Hong Kong is chilled by the mistral. It is 8 degrees centigrade by the thermometer but feels like six or five because of the rain and wind.
Photography and creative writing have a blood relationship for two reasons. Both are creative activities, and both are without the references of certain senses. For example, in a photograph, how do we tell coldness?
Can we photograph a street where the pedestrian traffic is sparse but dotted with passers-by apparently heavily clad in warm clothes? With a camera like the GX200, we may even tint the image with some colour of coldness. Better still, we can underexpose the scene to give it a sense of desertion. These were what I did to the first photo.
Or can we take a photo of places where the focal point combines both the feelings of fullness and emptiness? This is actually a technique borrowed from creative writing: contrast. There are numerous examples in classic Chinese poems -- if the poet wrote about the emptiness of the mountain, he would first write about the multitude of dirt roads where were, as he would later reveal, empty; if the poet wrote about the pity on a beggar, he would first describe how busy the passers-by are. In the second photo, the well-lit playgrounds covered by a thin chilly mist are all empty. The message conveyed may not exactly be "cold" as I hope, but certainly "desolate".
Or how would you tell your viewers in a photo the specific sense of feeling you hope to reveal? Coldness is a challenge not only to the body, but also to photographers.
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