Almost all my students in Hong Kong ask me the same question every week, where is the best place for photography in Hong Kong? They are waiting for my mouth to come out with the magic place where you go and get that photograph you always wanted to do, but nothing could be further from the truth, the best place to do street photography in Hong Kong is wherever you are at the time.
With this post, what I want you to realize is that once you close the door of your house and go out to the street, the street is the street and there is life in it, everything is photographable if you know how to photograph it.
Still, and for the practice of some techniques I have selected some sites to give meaning to this blog. Let's go for it
Places to practice street photography in Hong Kong
TST Cultural Center
If what you want is to practice street photography applying geometry you must go to TST Cultural Center, famous is the photography that many photographers get (we get) there between the angular walls where playing with the exposure of our camera we can darken 90% of our photograph being illuminated in the form of triangles, a photograph that will please everyone who looks at it, easy to execute and a place where we can give free rein to our creativity of so much geometry that we can find.
Avenue of Starts
A few meters from TST Cultural center we find Avenue of Starts, a very relaxing walk with beautiful views towards Hong Kong Island where we can also get very good images due to its traffic of people. If what you are looking for is to play with backlighting this is one of my favorite places in Hong Kong to practice this technique, inside the gallery that serves as a grandstand for the light show and looking towards Hong Kong Island we can get great photographs against the light because there is a lot of traffic of people through the same gallery.
Tamar Park
Tamar Park is another place in Hong Kong where it is very busy for people walking or doing sports, remember that busy places are very interesting because we can fill our images with life. What I like about this park is that no matter which way you look you always find something of interest. IFC, Wanchai, Kowloon or the skyscrapers of Central and Admiralty can always give you very good compositions for your images.
Repulse Bay Beach
It could be any other beach but this has been my favorite for many years because every day and every 15 minutes a bus full of Chinese tourists came to it (let's hope that the pandemic ends soon or that by the time you read this it will be over). A beach full of people and none of them in bathing suits is an extraordinary place to photograph and here you could find them all the time. There have been many photography workshops that I have done on this beach.
Tai Kwung
This former prison turned into an art center on Hollywood Road is a fabulous place to practice our street photography, here you have everything you need to get stunning images.
People
Geometry
Contrasting buildings
Gray walls (if you are a black and white lover like me)
Wet Markets
One of the things that still fascinate me the most in Hong Kong are its wet markets, there are some businesses that have not changed in (many) years and for me, coming from another country it is very difficult to understand some products exposed as live or dried animals, I see it very medieval although I must say that I really like to walk through these markets.
Sellers with cigarettes in their mouths and without t-shirts.
People, lots of people in a very closed space.
Different products (at least curious for those who are not from here).
MTR
The subway is one of the places par excellence in all the cities of the world for the practice of street photography, in its corridors we find people coming and going in different directions and that can give us a lot of play for our street photography and for the practice of different shutter speeds.
And what about the subway cars? Full of people staring either at their cell phones or at infinity, people glued to each other, sleeping, yawning, talking, laughing, crying, avoiding each other, running....thousands of expressions we can find in the subway!
Alleys
In between the big buildings and around the most crowded places of this city we find some alleys where cooks in white suits gather to smoke, where cardboard is piled up for recyclers to pick up and the smell of urine is so strong that makes you doubt whether or not to pass through there (although that smell tells me that I'm going to find good pictures).
Affluent places
One of the techniques I like the most for my street photography is to fill the frame, a rather complicated technique to execute well but when you learn how to develop it you don't stop photographing. In Hong Kong there are numerous places where there are more people than air to breathe and those places are the perfect place to fill the frame of your photographs. (Mong Kok, Wanchai, Causeway Bay, Jordan, Yau Ma Tei...)
Conclusion
Any place where you are can be the perfect place to develop your look and get good pictures, you just have to look and photograph in a different way. I invite you to leave a comment and share it with those who might be interested in it, it would help me a lot to continue creating content like this.
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