Asia

Hong Kong Diptychs In Lightroom

DerekClarkPhotography.com-HongKongDip01 I've been looking at maybe buying VSCO 6 and noticed that they have a 40% discount on all film packs at the moment. As I'm not sure how much I would use said film pack (as I tend to bake my own). So I started mucking around in Lightroom and made a new preset. It's a desaturated look, but with the reds and blues pushed back up. Add a bit of Contrast and Clarity, through in a vignette and bingo. I did add a bit of yellow to the shot with the trams, just to bring up the yellow grid on the road.

I'm pretty happy with the look of this preset, but working on these has made me miss Hong Kong. Maybe next year!

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Asia 2013 Part 7 :: All That Glitters Is Not Gold

DerekClarkPhotography.com-DSCF2971 Sometimes life takes us by the hand and helps us to see what otherwise might be missed. It shows you one thing to allow you to see another. You might not realise it at the time, you might not realise it until after it happens, but the aha moment shows it's face and makes you wonder just how the universe nudges us one way or another as we stumble through life.  The divide between rich and poor was projected on the walls of  shops and houses, but first I would be taken on an unexpected journey with the Chinese workers of Taipa and Macau.

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I woke early and slipped out of the hotel room with my shoes in my hand and my camera bag over my shoulder. This was fast becoming my MO, up early and out either before, or as the sun comes up, leaving the others to sleep. I slipped my shoes on and stepped into the elevator and hit G. The lobby was empty, nobody on the desk and nobody on the door. I stepped outside and felt the Asian heat hanging from the night before. The sun had just came up, but was nothing more than a bright spot in the thick fog. I was in Taipa, but  I has heading to Macau, the Chinese gambling capital. The Taipa Bridge wasn't far from the hotel and would take around ten to fifteen minutes to walk across (it's long), but I felt like commuting with the local workers that were just starting to surface from their grey hi-rise flats.

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I asked the driver of the first bus if it went to Macau and he nodded and gestured me inside, looking a bit annoyed that I wasn't speaking Chinese. I had a good idea he didn't have a clue what I was saying, but I got on, sat on a single seat and felt the laser-like stares of thirty-odd pairs of eyes. The bus headed off in the opposite direction from Macau and the Taipa Bridge, but hey, it's a bus route and it will get there eventually right...wrong. I sat there hoping the bus wouldn't cross over some Chinese border with this dumb Gweilo (white ghost) with no passport. Eventually I asked a collage student (guessing they would have a better chance of knowing some English) if the bus went to Macau. He shook his head and spoke to the driver briefly. The bus pulled into the station and the driver looked back at me and  pointed out the door. As I left the bus he used his right index finger to tap each of the five fingers on his left hand, which he repeated and then pointed to the departure area. As the bus pulled away, I thought "did he mean 5 or 10?". Number 5 bus came first, so I jump on, but it was the wrong bus. Another wrong direction, then a third bus and I was travelling toward Macau.

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I had gone miles off the reservation, but I was back on track and heading into Macau. In a way, I felt there was a point to my journey through the streets of Taipa and Macau. I was looking at the average Chinese person in an average working class area, both on and off the buss. This was no tourist tour!

As soon as I spotted the unmistakable shape of the Grand Lisboa casino in the distance, I knew where I was and got of the bus at the next stop (in case it changed direction). I had got off way to early, but I was happy to be walking in an area that I recognised. As I turned the corner, it hit me like a slap in the face, and it was as though I had been guided here at just the right time. I would have missed it if I hadn't made the unplanned extended journey first. The sun shone on the facade of the the Grand Lisboa and bathed the run down buildings behind it in the most amazing ocean of gold. I stopped in my tracks and stared. It seemed to shimmer and the words literally popped into my head 'All That Glitters Is Not Gold'. The physical gap between these two buildings was nothing more than a narrow street, but the real gap was vast. One of the most iconic casino buildings stood there proudly showing off it's gold and rubbing the little guys face in it.

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Ghandi once wrote "There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed!". You see it in every country.  Rich man,  poor man, beggar man, politician. It's Robin Hood in reverse!

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Looking from Taipa towards Macau. The Grand Lisboa can be seen at the end of the bridge with its exploding firework design.

All photos shot using the Fujifilm X-E1 & 18-55mm lens, except image number 2, which was shot with the X100 (obviously).

 

Asia 2013 part 6 :: The Philippines & The Wrath

DerekClarkPhotography.com-DSCF3401-Edit-2 Arriving in the Philippines from Hong Kong hits you like a slap in the face. "Life is hard and then you die", I don't know who said it, but they probably said it in the Philippines. It's hard for me to take photos here. Outside of the compound I'm staying, I'm pretty much the only white guy. Everybody sees me and everybody stares. Even in Hong Kong when I walked to areas that were Chinese only, I still felt my invisibility cloak was working. But here is a different story.

We visited my mother-inlaw's grave yesterday and the sky opened up. Thunder, lightning and torrential  rain, the full deal. Fe told the kids that Lola (Grandmother) was angry, because we had visited the swimming pool before visiting her grave. Superstition is a big thing for Filipinos. The guy (above) asked if he could hitch a lift on the back of the van (converted to a small minibus) that we were traveling in. He was a character.

DerekClarkPhotography.com-DSCF5836There's so much beauty here, but such terrible conditions for the majority of the population.  We live such a privileged life in the west (all though I think that's changing), even struggling photographers should think themselves lucky. If we can afford to buy a camera and a couple of lenses, then we're doing ok in my book.

DerekClarkPhotography.com-DSCF5971Janel sulks in the corner of our hotel in Cebu (above) . This doesn't happen too often thankfully. I look at my kids on this trip and hope that these will become amazing memories when they get older. I tell them how lucky they are to be able to travel to places that their classmates at school will probably never see. I hope that some day when I'm no longer here, they will sit around a table with their own kids, looking at grandpa's photos and telling them what a great childhood they had. I hope so! They're sitting a few feet away from me right now, watching Filipino TV with Fe. I've got tears in my eyes and I'm grateful for what I've got' The keyboard is getting blurred, so I'll just stop typing here and leave the rest of this post to photos. and captions. It's a short life...LIVE IT NOW!

35mmStreet.com.DSCF5987Fe let's the kids stroke a small  stray bird in the airport.

DerekClarkPhotography.com-DSCF5980Blind musicians play at Cebu airport.

DerekClarkPhotography.com-DSCF6030It turned out that the plane we flew in from Cebu was the same one that went off the runway a few weeks before.

DerekClarkPhotography.com-DSCF6037My nephew Ken, a really nice dude.

DerekClarkPhotography.com-DSCF3418Full circle. The wrath of Lola.

 

Asia 2013 part 5 :: Leaving The Lights Behind

DerekClarkPhotography.com-Hong Kong-001 So that’s it for Hong Kong. I’m typing this on the flight to my first destination in the Philippines. By the time you read this, I’ll have shot the first part of the orphanage project for the NGO, then another internal flight to shoot the second part. I don’t want to say to much about destinations at this point as the Philippines is a poor country and I’m carrying some expensive kit. But I’ll post more details at a later date.

Part of the gear I packed for this trip was a Joby Gorillapod Focus. I've carried it half way around the world and I hoped it wasn’t for nothing.  Luckily It turned out to be a good move as I’ve shot quite a bit of long exposures. I've also shot long exposure street photography with interesting results. Take a look HERE for a couple of those shots. I also wanted to capture the breathtaking views of Hong Kong lit-up at night. So here are a small amount of what I’ve taken and I hope you guys enjoy them. The first three were shot with a tripod and the next three were handheld.

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I really enjoyed taking these long exposures, it’s extremely relaxing and I’m sure it’s the fishing or golf for the photographer. I wrapped the Gorillapod around railings to get the first three shots. I used the X-Pro1 for these and set it to full manual. Shutter speed dial was set to B (Bulb), with an aperture of f18 and ISO of 200. Each of these three shots took a 20 second exposure to capture. There’s so much light coming from these buildings that they illuminate the clouds and then the clouds act as a huge softbox, sending light back down on Hong Kong.

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This shot is straight out of the X-Pro1 with no editing at all. I wanted to show what these cameras can do in extreme conditions. Setting on this one and the other handheld shots are 1/30th of a second at f2.8, ISO 3200. There is noise there, but I’ll fix that in Lightroom 5 later and I know it will do a fantastic job. But I wanted to show this totally untouched straight OOC. It’s a kind of eerie look with the clouds so bright at night.

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This is the view from Victoria Peak at night. I was here in the day time in 2008, but it's a completely different experience at night.  I recommend visiting around 6pm to catch day, night and a sunset to boot. But go early as cues can be very long and there’s a bit of pushing and shoving to get on the Tram (boy is it steep!).

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So Hong Kong is a wrap. I’m sure I’ll post a lot more when I get home next week, but these photos are a good place to leave it for now. We’ve stayed on Lamma Island at the house of friends, while they were abroad So a huge thank’s go to Andy & Honeylet for the use of their beautiful home. You get the best of both worlds staying on Lamma, an island with no cars and an amazing contrast to the hustle and bustle of Central. It’s been a pleasure to arrive in Hong Kong by boat each day, most of them listening to an amazing album by violinist Daniel Hope, called “Spheres’. It was the perfect soundtrack to the breathtaking architecture of Hong Kong, a place I’m extremely sad to leave.

I’ll do a post soon about my workflow on this trip, especially file management and how I set the file structure up before leaving home and how I’ve backed up my work and tried to keep the files same in case of theft or disaster.

 

Asia 2013 part 4 :: Macau

DerekClarkPhotography.com-DSCF2882 Macau is probably based described as the Chinese Vsgas, but although the later is better known, Macau actually takes in more money than Vagas. It takes one hours be boat to reach and the first thing that catches the eye as you get close, is that the water is very brown, huge patches...I wouldn't swim in it!

As you can see from above, the skyscrapers are not exactly conventional. This golden monster is the Grand Lisboa and is probably the most striking building in Macau, if for nothing else, for it's plant style design. DerekClarkPhotography.com-DSCF3104

You know there's money in town when helicopters shuttle people to and from the ferry terminal to the various hotels. This goes on all day long.

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Just like the Brittish with Hong Kong, Macau was leased for one hundred years to the Portuguese and this is very obvious in the architecture. The Portuguese actually renovated a lot of the buildings in their original bright colours prior to the handover of sovereignty (to the Chinese) in 1999.

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I don't know who I felt more sorry for in the blistering heat, the couple or the photographer...who am I kidding, it was the photographer. With no umbrella to shade hime from the sun and wearing jeans (very casual over here), he must have been having the worst day, especially having to shoot in direct sunlight.

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We stayed in Taipa, which is just over one of the bridges from Macau. This is the flattest of the three (first night shot) and looking from Taipa to Macau. You can see the Grand Lisboa just at the end of the road. This shot give a better idea of it's hight, with the round entrance section just visible at the base.

The bridge above (second night shot) is the Taipa Bridge with the Macau Tower to the right. You can do lots of crazy things here, including a skyward or bungee jump like HERE.

The shot's on this post were taken with either the X100 or the X-E1.

Asia 2013 part 2 :: Hong Kong - Great Light

DerekClarkPhotography.com-DSCF2612 It's been five years since we were last in Hong Kong and it's great to be back. We have a ten day stop over here (although two days will be spent in Macau), then it's off to the Philippines to shoot the project for the NGO, which will appear on the Kage Collective site later in the year. I shot these with either the Fuji X100 or the X-E1 with the 18-55mm f2.8-f4 (more on this lens on a later post). At this point the X-Pro1 was still in the bag.

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Hong Kong is an amazing city with stunning archetecture and design. It's a living, breathing, pulsating metropolis, a great place to be and an even better place for photography. I don't think I've felt more at ease or safe,  even in the two cities where I shoot street the most in Scotland. Everyone should come to Hong Kong at least once in their life.

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I shot a small video of the scene above and it looks so much like ants. everybody just flowing along, moving out of each others way and going about there business.

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There's one thing that Hong Kong has in abundance, and that's great light. Of course it's better during the golden hours at both ends of the day, but like my Kage Collective colleague Robert Catto wrote about in his story Brighter, everything does just look brighter and more colourful at this end of the world. I'm afraid the UK lucked out on light.

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Hong Kong has many levels in so many ways. But for a photographer, it offers a lot in the way of places to shoot from. You can be on ground level shooting what's around you, or above. In the vast elevated walkways that join buildings like a giant dot to dot. You can shoot what's ahead or behind, or down on to the street. Or you could shoot over at another walkway running parallel. There's just so much veriety of view points.

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And finally, here's a couple of locals.....not really, it's my kids, cooling of on the roof of our home for the ten days we're in Hong Kong. Even they are finding the heat hard to bear.

I've posted a number of black and white shots from the streets of HK on my 35mmStreet blog, so click HERE to go there. A lot more coming soon.

Patrick La Roque should be back from Cuba around the time this post goes out (or soon after), so check his blog HERE regularly for more travel shots.

Now...where are those Digital Rev TV guys?

 

Asia 2013 part 1 :: Equipment & Packing

20130622-180632.jpg This is part one of a series of blog posts about traveling to and shooting in Asia. The destinations being Hong Kong, Macao & The Philippines.In this first part I'd like to go through the gear I'll be taking, how I'll be carrying it and what I'll be using to carry it. So I'll start with my camera bag of choice lately. But before I get to the goods. If you're on twitter and would like to follow my tweets and blog posts, I'll be using #dcpAsia . I'll also be posting street photography on my 35mmStreet blog.

I chose the ThinkTank Retrospective 7 for it's worn look and because it doesn't stand out as a camera bag (unless you're in the know). I bought it two or three months ago and have been using it every day since, mainly to get it looking even more used. I went for the Pinestone version as again, it looks more worn that the blue or black. The main reason I chose the Retrospective 7 was that I can fit my 11" Macbook Air in the back pocket (the bag is designed for the 11" Air), and my iPad in the inside pocket. Most of the contents of my bag are what I carry around every day and because I shoot the Fuji X series, I can pack a pretty amazing kit in a small bag. I'll put a list below of the gear that I'm taking on this trip & then I'll give an idea of the reasons for my choices. This trip is a mixture of personal and project. I'll be shooting for an NGO in the Philippines, going to children's orphanages in two different cities. The results of that project will appear on The Kage Collective website in August or September. I'll also be shooting plenty of street photography and of course, general travel stuff too.

  • ThinkTank Retrospective 7 (contents)
  • Fuji X-Pro1
  • Fuji X-E1
  • Fuji X100
  • Fujinon 35mm f1.4
  • Fujinon 18-55mm f2.8-f4
  • 5 x Pateries for the X-Pro1 & X-E1
  • 3 Batteries for the X100
  • Casio Point & Shoot
  • Hotshoe adaptor to mount the Casio on the X-Pro1
  • Apple Macbook Air 11"
  • Apple iPad 2 (Wifi only)
  • Apple iPhone 4 & Earpods
  • iPad Camera Connection Kit
  • USB3 Card Reader
  • USB3 4 Port Hub
  • Zoom H4n Audio Recorder
  • SD Card pouch with 10 SD cards (mixture of 16GB & 8GB)
  • Western Digital Portable Hard Drive
  • Manual Cable Release
  • Flashwave III Transmitter & Receiver
  • Fuji EF20 Flash
  • Moleskine Notebook
  • Hong Kong City Guide
  • Sony Headphones

I've thought long and hard which of the three Fuji cameras to take. The X-Pro1 was always my first choice, but it was a toss-up between the X-E1 and the X100. When I shoot a project, I like to use two cameras and the X-Pro1 & the X-E1 go so well together. But I know I'll be shooting loads of street photography (especially in Hong Kong), and the X100 is my weapon of choice (the X100s will eventually make it's way into my bag...I think). I was planning to take the 35mm f1.4 and the 18mm f2, but I'm leaving the 18mm behind in favor of the 18-55mm f2.8-f4. The variable aperture is a bit of a bummer, but the IS could be useful, and with the 56mm f1.2 not out till 2014, this will give me a handy telephoto focal length (83mm in full frame speak). Plus I could set this to 23mm and leave it there, so that I get my favorite focal length of 35mm on one of the two bodies.

  • Hold Luggage Gear
  • Joby Focus Tripod & Ball Head
  • CineSkates wheels for the Focus Tripod
  • Battery Chargers for All cameras and Apple devices
  • Small shoot through umbrella
  • Extendable (Lastolite) hand held poll for flash and umbrella

The Joby tripod will be used for night shots in Hong Kong and the CineSkate wheels will turn the tripod into a dolly for shooting video. I'm intending shooting video and recording audio with the Zoom H4n, but it won't bother me if I come back with neither. It's just an idea. I would have loved a GoPro Hero 3 for this trip, but the trip is self financed and with this also being a family trip too, it's expensive.

So that's about it for part 1. The first part of the trip will actually be London, which although has China Town, is not really Asia :o)

Stay tuned, follow me on Twitter @derekclarkphoto and remember to add a search field on your Twitter program of choice for #dcpAsia .