Around the time I was doing weddings, I decided to stop lugging around a DSLR on a daily basis. Aside from the obvious weight issue (Nikons are heavy bishes), I was having trouble disassociating work from leisure, my own photography from my “brand”‘s photography, if that makes any sense. It just made everything feel like work. So despite the obvious difference in quality, I set my D700 down when I wasn’t working and instead went for my little Fujifilm X100s. Most of the images you’ll find on this blog from 2011 onwards are by this camera. I even used it to shoot parts of my MFA thesis project.
Things I love about it: it’s small, light, easy to use, extremely manual when it wants to be, and has a pretty boss fixed lens – yeah fixed, i can’t be bothered with interchangeable BS on a regular day anymore. I like to use it with the ISO cranked high with the aperture pulled as tight as it can go, and I get this tremendous amount of detail i could probably only get with a tripod on any other camera. (This isn’t sponsored, I promise :)) I have a point.) It also does a bunch of other quirky stuff that I have never gotten around to trying in six years of owning it: it has film simulators and other formats and takes a pretty sexy panorama. It also does double exposures, that i’ve been meaning to try but could never find a reason to.
Cut to this year’s trip to HK with my sister and a bunch of dudes, and i thought I had a pretty good excuse to try the double exposure function. It’s not something i would attempt to do in a place that i didn’t know as well as I know HK. Anywhere else, it would feel like a risk, I guess? I’m pretty boring that way. I like to do traditional travelogs in new places, just so i can get my thoughts straight about it. But HK isn’t a new place, and having lived there for a good while, i’ve taken all my boring travel photos of the place. So I shot exclusively in double exposure mode on this trip.
Interestingly, the photos feel the way it feels to be a visitor in a place you used to live. Like it’s all the same but not exactly, you’re from around here but you’re not really. I wondered this whole trip how long my understanding of the place would stay relevant, or if it still even was, and constantly found myself confronted with things that shifted since the last time i was there.
I know in this instant gratification kind of world, people aren’t such great big fans of scrolling patiently through content anymore, so thanks for making it this far!
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2 comments on “Double Vision HKG”
This is such a gorgeous selection, Sands! I think Meggy said it accurately when she said that you captured the rush of Hong Kong. Like when you’re walking, everything is always just a blur. and I don’t really see these images as double vision, but more like a still capture of what it’s like to walk in the appropriate pace it takes to traverse through Hong Kong. I love these colors- they’re vibrant yet it’s not garish or foreign to me. It feels familiar and really a lot like… home. This is such a well captured narrative.
Thank you Kitty! That means a lot especially from a “local” ;D