GX GARNERINGS

^I did several shots for this shop.  The composition of this shot ticks because, to me, the lines of fish are eye-catching and the two people just rightly balance the "weight"  of the boxes of the goods sold. If you wonder why selling the fish necessitates hooking them up (animal abuse?), it's because you don't know about the delicacy among people in Southern China including Hong Kong. These are salted fish made with several kinds of fish, the best being the King Salmon.  They are not expensive in absolute term but are costly.  Sheung Wan and Tai O are two of the local places famous for selling salted fish.  If you have no wish to buy any but fancy a taste, try the Baked Eggplant and Salted Fish Casserole * which is served in most Chinese restaurants and fast food shops in Hong Kong. However tasty salted fish it may be, the food is cancerogenic if consumed too much. This is the fish story, which is not a fish story . *The Chinese name is 魚香...

* Taken from Latin, the word literally means the "spirit of a place" which is based on the concept that cities have a deep underlying spirit arising from climate and cultural aspects. ^I like this shot for the lady's mannish smoking gesture and sober gaze in face of the wide array of making-you-drop items sold in the night market. Ricoh cameras are known for rendering its black-and-white shots with likable tones. For sure, in the digital era, it is worth considering the strategy of whether shooting B&W images straight out of the camera or colour images to be converted into B&W. The reason, as I once wrote , is that "a straight digital B&W photo gives you an image with only 256 scales of grey while a colour photo can afford a much wider range of colours, hence more information, to be post-processed for the best B&W conversion result." ^What I like about this shot is that the racks of diversified shoes, boots and wellies suggest why the two shop...

^Monkeys and Monkey Bars: Instead of photographing the subjects, I shot their shadows which told of their action in a more intriguing way with the rhythmic shadows. It is almost a cliché to say that light is the soul of photography. If light is the soul, a shadow is the body. Taken together, they are the tools for photographers to draw the pictures, much like a brush to a painter, a carver to a sculptor or a musical instrument to a musician. But light and shadows are more than just tools. They are also the important factors in a composition. ^A Long Working Day: Hopefully the theme is somewhat echoed and enhanced by the long shadows suggesting the day was closing. In fact, it was taken on a winter morning. Having known the ABCs of light and shadows: - The light coming sideway gives subjects a richer three-dimensional quality and the light coming from behind is best for putting the subjects in silhouettes, especially when the sun is low, or putting your own shadow in the picture; - Sha...

- For GF-1 and Lens as at 25 Nov (Download here ; accept the agreement at the page bottom there)   - For GRD III as at 1 Dec (download here ) - The following enhanced features are added to the GRD III (For details, read this PDF document ): 1 [The GF-1 Flash unit compatibility]The camera now supports the optional flash, GF-1. This update allows TTL-auto flash control with the GF-1.* During interval shooting, any external flash unit will not fire. 2 [Date List] in playback with 81 frames view in the playback mode, clicking the thumbnail button changes a list grouping pictures by date. 3 [Page List] in playback in thumbnail view (20 frames, 81 frames, or Date List), you can switch the view between the image selection screen and the paging screen. 4 [Menu Page Advance]You can switch pages by using the zoom button in the Shooting menu, in the Setup menu, or in the "Edit My setting" menu with selected an item. 5 [Snap Focus Distance]The...

^Click the photo to check out the colours, which I like best for it. This is the show performed by the Flying Troupe in Hong Kong Ocean Park, an attraction which also fascinates me. I'm less verbose today for you to enjoy the show.  

^To me, dragging the shutter speed to blur motion of secondary subject is a sure-fire way to give street shots a sense of impromptu with a rather journalistic charm to it. China is as famous as notorious for many things. Cheating is among one of them. I have bags of stories about cheating concerning the nation. Walk on the streets in China and you'll see the physical evidence. Here are some. Mark the well arranged sheet displaying photocopies of newspaper clippings in the first photos which was taken in the street of Shenzhen, the booming town neighbouring Hong Kong. In essence, the clippings told of how bad blind children suffered in China, faintly hinting curious people stopping by to donate money to this child whose blindness was without any clue for me to tell for sure. I doubted if I was too mean to think it this way until I saw another younger boy at the next road junction. ^For a similar street shot in Hong Kong, such a slow shutter speed would have blurred all the motion r...

^The photo was taken at midday when the low winter sun shone almost 45 degree into the window. The sunlight was on a fairly high ka level, whitewashing everything on earth which was the least flattering to a photographer. That is exactly when the WB Correction function of GX200 comes in handy, allowing the user to counterbalance the undesirable light source. Here the WB was corrected to cyan. The few pictures here give you a real sense of how densely built Hong Kong is. This is a view from a high point on Kowloon (actually the height of almost 40th floor). The ranges in the background are the mountains on Hong Kong Island. People living in Hong Kong may feel nothing special about the mountains and the harbour. But they do the populated Hong Kong a big favour. ^Here you actually see the old Mongkok/ Yaumatei area cramped with pre-WWII buildings and newer concrete towers, donning the area with a hap-hazard kind of development outlook. Paradoxically, it is the untidiness which adds a in...