Past in the Present

The fire in me is almost extinguished.. A sign of not trying hard enough or effort is not well spent in the right place. It led me nowhere.

I’m grounded at home so to speak. It’s another gathering of odd photos from my secondary camera and hard drive. They did not make any sense until I have a few more and more. The accumulation of a few odd images actually had turned into something I like. However, they were many other just never work no matter how I arrange and process them. They have to go into trash. Speaking of trash, it’s always a topic of debate when I walk by a recycle collection bin. I tend to sort out most of my trash when it’s possibly done, such as the common plastic, paper packaging. The idea of putting the sorted recyclable trash into the bins is to create less waste. I think the recycle collection point on the streets are amateur. It’s horribly designed, heavy (made of steel), not practical in real life, low in volume, ugly, and fugly. Alright, they all seem far too subjective right. The function behind this is to encourage the public to use it wisely. What if one day you realized the garbage workers treat them just like any other garbage or even worse the sorted waste got nowhere to go because there’s no such recycle business exist or they simply went out of business. Last time I heard few months ago was due to the lack of value in both Hong Kong and China. Many sorted plastic waste has been dumping to the landfill. It led me thinking what’s the point of the recycling campaign. My dad and I often debate on this issue for a few years now. We did again today. What the hell is going on?

The government is pushing for the expansion of landfills which will reach its full capacity in 5 years, the expected fierce confrontation is going on. Their solution is really not to keep pushing for policies. They need to ‘wow’ the crowd and give the involved party incentives. Years ago who knows Samsung would out sell Apple’s iPhones. To us and even many political critiques feel that the government is functioning too bureaucratic, stubborn, rigid and outdated. Well, we cannot worry too much. Why not just open a bottle a wine and enjoy what’s on your plate, right?

These photographs remind me of the what I’ve done 2 years ago when I dedicated using a single camera. Ironically, many do not look anything like in the past; they are looking somewhat I do up to this day. Just like a mixture of my X2 and mobile phone. It’s precisely what drew my interest of them.

The Undeveloped Development Pt.2

Suppressing our emotion is a good way to show ourselves being in control. While not emotionally attached to a specific set of photos, may very well leads to a higher quality to the collection. Once in a while, It’s not particularly a bad idea when the material working with is already contrasty as a day that’s almost in monochrome. The entire world was underexposed. It became quite a ‘fun’ challenge to myself – It’s how I would describe the afternoon with typhoon signal no.3 in force.

As much as the expected rain had yet to come, I made my way to the Kwun Tong Ferry Pier. I like visiting the harbor front whether it’s a good or bad day. I just did and I knew there’s always someone, something right there despite the expected poor weather condition.

I wandered through the former industrial area (now mostly rented as offices which is very common as most factories have migrated to Mainland China long ago since the 90s). In just a few blocks I arrived at the harbor front. It’s one of the few locations where anyone can kick back and relax in the city.

 

Further down, there was the recreational area. I was heading there and just in time I made it half way to the public pier. I did not intend to stay longer than 2 mins at the pier until the rain started to pour. At some point, the visibility was so low that I couldn’t even see anything but the rain. The gusty wind started to catch up as well. I saw birds flying without moving, hanging in the sky. The cruel nature gave no mercy to the little life.

  

This happens to be a different part of the Kwun Tong district: The Undeveloped Development

My Way

I would argue 80-90% of the time of the location that I visit daily would not likely to have anything that’s too interesting for me to shoot a photograph with, more even so during this hot summer. Again and again, I’m finding myself falling into the same loop over and over again at the same hours. I found it not worth it either just to travel to another district to do photography for an hour after my day job. I still believe that remaining 10-20% photo opportunity would eventually appear. It’s sounds a bit counterintuitive to think outside of the box while staying inside of a box.

Thanks to the Google Map, I’m able to see my route and calculate how far I’d done my photo walks approximately on a normal given day after work. In Summer, I walk for 1-2km; in Fall, I can walk further about 4km. Of course, the productive part is just a few segments of it. So you see my photography is not just a simple shutter click (nobody should be), there’s plenty of jogging and time investments behind some of my photos.

I think it’s a bad idea to fall into the same lazy loop over and over again. A well-planned route or even get lost are deemed better, especially to explore around town. The end of the day, whatever that’s on my way can be used for my photography. It shapes what I do.

My 2013 summer weekends are all planned thanks to my visit to the little island south of Hong Kong. It’d be a mini-project which I really want to complete. There’s just way too many things I appreciate on the island. More even so, I just want to grab one of the locals and tell me their life stories.

I must give credit to the Limp Bizkit track ‘My Way’, it became the title of this post while I was typing and listening to it. Thank god I was able to filter out the swearing while brainstorming…