Hong Kong Cosplay Kids

Mon, 03/08/2009 - 4:44pm

Over at 'Ani-Com & Games Hong Kong' things are little strange if you're not familiar with the world of 'anime' and 'manga'. Which I'm not.

Once a year Hong Kong kids get together to go crazy on the latest in the world of comics and plastic figurines. It's easy to imagine why. Hong Kong teens are mosly cooped up in tiny flats in public housing. The kids with fertile imaginations let them run riot in the (mostly Japanese-inspired) world of super heroes and cartoon characters, whether that be in 'graphic novels' or computer games, or both. Going outside gets tedious, you see, when everything costs money, is covered in concrete, and the weather is too hot and polluted. It's just so easy to shut the world out with a comic or PSP.

But isn't the real world an odd enough place as it is without having someone else dream up a pantheon of wierdoes with big fluorescent hair-dos, capes, weapons and frilly bits for you?

One only has to read the news on any given night to see that fact is so often much stranger than Edwardian fiction. Especially in Hong Kong.

But it's all harmless fun, and the Cosplay kids were having a whale of a time down at the Convention Centre today.

I usually have a strict policy on the old Winston Churchill, but today I decided to let it slide for once. Spot the geek in the background.

This one is reminds me of chicken teriyaki, chop suey or that stupid chopsticks font. Too much.

The rather breathless-sounding Ani-Com press release was very keen to let the world know (in large bold font no less), that "the total number of visitors for today is 156,000, comparing to the figure last year, it has been increased by 5.4%".

So there you have it. I put that down to the ever-present pseudo-models, don't you know.

If this stuff really grabs you, there's more than you can shake a stick at in my Hong Kong Cosplay album in the Portfolio section of this site.

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(Time for a bit of housekeeping >>> I've had a few people berating me for not 'keeping your blog up to date'. It seems the last post was on the 25th July. Well, I've decided that the way it's going to be is if I've got nothing interesting to say or no interesting photos to show, there'll be no blog entry. If I'm busy or having fun, expect colour. But I'm certainly not going to make myself a slave to this thing. I think it's pointless 'updating' it for no reason. Nuff said.)

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In Hong Kong, Sex Sells

Sat, 25/07/2009 - 4:59am

I went to the Hong Kong Book Fair yesterday to cover a tattoo event. Except I got the wrong day. Duh. Yesterday was the book signing part of the event by author Phat Chan who has compiled a really great book on tattoos called 'Tat Addicts'. But since I didn't want to shoot a book signing as they can be quite boring for pix, I decided I would come back the next day - which is now today. Later there will be a live tattoo artist engraving (real and free) tattoos on the Book Fair crowd.

As I was leaving the book fair I passed a stand selling books by so called Hong Kong 'pseudo models'. These are picture books that look like soft porn, but aren't. The poses of the girls in the books are porno-ish, but their delicate bits are usually concealed by a bikini or a strategically placed ice cream or dribbling toothpaste or something. Or so I've read! This means that they can be sold openly and legally at the book fair, as under Hong Kong law the books are neither indecent nor obscene.

The reason I mention all this of is because there has been a huge outcry over the 'pseudo models' in the local press this week. The moral minority and the culture vultures are supposedly upset by the 'hijacking' of the Hong Kong Book Fair by these purveyors of smut with their pseudo models and their fans: hordes of hot-blooded teenage boys and taxi drivers. The Book Fair is seen by the local high brow crowd as the pinnacle of Hong Kong's annual cultural calendar.

Personally, I think the 'pseudo model' phenomenon is just another fad like so many others in Hong Kong, and it will go away by itself. The real issue at stake is that they be allowed to attend the book fair in keeping with Hong Kong laws protecting the freedom of the press, but perhaps they could have their own 'Category 3' area, or something.

As I left the Book Fair in the afternoon I walked through Wan Chai on the way to the MTR. I passed these ladies in plying their trade in broad daylight.

Like I said, sex sells.

The Hong Kong skyline is looking crystal clear after the typhoon.

Tue, 21/07/2009 - 12:58pm

Beautiful day today!

I was on my way to a job today, going along Magazine Gap Road when I saw the skyline was wonderfully clear after the typhoon which had just passed. I told the taxi driver to stop so I could grab a few stock shots. A small vignette from my daily life in Hong Kong...

Hong Kong Trade

Mon, 20/07/2009 - 4:21pm

This is what this town is really all about.

Trade.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a ceremony a few weeks ago where they joined together the two bridge spans of the Stonecutter's Bridge at the port at Kwai Chung. I forget what the exact geo-technical engineering term for that is. Lucky because it gave me the chance to shoot some great stock of the port, (which I have yet to upload to my site), but not to shoot the pointless white elephant that is the bridge to nowhere (Ting Kau to Sha Tin link - I think??). The official ceremony was pretty standard. Dull suits from the Transport Department and fat contractors making boring speeches, patting each other on the back and shaking hands with each other extremely vigourously. And then the MC said what they always say: "And now I would like to ask Mr So-and-so to come up to the stage to say a few words." I wish someone would tell the PR companies around here to brief their 20-something-girl-in-a-black-skirt-suit-with-a-wireless-mic not to say the phrase "bla bla bla say a few words..."? I've lost count of the amount of times I have heard it at functions and events in Hong Kong and now it really grates on me. Note to PR companies putting together an event for a client: be original!

Oh, and there's an economic downturn, so ocean container shipping firms are lowering rates because of slumping revenues in the first quarter of 2009.

The air pollution in Hong Kong is bad today

Sat, 18/07/2009 - 2:58am

After a few glorious days of clean air:-

we are back to this:-

The top image was photographed at: 7pm on 15 July 2009.
The bottom image was photographed today: 10am on 18 July 2009.

The top image may look good, but looks can be deceiving. Roadside air pollution at street level is filthy everyday. Admittedly comparing the two images is unscientific as both images were taken at different times of day - evening and morning. But that doesn't matter, as the difference is plain to see.

Can anyone see Victoria Peak in today's image? Can anyone spot Lantau island? I don't think so.

According to the Hong Kong Observatory there is a typhoon on it's way to Hong Kong right now, so that's why the air is so still and filthy. It's supposed to hit sometime on Sunday. I have a helicopter photo shoot that is dependent on the weather lined up for sometime in the next week or two, so I'm hoping the typhoon will clean up the air again soon. The client wants beauty shots of the harbour, so I have a financial interest, if not just a health interest, in radical improvements to regional air quality.

For a picture of the true cost of air pollution to Hong Kong visit the Hedley Index.

For more information about what you can do to help out, visit the Clean Air Network.

* * * STOP PRESS * * *

It's 1pm and it's even worse now:-

E-waste 'recycling' in Guiyu, China - 01

Fri, 17/07/2009 - 4:14am

I've had a lot of interest in the 'China e-waste' album in my portfolio which you can find on the first screen of the portfolio page, ninth album along.

So today I decided to upload more photos from a recent trip to Guiyu, the 'e-waste processing capital of China', that I made as part of a field project for my MJ course at the University of Hong Kong's JMSC. I have put these photos at the back of the album, behind the photos from Guangxi Province and Hong Kong that I took in 2007 and 2008. I've posted a few of them here on the blog page, but if you want to see them in their full screen beauty just go to the Portfolio page, then click on the full screen icon which looks like this:

For those who are unfamilar, Guiyu is centred at the centre of the world's 'e-waste' processing industry. Illegal container loads of discarded electronic goods from the United States, Japan and Europe, find their way to China via the port of Hong Kong. Most of it usually ends up in Guiyu for 'recycling' at informal e-waste processing factories, of which there are around 3,000 in the town. Computers, printers, keyboards, CRT monitors, mobile phones, and other obsolete high tech junk can be seen in large piles strewn across Guiyu.

Much of the work is highly lethal. Migrant workers dip computer integrated circuit boards into vats of sodium cyanide to extract lead and precious metals, such as gold, silver and cadmium. This is by far the most poisonous and dangerous e-waste processing job of all, as most workers get sick from doing this job within a month. Many soon die. The waste solution can contain lead, dioxins or polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and is usually discarded by pouring the solution into the soil. It then leeches into the water table and the nearby Lianjiang River, leaving it severely poisoned.

The open burning of electronic items like printers and fax machines takes place on the banks of the river in Guiyu. This is so that metal components encased inside the items can be retrieved from their plastic shell for recycling. Obviously, this a less than ideal solution for the region's air quality.

The image quailty of some the photos is not great as I was shooting through a dirty windscreen most of the time (I never got out of the car is it's quite unsafe there), but I think the pictures speak for themselves.

With all the toxic lead and dioxins flowing into the tributaries of the Lianjiang River, which runs through Guiyu, I do wonder if the water in Hong Kong is safe to swim in. This is given the vast amounts of dioxins and heavy metals that flow into the sea at the river's estuary near Shantou, Guangdong Province, which must occasionally wash southwards towards Hong Kong on the ocean currents.

Basel Action Network seem to be the most active NGO on this issue. Check out their website here.

Hong Kong Cemetery

Thu, 16/07/2009 - 3:59pm

It was a 'slow news day' in Hong Kong, so I decided to pay Hong Kong Cemetery a visit.

I've gone past it many times, either going to or coming from the south side of Hong Kong island, as it is by the entrance of the Aberdeen tunnel in Happy Valley. The cemetery, with all it's decaying white marble statues of angels and overgrown banyan trees, has always exerted a fascination over me, in much the way the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris still does. Some parts of the cemetery are definitley a bit like Angkor Wat meets Père Lachaise.

The Cemetery is divided up along ethnic and sectarian lines. I visited the St Michael Catholic Cemetery and the Muslim Cemetery.

The lady in the office was struggling to read the swirly English handwriting in the dog-eared 1944 death register, so that she could transcribe it into Chinese, then type it into the computer, presumably to put the whole lot online. I helped her to decipher the word 'Giovanni' for her. I was surprised, given the Hurculean-sized job that she had been given, that she spoke no English at all.

The Muslim Cemetery around the corner was fascinating. Many people don't realise that Hong Kong has quite a sizable Muslim community, due to it's colonial past.

But I saw no snakes.

Martyr's Square & Holiday Inn, Beirut, Lebanon, 1992

Wed, 15/07/2009 - 7:43am

Today I added to the Middle East album in my portfolio a couple of black and white photographs that I took in Beirut's Martyr's Square in 1992 during my student days as a budding photojournalist.

The two images depict the carnage wrought by Israeli airstrikes, and were taken with my first camera an Olympus OM10, and shot on Ilford FP4 film.

I had to clamber up the bullet-riddled statue to get that funky angle, and felt somewhat uneasy making myself so exposed to random gunfire in the centre of that big empty square. This was because the shaky peace accords that ended the Lebanese Civil War had only been in place for just a year or two.

Another image in the same set shows the damage done the the Holiday Inn.

Accompanying me on that trip to Lebanon was my friend Brian Scudder, who nows live and works in Dubai.

We Buy Gallstones?

Tue, 14/07/2009 - 12:22pm

Today I was down in Sheung Wan, the dried seafood area of Hong Kong, to shoot a small feature on crocodile meat. On the way there I passed by a small shop on Wing Lok Street which had a sign in it's window advertising to buy gallstones, (a friend had wrongly tipped me off that they were out to buy gall bladders!). Apparently they are only after cow, not human gall stones, as I was assured by the friendly shop owner with a smile on his face and his arm draped around my shoulder. It seems that cow gall stones are the size of a golf ball and yellow in colour, but he didn't have any to show me as they were "all packed away". According to him, crushed and powdered cow gall stones are used in Chinese medicine to improve liver function.