So that’s it for Hong Kong. I’m typing this on the flight to my first destination in the Philippines. By the time you read this, I’ll have shot the first part of the orphanage project for the NGO, then another internal flight to shoot the second part. I don’t want to say to much about destinations at this point as the Philippines is a poor country and I’m carrying some expensive kit. But I’ll post more details at a later date.
Part of the gear I packed for this trip was a Joby Gorillapod Focus. I've carried it half way around the world and I hoped it wasn’t for nothing. Luckily It turned out to be a good move as I’ve shot quite a bit of long exposures. I've also shot long exposure street photography with interesting results. Take a look HERE for a couple of those shots. I also wanted to capture the breathtaking views of Hong Kong lit-up at night. So here are a small amount of what I’ve taken and I hope you guys enjoy them. The first three were shot with a tripod and the next three were handheld.
I really enjoyed taking these long exposures, it’s extremely relaxing and I’m sure it’s the fishing or golf for the photographer. I wrapped the Gorillapod around railings to get the first three shots. I used the X-Pro1 for these and set it to full manual. Shutter speed dial was set to B (Bulb), with an aperture of f18 and ISO of 200. Each of these three shots took a 20 second exposure to capture. There’s so much light coming from these buildings that they illuminate the clouds and then the clouds act as a huge softbox, sending light back down on Hong Kong.
This shot is straight out of the X-Pro1 with no editing at all. I wanted to show what these cameras can do in extreme conditions. Setting on this one and the other handheld shots are 1/30th of a second at f2.8, ISO 3200. There is noise there, but I’ll fix that in Lightroom 5 later and I know it will do a fantastic job. But I wanted to show this totally untouched straight OOC. It’s a kind of eerie look with the clouds so bright at night.
This is the view from Victoria Peak at night. I was here in the day time in 2008, but it's a completely different experience at night. I recommend visiting around 6pm to catch day, night and a sunset to boot. But go early as cues can be very long and there’s a bit of pushing and shoving to get on the Tram (boy is it steep!).
So Hong Kong is a wrap. I’m sure I’ll post a lot more when I get home next week, but these photos are a good place to leave it for now. We’ve stayed on Lamma Island at the house of friends, while they were abroad So a huge thank’s go to Andy & Honeylet for the use of their beautiful home. You get the best of both worlds staying on Lamma, an island with no cars and an amazing contrast to the hustle and bustle of Central. It’s been a pleasure to arrive in Hong Kong by boat each day, most of them listening to an amazing album by violinist Daniel Hope, called “Spheres’. It was the perfect soundtrack to the breathtaking architecture of Hong Kong, a place I’m extremely sad to leave.
I’ll do a post soon about my workflow on this trip, especially file management and how I set the file structure up before leaving home and how I’ve backed up my work and tried to keep the files same in case of theft or disaster.