A perfect confluence of events

It is now officially the wettest June in recorded weather history in Hong Kong - which means in at least the last 125 years. To date 1,255mm of rain has fallen this month. So amidst this - and in practical terms that means a June during which it has only not rained on six of the days - the coming together of a super-low, bay emptying tide, crystal sunshine, and a sunday afternoon was a lovely moment. The bay is largely sand bottomed but close to the shore there are a lot of rocks and shells and hidden-just-below-the-surface sharp things, making it less than ideal. Shoes of some sort are the way to go. In the middle of the bay however is a sandbank without anything sharp on it, and at a very low tide you can walk out to it, lose the shoes, and have a great time. The colours were amazing - Hong Kong is usually so muted, and the late afternoon was full of golds and green blues - nice and contrasty too. A French guy I know called David was out on the sandbank with his family, teaching his kids how to water-ski. He had this very cool surfboard type thing that he was using - if you look at the design you can see that the boat pulls the board (not the handle) and I think that makes all the difference.

The only missing ingredient is initial stability, in this instance provided by David's wife Pascale. David runs an adventure company in Hong Kong that does corportate outings on boats and kayaks - very cool job I think, though tough too.

The when the sun did go down and we had to start heading in to avoid worsening moods, shooting into the sun also produced some groovy images, I thought. Of the last two, one is taken at home - but I thought it necessary to balance out the numbers.

Moustache

I thought I'd grow a bit of a mo' - but it's not in any way popular with the troops, it needs to be said. An absolute "no to the mo" would not be overstating the welcome the idea received.

Photographic courage

It's been a busy busy past weekend, photographically speaking. I did the prelim shots for the art gallery I mentioned somewhere below, with a view to putting together some options for choice, so when I get to doing the job (with a lovely guy called Fred Croft, who I think I'm going to learn a stack from) we know what exactly it is that we are aiming for. There is a lot of stuff to shoot, and knowing what people want up front makes us efficient. I really liked one of the paintings, and (naievely) asked how much it might cost. Half a million U$ was the answer - mmmm, looks li. The furniture was really fantastic, and I liked this bench above, built out of slats of wood with holes inbetween. I shot it like this to pull the colours and I think it has a space-ship like quality to it as an image. To get the outcome we wanted I shot things in a number of ways, textures, backgrounds etc. The stuff was just beautiful. It's incredible the things that humans are capable of making, such refined detail and shape and texture - quite lovely. It was also a nice change shooting stuff that didn't move. Much easier I can tell you.

Later that day I worked with Jens at a family portrait shoot. I love working with him. And this is the reason for the post title, I've discovered that it takes some courage to go into someone's home and point a camera into their face from close range with blinding lights when they are looking at you with these sort's of expressions below. These are desaturated portraits I am experimenting with, washed out if you like. GR bought me a beautiful book some time ago called Karoo Morning which featured desat images that I liked. In reality these were very lovely people, despite the slightly morbid looks. I really like all the images I've posted here - there is a lot of authenticity and calm acceptance in them, and I think that the image of the littel girl on her rocking horse is positively regal. The more bald grandfather also had a lovely twinkle in his eye. It's always a challenge shooting people with flash lighting when they are wearing glasses too - because your soft boxes can come out as eye-obscuring reflections - you can see the start of one of these in the bottom left hand photo.

The weekend before I did a family shoot of some children. It was a hugely bright day, and I wanted to take photos in the garden, but it was way too contrasty, and with a test shot on Courtney (she agreed to work as my helper, thankfully) she came out greenish because there was such a reflection coming off the grass. In the end I used a doorway into the house, put the kids in that and had Courtney hold up a white reflector - very simple, very good quality diffuse light. I prefer the feel to that produced by studio lighting; there's a softness to it where studio lights are so intrusive. The little girl in the middle has devastatingly lovely eyes, not really evident here though. She'd also landed on her pip at some point so had the bruise and bump that you can see.

Thanks so much for your text on Sunday, I really appreciated getting it; hope you're toasting the quiz time, and looking forward to some freedom.

Jordan's birthday

It was Jordan's birthday party last night, there were lightstick necklaces. These are a bit of a mixup, lacking theme you could say, but they are the ones that I like. The ones with the exploding colours are zoom blurs - shooting manual with no flash and a slow shutter speed and cranking the zoom while the shutter's open. I like the portrait of Jordan in the middle above, a lot, grainy from the very high ISO and desaturated colours. Below right are Allie and Gracie, two of Courtney's friends - that is shot with a low key flash - I like the skin tones a lot. I'll come back to this post and try and reorganise it a bit better - but in the interim I hope you like the colour chaos.

Chaiwan Loft

On Friday night I went to a dinner in a wildly stylized and cool place, a factory space converted into a loft apartment, by a Swiss woman I know, Jacqueline, and her partner David. Outside, industrial wreckage, inside superchic artspace. Check out some of the details - like the sculpture of the three burned matches behind her to the left. The pic here does it no justice - wrong lens, 35mm - need about an 18 to get it in meaningfully. All you can see here is a part of the lounge and the very corner of the dining room. As a piece of art, an 850cc Triumph, unusual but nice; the floor grey sealed concrete. I'm going back to do do some photos for her, of art from the Philippines which she sells, and I'll have some additional lights and the right glass to get something much better. I like the light dynamic - the lamp as a halo, connecting Jacqui to my friend Jacques Perche - matching names too, now that I think about it.