Having lived in Hong Kong for the past 6 years I have always tried to avoid the hustle and bustle of the cities streets. It's why my family and I decided to live outside of the city in Sai Kung. A beautiful fishing town next top the sea.
My job often takes me all across the city and I regularly finish after dark. Until recently I have solely relied on my full frame Sony A7rii for my photography. However, I had decided to trade in my trusty A6000 back up camera and replaced it with a used Sony A6500 and Sigma 16mm f1.4 (24mm equivelant on full frame). I found having a crop sensor camera with lower sized files worked well for my casual family photo outings. But soon I realised the flexibility of having such a fast aperture in a relatively compact body such as the Sony A6500. I won't go too much into the gear aspect otherwise i'd never get to the point.
As previously mentioned I work all over Hong Kong and often find myself in Mong Kok after work at night, i'm sometimes on Hong Kong Island too where I would usually just head home and spend my time commuting thinking about landscape photography. I've never really gotten into street photography as I find I lack the confidence and know how to create interesting images.
So because of my smaller and lighter set up I decided just to bring my back up camera out with me every day as it easily fits into my backpack. I would go to the usual places where the streets are abuzz with activity and store lights bathe the streets with their artificial glow. I had soon found myself enjoying capturing the chaos around and I wouldn't arrive home until a few hours later than I should have.
Another challenge I found with street or urban photography is how to edit them with such varying lighting and shadows. The example above shows a preset I had made in Adobe Lightroom. It's quite possibly a little overdone but in my mind it's how I see these streets. Like something out of a science fiction movie. Think Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell. I often tweak other street images to look grittier, perhaps a little too dystopian but I've found it's how I like it to be.
Whenever I had previously traveled into the city I would always bring along a tripod. These days however I rarely go to the city on my time off work. However since switching out some slow glass I was able to handhold most of my new urban photographs (f1.4 sure helps!). However, there are times when you see a scene before you where you would need a longer exposure time.
The examples above were shot using a tiny Manfrotto tripod which I was able to perch precariously on the many railings found on overpasses. All this kit could easily fit into my 20 litre backpack along with my work stuff.
Locations
I won't go too much into urban Hong Kong locations for photography as I plan to create a video post of all my favourites but below are just a few examples. Nothing special and not hard to find.
Sheung Wan - Lok Ku Street
Mong Kok - Soy Street
Mong Kok - Tung Choi Street
Mong Kok - Ying Chong Street
Central - Des Voeux RD
I hope you have enjoyed this article. It's not my usual genre of photography but it's important to try new things in everything you do.