.Lost In Translation

In late October of 2009 I went to Hong Kong without a real plan what to do & where to go.  I was just fascinated by this “little” spot in South China and “probably” wanted to proof something to myself and others.  After 3 weeks and a good amount of shot rolls of B/W film I left and the personal struggle began.

After developing for 3 days and scanning a strong feeling of being disappointed and frustrated turned up, which didn’t left me for the next couple of months. I stopped shooting. Well, In fact that’s not 100% true but 4 rolls in almost 5 months … you know what I want to say.

Not the best idea to get into an depression and stop doing what you usually love to do, especially If you’re attending photoclass at University and you’re in the final year. Long story short… when it comes to photography I wanted to be someone else, someone I’m simply not … which in fact was bullshit.

For sure it’s good and important to look a the work of other people but you need to find your own way of doing certain things. Something I learned the hard way, although I did knew it the whole time, but somehow ignored it.

So this post is sitting more or less half finished here for months now and chance of getting published was pretty low, but since I’ll return to Hong Kong next week to shoot my final project(got a clear plan this time), I needed to end this “dark” chapter by finishing it. Still not the tightest selection (mixed up too) and nothing I’m proud but thanks for having a look at it!

Really appreciate it !

view from Victoria Peak over Central & Kowloon

Missing the files from the flight to get this started but doesn’t matter anyway. Remember this was during my ride from Airport to infamous Chungking Mansions in downtown Kowloon. You have 3 options to get there … Bus, Subway or Highspeed Train. Tired I went for the cheapest and slowest, the bus which turned out to be the first adventure because the driver wasn’t really good at speaking english and the onboard info which usually says which stop comes next is in Cantonese only. Nevertheless the western tourist army on the bus managed to get out at the correct stop.

Chungking Mansions aka the backpacker heaven. 5 blocks packed with guesthouses and every other business you can imagine. Center for People from South Asia and Central Africa, as well as my topic for the next project.

dark, wet and with a “nice” smell

rooms are tiny in Hong Kong and look more like a bathroom with a sleeping place

and my second room .. a little bit nicer … going to stay there again …

note: scan frames in the order you shot em ….. some pics from the last days ….playing around with the 50mm Nokton f/1.1 I bought there for an unbeatable price

need to rescan this one. composition could be better but still like it

test roll for the 50mm here at f1.4 If I remember it correctly

one of my favorite frames although it would be better if I’d captured her face too … Nokton at f1.1

folks where busy getting cabs which was hard this night because of Halloween

you get eye contact rarely in Hong Kong at least this was my impression, so maybe a slipknot like mask helps

HK is pretty much a financial city only so the press guys really enjoy events like shooting Halloween

in 3 weeks i’ve seen more M’s than in years here in Europe

Halloween in Wan Chai which is more or less the red light district for foreigners. This guy was wasted & doing strange things which cought the attention of the tall Navy guy. Same week a US Carrier visited HK, so the place was packed with US troops.

Tribute to The Wanch …. pretty small but nice live music pub. Saw a couple of good shows there and meet some awesome people.

checking it out from the outside.

party time at the Rockschool. Fantastic place owned by a cool guy from San Fran. DP Metalheads on stage. The music scene in HK is tiny but growing and there are already some good bands.

opposite side of the street from Chunking Mansions, can’t really remember which day/week it was but I guess it was shot while I’d my daily orange juice

Nikon for Professionals … shot in Mong Kong which is the area to buy electronic gadgets, cams & other stuff. Every once in a while there are girls promoting cell phones.

and always a bunch of “amateur” shooters surrounding them ….

People in HK don’t eat dogs ! In fact they love dogs. Shot the day I decided to get a haircut, which was interessting because the hair stylist didn’t really spoke english and afterwards I looked like an asian teenager ^^

although there’s no empty space in HK all the people are really healthy. one of the sport fields/parks

too lazy to look at the map but it was at the last station of the subway line going to New Territories ( a district of Hong Kong). Not much going on there and my friend Dingo asked me why I went there. 

The other HK .. Yuen Long in New Territories. Spend a great afternoon there with my fellow Leica addict Dingo. People love to get their Wedding shots done there.

fellow shooter Dingo

and they love do cosplay shootings … strange Japanese  anime/manga thing

Sham Shui Po Flea Market

a pity it’s not in focus and better composed

afraid of the camera ?

around 6am … someone told me that the parks a packed with people doing their Tai Chi stuff so at  least on day I managed to get up this early to have a look at it myself

rumors turned out to be true … can’t imagine old people in europe to get out so early to do sports

mood shots from Yuen Long again

loved her outfit

spend an afternoon at Lantau Island which was another side of HK I didn’t knew before

more chilled

and with giant dogs

apples of course

food markets are awesome. fresh stuff everywhere .. maybe to fresh for the average European as most of the animals are still alive…

used Triad cars ? how knows

there’s so much great food available but the American lifestyle is becoming more popular I guess

on one of the last days  i went to Macau (Vegas of Asia) which used to be Portuguese colony. Biggest disappointment of the whole trip and wasted 60€. Nothing more to add

philippine  woman gather on their days off from work on the streets to relax

tourist spot on the south side of HK Island

and back in Central where mainland Chinese spent a huge amount of $$$

Time Square Mall .. If you need expensive stuff go there

Central during night

typical Wan Chai …

and back to Mong Kong

support the resistance I bet he couldn’t wear this in Bejing

not so packed

first time at Rockschool … birthday party going on with people going nuts. ran into Dominic Nahr there . Awesome Photojournalist!

more packed

really packed .. there’s a train coming every minute although i needed for like 15minutes to get into onelucky numbers

so romantic … in front of the HK Island Skyline

Murph would’ve fun in HK, I’m sure

How to ruin a beautiful beach … just built a power plant

coments getting shorter as it gets later .. so as usual .. did it again and produced double exposures by accident….

last night I want to stay awake in order to be able to sleep during the flight, which in fact worked fine. went out a last time to see what’s going on and well .. nothing..

almost frightening how empty this area is during the night

last frame during take off

having a smoke in Helsinki after almost 10hours of straight sleep