Yau Ma Tei Fruit Market (果欄)

Yau Ma Tei Fruit Market

From my walk from the Streets of Jordan – Mong Kok. I also passed by this wonderful part of Old Hong Kong –

The fruit market has been around since 1913. It’s the oldest wholesale fruit market in Hong Kong. I have heard it a lot in the news. It’s also my first time passing by there. The market itself is still partially functional. Many transactions are now not exactly happening here. The entire block you see at the fruit market made me travel back in time.

Everything there looks dated and beaten. You can easily see the lack of maintenance roof. The complex is only two story high. So you know how flat the buildings were back then!!! This place has a lot of historic value. I really hope the fruit market as well as some of the old buildings around can be maintained.

I really don’t like the restoration of old structures had turned into new apartment buildings or shopping malls. Our government is forcing the old communities to scatter and move away. This approach is so annoying that i don’t think anyone realize how bad it is, and how far the government had gone.

Old communities have their own charm, dynamic, ecosystem. By removing them, anything unique, special about the people and the place would be gone forever. A wipe out! Pretty much like the Native Indians in America. Well..not to that extreme. But you get the idea..Where’re they now…

Our districts are lacking of its originalities. In a sense, most of the districts look and feel the same. Just have a look at all the new developed New Territories districts. I’m sorry to say, but many of those public estates are like prisons. I’ll leave it up to another topic in the future.

What’s on it

Many of these Hong Kong social issues were discussed on a TV program (I Want to Be the Chief Executive) by Mathias Woo. He had raised so many questions and always criticizing positively on why our government is failing since the handover in 1997. I’ve heard much from him.

Torn food menu

At the time of my visit, it was on Sunday. Many of the stores were closed. Only a few were open. So I briefly passed by and that’s it. Perhaps more next time when I visit the place at the time when they’re working.

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This series is presented in B&W. Experience the little travel back in time with me!! Alright, pictures from my last post were too saturated I tuned down my preset on Aperture. I’m still working on the presets.. fine adjustments little by little every time..

Streets of Jordan to Mong Kok

Jockey Gambling

Candid street photography requires walking. I’m realizing it’s a good cardio-exercise in summer. I get to sweat and replenish with a beverage. And how about a bite of puff pastry from a fresh bakery off the corner. That’s precisely what I’ve done.

I normally don’t upload/process photos on the same day. It was an exception due to the various themes I’ve encountered today. It’s quite something I think, for a short less than 3 hours of wandering on the streets.

I had no planned routes, purely wandering around and exploring every street corners. It was 3pm, I arrived at Jordan by MTR. The night before I was with my friends on the Temple Street. I found it really cool, it could be troublesome to shoot photos of the locals at night. I don’t dare trying, at least not with a shiny camera. I revisited the Temple Street again.

Temple Street arch

It’s not uncommon to see an arch in Chinatown overseas. There’s this arch actually here, reminding while I was in the U.S. So irony…

The camera with me today has a focal length of 35mm (X100). It’s very tight for narrow streets. I often found myself not having enough distance to frame my shots. I managed to pull out some shots I wanted while keeping myself invisible. I did miss many passer-by portraits. Way too many that I don’t want to accept. I’ll put a note on that and work on it later on.

Jockey gambling – speaking of industrious

Sunday is a Jockey race day. A big day for many as it’s a habit for the locals to place bets for win! It’s actually quite exciting to do it (I’d done it with friends). I wouldn’t say it’s addictive, it’s more of an atmospheric force that makes you do it. And there’s more than just placing bets. A couple other factors come into play, such as who’s the jockey, the weights of the jockey & horse, what’s the horse latest conditions/results, whether the horse is good on grass/mud/wet. It sounds so technical when I first heard about it.

So there’re all these people hanging out near the Jockey Club branches to share tips, place bets and whatnot. They’re all good.

Jockey gamblers

After seeing these busy people, I came across with this dog. It’s not a good shot of her. She’s actually dressed up with blue jeans and shirt!!! My first time seeing a dog with jeans on!!! She’s overly excited about my presence. She jumped on me…Perhaps because of my stinky broken jeans?! I was busy playing with her forgot about another picture of her…

Excited dog

I walked in the market of Shanghai Street. I stopped by a bakery for a pastry.

Shanghai Street

I found the right spot and snap this photo. I was there.

Listening to the jockey race

I turned into a corner and found this man with his cigarette, reading the jockey paper. I think he’s working at the shop next to it. Who cares whether he’s working, if he wins. He got the money!

I was done with the Temple street and the area around it. I decided to head to Mong Kok which is two subway stops away. I was back on the main road and I found there were police setting up road blocks. I heard sounds of parade from distance. Alright beginning part was a parade, it was actually a protest demonstration by Falun Gong..no one cares about them anymore in Hong Kong. Just don’t mess with the public and we won’t mess with you.

The recent famous local design for demonstration (Jun 4th Tiananmen)

Speaking of protest, if you google ‘Long Hair Hong Kong’. He’s the master of demonstration. Some thinks that he’s too aggressive and try to make unnecessary scenes in the public. He got arrested all the time. On the top of that, he’s actually a member of the Legislative Council. LOL. Anyway, I’m not too sure who’s idea it was. Sometime this year, their democratic party had come up with paper models for demonstration. They’re simple, colorful, expressive! The famous green tanks. It resembles the tanks at the Tiananmen Square Jun 4th 1989. The man in the photo is Long Hair’s partner, Tsang Kin Shing. There’s this art workshop at the street corner. They were showing how they were made.

Bank of China limited edition banknote speculation trading

Hong Kong is famous for speculations – reselling for money. After the iPhones, there’s iPads. Anything that is limited supply, there’re people doing trades. Speculation is making Hong Kong look so hidieous. We’re the financial center of this part of the world. Yet money is still a scarce resource for many. Or I think it’s Hong Kong people’s habit to follow what others are doing. I personally don’t do. I just don’t want Hong Kong to look like that and I got BETTER things to do.

When fire inspectors can’t read the name of the building

There were these fire inspectors checking for indoor fire facilities/safety. Um..They were confused and smiling whether they are at the right place. I couldn’t help to pull out my camera from a bag to take this photo.

After that, I arrived in Mong Kok. I was a bit tired so I was slow on scanning for subjects.

Couple

Mainland tourist/Loving mom feeding daughter.

Then I wandered into a movie set!

Movie shooting in the street of Mong Kok with William Chan

They were filming and I got to see the movie stars. I only recognized William Chan. He got fake blood on his chin and some scattered fruits, fish balls on the ground. Must’d been a fighting scene.

Battle scars show off at the movie set.

I really don’t know who he is. But there you go, showing off his beaten back.

Back to street photography, again.

Enjoying his own world.

That dude was walking so fast that I was panning for the shot. I just have to go fast next time when I do portraits on subjects. I actually can pull it off.

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I also wandered into the famous Yau Ma Tei Fruit Market. I got a few great environmental shots. I’ll get them posted tomorrow.

First attempt on the zone focusing method with Fujifilm X100.

[great pose by him at the light and saw no hostility in his face. so i framed it with my OVF.]

I thought auto focus was lazy enough. Actually the one technique that’s preferably used in street photography – zone focusing, it shoots pretty sharp images too, once the pre-focused focal length is in the zone of your subjects. And it can make you even lazier, or a nicer way to say it; it lets you concentrate on your composition. The distance error can often be ignored if we’re not that far off. Let say I’m shooting a subject 2m away, and my focus is just 1m. The subject can still be seen sharply.

setting for a day shoot only

By doing so, on my X100. I set my focus mode to manual and pre-focus (with AE lock) to about 1.5m-2m depending upon the area i’m shooting. Then now the aperture, set to relatively small f7.1-higher value. I found that it’s possible and safe to shot it with f7.1, ISO800+, shutter speed as auto, in the afternoon under a tiny bit of shade. I got around over 1/200s of shutter speed. It’s very well over the speed i needed to capture a shot via a viewfinder or off the hip (i’m more like “off my chest” usually).

The manual focus mode in X100 is useable in practical situation, in times like what i do. The AE-L is a cheat button, but you fall in love with it eventually.

I think i’m liking this pre-focused zone method. It saves time by not needing the systematic focus mechanism of your subject. It’s not as intelligent as the snap focusing by Ricoh. But it’s the same token. I got some great results from a shoot during the weekend near Mong Kok and Yau Ma Tai. And yea, many interesting faces and things in those area.

[A very special week of the NBA history made by J.Lin, keep it up!]

[old lady taking a stroll behind the street of a market.]
 [market stall with chinese sausages]

[old lady with a funny look, is she stealing her own goods?!]
[While we’re ditching our outdated thin LCD TVs, there’re people out there repairing TVs that had been out there for over two decades.]

peeling pineapple in less than 30sec.
[art of multi-tasking in the mouth with cigarette and toothpick by the man.]

I have not gone shooting at night with the zone focusing method yet. I assume I’d have to step down the aperture to a less than f3.0 in order to shoot with a workable shutter speed. And the ISO would have to go as high as my camera can. It’s like a game of working a perfect mix between the aperture and ISO. Fine tuning is always needed anyway.. there’s not a textbook setting of what’s best. I personally found it more comfortable and easier to get a better shot with the aperture almost wide open. I’ve no idea when I hurt my ankle. It’s been a few days now. Seems not healing too well..it’s bugging my daily exploration.

Update: Check out my results 3 months later
The Colorful Hong Kong: Collection (5-6/2012) – Part I