Cities & Architecture

One Last Swig

*One Last Swig*
Fuji TX2 + JCH 400

I was in Shanghai in early January (you know, the world before…) but the weather was miserable. I shot some colour with 800 ISO film, but I felt the mood was really better suited to black and white. So I walked around the French concession with a roll of JCH400 that fit the mood nicely. I’m normally a bit stifled when shooting street, looking for alignments and clean compositions instead of just shooting interesting people. I’m also not very good at manual focusing in haste. So I was double happy about this shot which doesn’t look like my usual stuff and is sharply focused!

Cricket Market

*Cricket Market*
Fuji TX2 + Cinestill 800T

One of my favourite places in Shanghai used to be the Cricket Market. A friend showed it to us when we first moved there in 2014 (and the sadly dissapeared Dongtai Lu antique market nearby), so when I went back for work in early January, I decided to go back there. I had 800 ISO film loaded, and tried to capture some of the scenes. This is a place where people who are into cricket fights come to purchase their champions. You see crickets from the near larval stage, painstakingly fed with droplets of rice gruel on straws to full size crickets like the one she’s showing to these customers here. It’s not the most graphic of photos, but it does show something you don’t see every day.

Big Buddha

*Big Buddha*
Fuji TX2 (XPAN) + Cinestill 800T

In early January I headed out to Shanghai for work. I had a half day off at the tail end of the trip and headed out to the Jade Buddha Temple where I’d been only once on the very first week we moved to Shanghai. Despite the gloom and rain, it was even better than I remembered. I had thankfully packed 800 ISO film, and while the light wasn’t exactly the best, I got a few good shots including this one of one of the larger buddhas.

Crooked Cross

*Crooked Cross*
Canon A2 + Ilford Ortho + 80

One of the things I really love in old cemeteries is those places where nature has blended with the graves. Here, the roots of the tree have shifted the grave and the cross quite significantly to it no longer stands upright. It’s a testament of the power of nature that I find important to keep in mind these days : the trees will be there and grow long after we are all gone.

Mysterious Cherub

*Mysterious Cherub*
Canon A2 + Agfa Scala 200 (expired)

From my first visit to the Hong Kong Cemetery I spotted this Cherub under the trees. The light hits it laterally, which is very nice although its face is always in the shadows. I quite like the way this shot came out although I would like to try it again with a non expired film and a reflector.

Broken Wing

*Broken Wing*
Canon A2 + Agfa Scala 200 (Expired)

Shooting expired film (let alone expired slide) is always a tricky proposition. I shot this one overexposed by +1 (but processed normally) to try and get some oomph back from it. It came out pretty low contrast, but enough that I could work with it. In the end, it’s conveys an old photo quality feel that I quite like and also is very appropriate for cemetery photos.

Quiet Sunday

*Quiet Sunday*
Canon A2 + Ilford Ortho Plus 80

I only ever shot Ortho once before and bungled that particular roll, so I was curious to see what the photos of the St Michael Catholic Cemetery in Hong Kong would look like. Turns out they really worked, with a lot of detail in the shadows and bright but not clipped highlights. Some dislike the Ortho grain, but I don’t see anything wrong with it. In this shot I was trying to capture this very strange and surprising tree in the middle of the path.

Two Crosses

*Two Crosses*
Canon A2 + Agfa Scala 200 (Expired)

Shooting expired film is risky at the best of times and with slide film even more so. Still, I hate wasting, and I shot this roll of expired Scala overexposed 1 stop to compensate for age. I still had to work the contrasts heavily in post- but the result has an old photography feel that I find appealing.

Paupers’ Ashes


*Paupers’ Ashes*
Fuji TX2 (XPAN) + Kodak TMax400

The paupers’ resting places in the St Michael Catholic Cemetery are these little boxed on walls on the side of the cemetery. Not the most photogenic of subjects, but a healthy reminder that class struggles do indeed carry on all the way to the grave…

Sunlight Over the Graves

*Sunlight Over the Graves*
Fuji TX2 + JCH400

I went to the Happy Valley cemeteries with my friend Matthew. When we arrived, it was drizzling, but an hour into it the sun was shining (that’s Hong Kong for you). Gave the whole place a very different feel. In this shot I wanted to capture the chaotic layout of the cemetery but also the shafts of light piercing the shadows under the trees.