GX GARNERINGS

(Leica D-Lux 5) The mist has turned Hong Kong into a sleepy town for a week, which is good because most human activities need to slow down a bit under the inconvenient weather. As in the case of my friends coming from afar, people visiting Hong Kong will find one common thing about this city: Hong Kong is  forever crazily busy. As with all bustling big cities, the busyness is kind of like scrambling an egg, it can't be reverted back to where it was. How great we have a chance to let time get stuck in the mist! When one looks out through the windows, the first thing jumps to the face is the dump air.  It feels like the humidity is at 100%.  Wet walls, wet floors! With the inertia in the atmosphere, the first thing springing to mind is watching a movie in bed with a can of beer in one hand and with the other hand digging in the foil bag for chips. If Saturday has a personality, she must be a very romantic lady to spend time with – at least when the day is misty.

I'd slack off a bit and let you enjoy this educational video about street photography. If you haven't ever tried some of their shooting strategies (not in those funny dresses though) as a street photographer, go and try any that suits your style. Anyone so wishes may send me your results to my email box and I'll post them on GXG, maybe with comments. Anyway, I will show you mine next week. Stationed in Hong Kong, Kai is the most entertaining presenter of camera reviews on this planet.  If there are lives on other stars, then he'll the best out of this planet too.  His lively, hilarious and somewhat tart (he commented the NEX7 as "brilliantly alright") style just dwarfs that of those boring camera reviewers who give technical-ish lectures on what a camera can do in video clips that sucks with sound recording that also sucks.

(Leica D-Lux 5; multi-exposure) Most of you have probably read the blog post of Tim de Lisle, Chief Editor of Intelligent Life, where he sort of bemoaned the overly post-processed images used in magazines. At the end of the post, Tim wrote, "But the shot is at least trying to reflect real life. It’s a curious sign of the times that this has become something to shout about." If such a light subject for moaning is called a curious sign of the times, then how should we call the recent political scandals developing in Hong Kong? Maybe "the impossibly ludicrous signs of the times"? For the purpose of education, the following are the billing, the scenario and some supplements from today's local English newspaper, South China Morning Post, about the scandals: Characters: 1. Tung Chee-hwa , helmsman of the 1 st term government after 1997 2. Donald , helmsman of the 2 nd and 3 rd term government after 1997 3. CY , convenor of the helmsman's de facto cabinet sin...

(Sony A55) It seems that every night when I switch off the camera, go into the bedroom and turn off the lights, what have become the reminiscences of the day in the memory card will start flickering from one electron to another in my head, interspersed with question or exclamation marks about the day’s conversations and observations. This will go on and on as I tuck myself into bed, turn from side to side and look around the faintly discernible whatnots on the side table until my eyelids feel so increasing heavy that the brain automatically comes to a temporary shutdown to put me to sleep. Then last night when the flickering stopped, I dreamt a dream about a Beijing ren (meaning “person” in Mandarin), a lead waiter in a hotel restaurant to be exact, catching a Caucasian madam red-handed with a bread and an apple on her hand which the lead matron believed to be blatant food smuggling after breakfast. The Caucasian madam was blocked from her way out, given a lecture on the restaurant ru...

(Sony A55) Let me start by saying something about today's shot. This was taken on the escalator leading to the lift lobby level of the Upper House hotel where I attended the cocktail party last night to open the photo exhibition of the Leica x Swire Hotels project. I think this image adequately conveys the mysterious quality to the hotel's atmosphere, as well as the moment's jovial feelings in my heart fluttering with inexpressible anticipation of the event -- my winning shot was one of the highlights in the exhibition. The reason for me to take this shot was simple: to challenge a commissioned photo taken (by a Beijing photographer) at the escalator top for the project echoing the theme "views from the top". It is not that the commissioned photo taken with a Leica M is bad, but that I prefer one with more depth in meaning apart from the interest of composition so that the photo can give more punch. The soliloquy to my soul led to one conclusion: take a shot to...

(Leica X1) Having been into a craft for an enough period of time, and through flounders and failings in matter of results, any craftsman will harvest wide benefits from reflecting on those flaws and foibles and then be catapulted onto a high level of craftsmanship at certain point. On this account, I have done some soul searching last week about the direction one may continue along the road of photography. I made efforts to answer two questions: What's so special about photography? And what actually are we learning in photography? My conclusion so far can be read, for what it's worth, after the following links. 1) Between Light and No Light 2) Between Seeing and Interpreting 3) Between Brain and Camera

(Leica X1) This is Sunday, give your loved ones a caring hug.