Musings at a Fishing Port (Part 1)

Cheung Chau is primarily a fishing community. For the most iconic of Cheung Chau people's daily life, look no further beyond its fishing port. It is the first sight greeting the visitors on incoming ferries. The haphazard clumps of boats scattering over the bay may make the place look confusing, but there is an unspoken order of things amid the disorganisation. The ferries worm in and away from the pier while walla-wallas crisscross their routes. On the narrow channel separating the clumps, there are always vessels going this way or that and giving out a tutti of hums from the puffing motor engines. But vessel accidents have never been heard of in the bay.

To any photographer, this port offers the most enticing yet challenging photo opportunity. On the one hand, the activities and liveliness are fascinating. On the other, it is so festooned with different shapes and colours that virtually no scene can be trimmed into a decent image.

So, I started with the obvious: human subjects. Whenever I shoot under a similar situation having to live with a disorderly background which just refuses to budge or oblige, it is always logical to hinge the focus on human subjects. This is very natural for we are social animals. Chances are that, take the first image here for example, we consciously or subconsciously check for clues of human subjects and activities when we look at a picture. In this sense, human subjects somehow "grace" an image by offering a natural point of interest.

Well, the point that there are plenty of techniques to work around the background should not required making. Using a shallow DOF is one example. We know better than that. So we skip it.

After making a number of shots, the image lacking punch remained a prominent flaw to my eye. The points of interest were there but far from clear in the photos. What should I do? Experience led me to look for intriguing elements to add an outstanding dimension of interest to the images which could hopefully grip the viewers' attention longer.

Then I searched for elements of tension and ended up with the above picture. It was a shot of two men on separate boats talking to each other. Owing to our reading habit, the viewing starts from the secondary subject to the primary subject; that is to say, from the man in a white shirt to the man in a grey polo shirt. The tension is formed through the travelling of the viewers' eyes, as well as the invisible line of sight connecting from the lower-left folk to the upper-right one. The image hopefully induces the viewers to imagine the dialogue between them.

For sure, there are weaknesses in the composition. But that was the best I could do with the longest focal length possible and the restricted space to maneuver.

I continued searching. Amid rows of similar flat-bottom boat containing unnameable odds-and-ends, this red sampan attracted my eyes for the clue of human activities faintly suggested by the rattan hat with a dropping wide-beam which were commonly worn by the fishery workers. The scene was half mystical and half romantic to me.

The composition was done by placing the red boat in the middle as a highlight to this primary subject, while the side boats were cut by roughly one third. The one-third trimming was borrowed from a technique in graphic design that an object extending beyond an edge gives a sense of continuum and movement into or out of the frame. Here, the continuum of the row of simialr vessels hopefully extend the viewers' imagination beyond the image. "Where are the boat people? Are they down a few boats along the row? How long does the row of boats extend?" are the questions which may arise in the viewers' minds.

A final note is that the top and, more noteworthy, the bottom of the image are used to show some water. If either of the space was filled up by the boats, the photo will look really stiff and narrow the scope of imagination intended for the viewers.

That's long enough for a post. Let's continue the musings in another one.