Reclamation Street gallery update... | The Rogan Coles Photo Archive

Scenes from Reclamation Street market in Kowloon, Hong Kong — HONG KONG, YAU MA TEI – NOVEBER 29, 2016: A shopper making a selection at a fruit stall on Reclamation Street in Yau Ma Tei, Hong Kong on November 29, 2016. (Photo by Rogan Coles)

Something new to view…

We have just updated the Reclamation Street photo gallery here on the Rogan Coles Photo Archive. In the process, we have added new images and changed the way the images were arranged.

Selected image and its story…

The above image is one of the newer images. I hadn’t paid it any attention before. It kind of gets to be that way sometimes. When I go out to take pictures, I take a lot of pictures. May be a 100 – often times many more. I don’t go out on a shooting frenzy as such – as in the shutter rattling away like a machine gun. I rarely if ever shoot motor-drive sequences. Each shot I take is deliberate – a calculated and hopefully, a meaningful shot, one that was given some consideration in the moment it was taken.

After a day of shooting – and sometimes, several days at that – all the images are moved onto my hard drives. And then, the process of editing and culling begins. Yes, it “begins” but, with time constraints and other demands of the day, that process can get drawn out. While this particular image was shot a few years back now, it didn’t seem to quite fit in with what I may have been working on at the time. Just recently, I had the need to look over some of my work including the photography I did on Reclamation street and, this image “popped” into view.

Serendipity…

Other than the woman’s gaze the thing that really became apparent were the colours – that magenta/maroon colour as well as the pinks. Serendipitous, coincidental, call it what you will, this is one of those moments where everything seemed to come together.

As commented elsewhere, there seems to be something quite “deliberate” about much of my work. From where I stand, behind the camera that is, this is never quite so. I’m not a “fisherman”. By that, I mean, I’m not a particularly patient person. I don’t particularly like standing around and waiting – much like those individuals who seem to take some pleasure in standing for hours on end at the water’s edge with rod in hand and hanging in there until something bites. I like to move. I like to be on the move.

In this picture above, I was fortunate. Yes, I hung around for a short while. And, in the process, things moved into view. I shot a few frames beforehand and then, this one. As can happen sometimes, one “misses”, let’s just say, certain nuances. I certainly did here. Both my focus and attention was on the woman manning this particular street stall. When she looked back into camera I thought, “This is it”, that I had the shot.

Yes, I did but, what I had actually missed was something bigger and, this only became apparent when I reviewed this image at a later date – as in the juxtaposition of all the colour elements – the colours of the sweet potatoes, the colours of the garments of the two customers to the right, the red on the lady’s top in the centre and similar colour of the lady’s trousers to the left. There’s also to pink top of the stall holder and the pink tops of the people on the background – the lady in the centre and the gentleman further way. There’s so much going on in this picture. I’m just surprised that I missed all this in my initial edits.

Street photography…

For me, there’ something “fraught” with street photography – that there’s so much that remains “unfinished” about such work. Perhaps this is what drives me on, the thing that gets me back out there and to do something better. Yes, this moment is unlikely to ever repeat itself and so it should be. It’s more or less a once off. And, being the person I am and given the choice or chance, I wouldn’t want go back there again. OK, I could and maybe I will. But, not to look for an “action replay”. If anything and, looking at this picture, I would definitely change my PoV – my “Point of View”. Standing in more or less the same place, I would have lowered the camera to get a different perspective – shooting upwards instead of at eye level. But, for another time perhaps.