ISO 800, 50mm

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.

2011 Highlights

1/80s, f/13.0, ISO 400, 27mm (HDR)

It's a little late for a year-in-review post, I know.  But blogger threw away my draft a few weeks ago and since adding multiple flickr shots to blogger posts is a real pain, I kept pushing it off (maybe it's time for a better a CMS in 2012).  You can view a fullscreen slideshow here (opens in a new window) or see the collection below the fold.  I'll let the photos speak for themselves.


1/800s, f/5.6, ISO 640, 150mm


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


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


1/800s, f/1.2, ISO 1600, 50mm


1/125s, f/2.8, ISO 4000, 148mm


1/2000s, f/1.4, ISO 100, 85mm


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


1/400s, f/1.2, ISO 1600, 85mm


1/100s, f/2.8, ISO 3200, 115mm


1/200s, f/6.3, ISO 1600, 50mm


1/200s, f/2.8, ISO 5000, 70mm


1/320s, f/7.1, ISO 1600, 24mm (HDR)


1/250s, f/1.7, ISO 1600, 20mm


1/640s, f/5.6, ISO 200, 24mm


1/320s, f/14.0, ISO 400, 24mm (HDR)

If you want to view my entire collection of photos from 2011 in all their fullscreen glory (and don't know what to do with your time), here's a slideshow.

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.

Roots

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

Here's a night shot from the Soho neighborhood in Hong Kong.  A few weeks ago, I noticed this tree growing out of a steep slope and became fascinated by how one of the roots had grabbed unto a a pipe running underneath its trunk.   It was very dark, so I shot the photo at ISO 3200 with the lens wide open at f/1.2.

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.

To Crop or Not to Crop

1/1250s, f/1.2, ISO 100, 50mm
To crop or not to crop: I took this picture a few weeks ago and initially decided to crop it and move the subject to the right of the frame.  I try not crop my images excessively but in this case I felt that the surroundings didn't add much.  And cropping seemed a way to bring the viewer closer to the woman in front.  But when I came across the orignal image yesterday, I realized that I made a mistake.  While there's not much going on around the woman, the surroundings provide more context and reveals more of the street's grit.  The cropped image is below the fold.  What do you think?

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

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