GUIDE TO HONG KONG´S BEST PHOTO LOCATIONS PART.3

central HK copy.jpg

1.     Downtown Hong Kong

When the weather conditions are less than ideal, I recommend finding a composition where the sky is not an important part of your shot, and instead looking for a stronger foreground will help you to make a more compelling image, even if there’s not a great sky.

During the day I recommend to explore the streets in Downtown Hong Kong, there are many interesting things to photograph, there are many street alleys, shops, roads and skyscrapers and of course the people.

Downtown Hong Kong alley

Downtown Hong Kong alley

One place that is nice visit is the Man Mo Temple in Sheung Wan (one of many, but this one is the most popular), it is located in 124-126 Hollywood Rd., is a temple that worship the god of literature Man Tai, and the god of martials arts Mo Tai, maybe Bruce Lee was a recurrent visitor, I´m just guessing.

Man Mo Temple, devotes burn huge coils of incense 

Man Mo Temple, devotes burn huge coils of incense 

Hong Kong is one of the densest cities in the world, and one with more skyscrapers than any other, if you walk through the dense streets of Downtown Hong Kong you’ll realize that almost from anywhere you can’t see almost any sky unless you turn your head 90 degrees up.

There are many interesting compositions from within the city that you could use to your advantage, Downtown HK have many flyover walkways that overpass many of the arteries; during the day you could try to scout around downtown until you find an interesting intersection with a nice building to use as a background, using the lanes of traffic from that intersection as leading lines helping improving your composition, this would take the focus of the viewer’s eyes from the flat boring sky (if that is the case).

Traffic lanes, a good composition to photograph when the sky isn´t interesting 

Traffic lanes, a good composition to photograph when the sky isn´t interesting 

In this blog I will show you a very iconic photo spot (many photographers have done this intersection), but this is not the only one, you may want to do something different, so I encourage you to scout the city and find your own composition.

The photo spot that I’m about to show you, have as a main background the Two International Finance Centre (Two IFC). IFC1 is 210 meter tall while IFC2 is 415 meters tall and is the second tallest building in Hong Kong.

D810 + 15mm- 30mm f2.8 @  15mm, ISO 64, 4s, f/8.0

D810 + 15mm- 30mm f2.8 @  15mm, ISO 64, 4s, f/8.0

To get this shot you’ll have to position yourself on the Rumsey Street Flyover that runs on top of the Connaught Rd Central. To easily find the Rumsey Street Flyover take as a reference the IFC mall that is located between the Two IFC towers. When the location that I’m about to shoot is a popular one, I try to arrive at least two hours before sunset, this one is not as popular as other locations in Hong Kong but you could find yourself with a couple photographers, so, get yourself there one hour before sunset and start looking for your ideal composition and claim your stake.

In the photo that I took I chose a very symmetrical composition, I tried to stayed as center to the traffic lines as possible, for this composition there is space only for one photographer, a little bit to the left or a little bit to the right breaks the symmetry, it doesn’t mean is not a strong composition if you break symmetry, but this is where you’ll have to choose what works best for you.

I personally don’t shoot much vertical compositions, but in this case I chose to because I have the Two IFC towers very near me, so in horizontal it wouldn’t work out for me.

My gear and camera settings were:

-        Camera mounted on a tripod.

-        Aperture priority, 4s, f/8.0, ISO 64

-        3 Bracketed exposures (from -1 to +1)

-        Lens at 15mm

-        Taken at dusk

I hope you liked this information, if you would like to learn more about Hong Kong, please leave a comment below or send me an email.

 
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