Hong Kong Street Life

Well I’ve finally managed to get round to start processing some of the photographs from my Hong Kong trip. An area I’ve always liked is Mong Kok, it’s vibrant, colourful and not so touristy as Tsim Sha Tsui and so we choose to base ourselves here during our holiday. But it wasn’t just a holiday. My son lives in Hong Kong, so it’s an ideal opportunity to catch up with him and spend a few weeks together. As I explained in an earlier blog post, this trip I was going to concentrate more on the people and the sights in the less touristy areas. Not for me the Harbour, the view from the Peak, or Symphony of Lights, keep that. Been there, done that, seen the film, got the tee-shirt.

Mong Kok has several street markets and walking around them gives plenty of opportunities for street photography. Normally I would convert my street photographs to Black and White, but like I said Mong Kok is colourful so it seems appropriate to keep my photographs that way as well.

Wandering around the market you can see stalls selling fish, meat, clothes, just about anything.

To our standards in the UK this is very unhygienic. The butcher’s shop is open to the streets with people passing by all the time and yet it seems to be the norm as I saw several butchers shops like this. I’m not going to judge, I’m not buying but I must admit it does make for an interesting photograph.

Continuing through the market I found one of several fish vendors.

Choose your fish and let the lady do, whatever she does. Hong Kong is a street photographers dream, so many interesting faces and as long as you’re discreet you can catch some good photographs. All I did here was keep my camera low and as I walked about I just fired off the shutter. Face-detection, if you’ve got it helps and a reasonably fast shutter speed.

I’m not sure if I got busted here, but the gentleman didn’t say anything so I just carried on walking. generally I found most people were more interested in going about their business rather than paying attention to me.

As well a the larger stalls, you find the smaller ones like this. I really love the eclectic mix of vendors that you can find in the market.

And now for something a bit different. A jeweller’s shop just a short distance from the market. Twenty four Karat gold. It’s too yellow for me. They tell you the weight, not the price. You have to go into the shop and find out what the price is that day.

Well that’s it. This is just a small selection of the photographs I took whilst I was on holiday. I hope it gives you an insight into street markets in Hong Kong.

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