Hong Kong Trams

One of the most wonderful things about Hong Kong is its cultural and social diversity. Along side this tram is a person on a push bike - with a basket full of things they are pedalling around town. It's a sight you see a lot, high rise buildings, wealthy people contrasted with push bikes and mountains of laundry hanging off the sides of buildings. Gotta love this place, I certainly did.

This image needed more contrast and a bit of tweaking on the colour side to highlight its delicious pastels. My contrast fix of choice is now, officially Curves in Photoshop. But these aren't your dad's curves or your mums! They are curves on steroids - select the channels R,G and B and adjust each of them to get the best contrast in the image, just don't look at colour - look at contrast. Then, when you're done, you did apply your fix on an Adjustment layer didn't you? Set the Adjustment Layer blend mode to Luminosity. Notice how the wonky colours disappear and your image's contrast is adjusted perfectly? Luminosity blend mode applies the change to the image's luminosity (lights and darks on a grey scale) and keeps it away from messing with colour - Like I said, not your mum and dad's curves.. these are for real Photoshoppers!

Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong

When I was in Hong Kong I went first to order chops at Man Wa Lane (Chop Alley) which is in the Sheung Wan area of Hong Kong. Chops are stamps with your name engraved on them in Chinese characters that you use to sign things. Because they are your name and your birth year symbol, they ideally are hand carved for you. I have wanted one for years and there's no better place to get it than Chop Alley.

With a few hours to spare until I had to pick up the chops, I headed by ferry to the wonderful Cheung Chau island. There are no cars here - everyone bikes or walks and it's just the most wonderful place. One side of the island is a fishing port and the other side is beach.

This photo is from the fishing port side. The atmosphere was horribly grey and polluted so the image was totally lacking in color as well as having a pretty ghastly color cast. First step is to remove the color cast. I use the "color by the numbers" approach of sampling white, neutral and black areas of the image and then adjusting curves until they are within the ball park of correct. Then, I took the image to LAB to boost the color using curves on the A and B channels. You can't do so easily unless you remove the color cast first. The result is wonderful and one of a series of boat images I'm working on.

Reflections in Hong Kong

One of the things I found myself photographing in Hong Kong and in Tokyo was reflections. The images I caught of buildings reflected in other buildings are mini worlds that exist only for those who choose to see them.

Rreflections are a different reality. While the building doing the reflecting might not be visually interesting per se and the building being reflected might not be so great, the combination of the two is so wonderful and temporary.

Photographing them is as if life is rewarding you for using your eyes to see, not just look.

Night Markets, Hong Kong

I really did not enjoy the experience of the Temple Street night markets in Hong Kong. Before I went there, I'd spent two days looking around Hong Kong at what I thought would be fun to see. And it was.

The guide book gave a wrap to the night markets, but as a place to hang out, it sucked - big time. The worst part were the hawkers spruiking knock off handbags and custom tailoring - I wasn't sure that this was a lack of insight on their part - I don't wear custom tailored stuff - or a "not so subtle" comment on my sloppy dress standards. Suffice to day, it didn't wash.

However, there were some good photo ops and this was one of them, taken looking up a crowded street. The lights, neon signs and all the activity was wonderful if you were prepared to look only superficially at it. Under the surface were too many junky souvenirs and way too many tourists!

Can we say Hong Kong?

In late December, I got a chance to savour the delights of Hong Kong for a few days. I have to say, I totally fell in love with the place. I loved the less touristy areas and this is one of them. These too cute trams run along a few miles of track on Hong Kong Island. They're double decker trams and they are so fun to ride. This photo was taken along the route and it's very typical of what you see - lots of breathtaking colour and busy streetscapes but also it's all about a slower and more simple pace of life. It's the complexity and contrast that is so captivating about travelling in Asia.

The photo is straightened out of the camera and it is also colour corrected to bring back the colour. My new Pentax K10D - which I absolutely love - takes photos which lack saturation particularly when I use a polarizing filter on it. I have yet to get a real handle on its behaviour but, for now, just shoot away and rely on Photoshop to fix the results.

One aspect of this photo and some others I took is the contrast between the saturated colours in the ligths and trams and the delicious pastel colours of the roadway.