Today’s photo is of the Lippo Center and the Admiralty Center Tower – Lippo Center Tower 2, to be precise – on Hong Kong island.
I’m guessing I walked along Connaught Road to Cotton Tree Drive to get from Exchange Square to the location of today’s photo, taken from Cotton Tree Drive outside Fairmont House and looking in an easterly direction.
As with my shot of the Exchange Square Towers 1 and 2, I’ve tightly framed today’s shot with a telephoto. This also serves to compress the distance and make the Admiralty tower on the left appear closer to the Lippo Center Tower 2 than it really is.
The Lippo Center was called the Bond Center back in 1989 when I took this photo but when Alan Bond’s Bond Corporation imploded in 1992 with debts of 1.8 billion Australian dollars they were bought by the Indonesian Lippo corporation. Bond’s loss was Lippo’s gain. The two towers were completed in 1988 – just the year before I took this photo. They were designed by American architect Paul Rudolph who sought to break up the straight lines of the traditional skyscraper with boxy clusters of protruding windows.
Reflected in the blue glass windows of both the Admiralty Center Tower and the Lippo Center Tower 2 is the golden colored Far East Finance Center Tower.
 
Topaz B&W Effects 2.1
As I mentioned in a post yesterday, an updated version of Topaz Labs B&W Effects will be released shortly and I’ve been working with a pre-release edition. Below is a rendition of the Lippo Center and Admiralty photo above in black and white, processed in Topaz B&W Effects 2.1.
With a little more time to explore the features of this new version I’m really liking the possibilities it opens up. I usually scroll through a bunch of the presets to find one I like to start from and then hop over to the modifying control to further play with the image. There’s a million-and-one ways to render an image in black and white. Below is one version I settled on for today’s image.
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Topaz Labs are gearing up to release Topaz B&W Effects 2.1 in the very near future and I’ve been fortunate enough to get an evaluation copy.
I’ll be writing a review in the next day or so but decided to post an image I processed earlier today while giving the plugin my first spin.
If you’ve already used Topaz B&W Effects then the panels will be immediately familiar to you so you can dive right in without having to relearn everything. The major advance in this new version is a zone viewing mode that gives 11 zones from black to white so you can check the tonal range and make any adjustments you see fit.
You’ll also love it if you work in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, or Chinese since these languages are going to be supported!
Best of all, it’ll be a free upgrade if you already have B&W Effects. And if you don’t you can hit my Topaz Ad in my sidebar or below the photo or this link here and use the coupon code rdavisphoto for a 15% discount. Note, since Topaz B&W Effects 2.1 is not yet released you won’t find it on the products page yet, but you can buy B&W Effects now and get the free upgrade to version 2.1 in the near future.
I was using it as a plugin to Photoshop for the conversion below, but it’s also a plugin for Lightroom (versions 2 – 4), Aperture (versions 2 and 3) and even iPhoto via the free Topaz Fusion Express add-on or photoFXlab. By the way, if you don’t have any of these programs, photoFXlab is a host program that allows you to edit your photos and apply any of the Topaz tools to your photos without needing Photoshop, Lightroom or Aperture!
I Just applied one of the 150 presets and added a red filter to my Exchange Square Block 1 and 2 image posted earlier today to get the image below.
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At some point I took a ferry from Kowloon to Hong Kong island to wander among the high-rises near the waterfront and found myself in Exchange Square.
Here you’ll find the imaginatively named Exchange Square Block 1 and Exchange Square Block 2. Brilliant! (to quote a Guinness Ad).
As one might guess from the name, this site houses the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and an accoutrement of banks, law firms and other ne’er-do-wells.
I’m pretty sure this is a view to the south-westish which puts Block 1 on the left and Block 2 on the right. I was struck by the symmetry of the buildings. Seeking to do something different than capturing both buildings in their entirety with the perennial perspective problem, I chose instead to use a telephoto and crop in more tightly. I did need to use the perspective tool in Lightroom 4 to get the parallel lines but my original slide wasn’t off by much.
The reflection of the one building in the other provides the cross hatching and the richer blue tones. If you look in the lower right edge you can see the round windows of the neighboring Jardine Building reflected in the glass of Block 2 – another tell that this is a south-westish view.
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In the blurb on yesterday’s photo I mentioned how the serene scene of a foggy Victoria Harbour was misleading because of the cacophony of commerce that was coming from behind me.
I felt myself drawn to explore the streets of Tsim Sha Tsui so I turned my back on the harbor and headed north up Nathan Road. Every street was bustling, despite the light drizzle. Had it been dark I might have thought I’d stepped into the world of Blade Runner!
I think the scene below was taken on one of the streets west of Nathan Road and south of Kowloon Park but there’s no particular landmark that allows me to place it.
I only have three images from this stroll – I think because of the rain I kept my camera in it’s bag most of the time. Looking at these images now I can’t believe I wasted such a golden opportunity. I was in a place where film was cheap and plentiful, I could easily have replace my camera or even traded up but chose instead not to use it.
I’ve seen so many pieces over the years about whether you should photograph or you should you experience the event. At 50, looking back, I recommend you photograph. When you photograph you are trying to capture the experience and so I believe you are more engaged in the experience than if you are simply spectating. Just looking at these old photos of mine unlocks and release memories for me. They do the same for others I was with at the time as well. Without the photo to unlock the memory it would just stay there, like the magazine at the bottom of the pile, slowly fading from view as new material is heaped on top until it becomes invisible, unwanted, and is scooped up and dumped in the recycle bin, gone forever.
And while the trend today is for ever more video, I don’t find I connect with video so well. I find I just can’t sit there and watch it. I want to speed through some pieces and freeze other pieces. With photos the viewer gets to choose when to move on or how long to linger.
That captured split second of time, forever frozen, allows all sorts of mental connections to me made, emotions to well up and subside in a way I find that the video clip just doesn’t permit. With video, the video is in control of the pace. With a photograph, the pace is controlled by the viewer. I can’t count the times I’ve flicked through my wedding albums but I know I’ve only watched my wedding video exactly one time, and even then I was pushing the fast forward button frequently.
And in that way, although life is constant motion, I think a photograph can better capture life than a video can in a lot of situations.
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After a few days on the sun drenched beach at Kota Kinabalu, I wasn’t really prepared for a foggy day in Hong Kong.
This was back Kai Tak was the international airport of Hong Kong and Chek Lap Kok was still a dream. I always enjoyed the landing on runway 13 at Kai Tak but I’ve a feeling the pilots might have been stressed, first with maneuvering onto the glide path and them with stopping in time. I still recall the high rise building with red and white checkerboard markings to make them obvious to the pilots.
The summit of Mount Kinabalu had been cold but dry. My first day in Hong Kong was cold and wet, but I resolved to make the most of it, eating dim sum from a hole-in-the wall cafe and strolling along Tsim Sha Tsui and Salisbury Road, at the southern end of Kowloon, overlooking Victoria Harbour.
The photo below is from somewhere on the Kowloon waterfront near Salisbury Garden looking across Victoria Harbour to the island. The high rises across the harbour stand like ghostly sentinels is a serene scene. A nearly empty tour boat plies its way across the harbour while a sampan travels in the opposite direction. But that was all an illusion. In truth I was being buffeted by the cacophony of commerce from the streets to the north of me.
I titled this shot ‘Blackfin Sundowners’ for somewhat obvious reasons – the prominent Blackfin on the sail of the largest boat and the fact that the sun is setting.
This appears to be the last photo I shot before leaving Kota Kinabalu for Hong Kong. It represent such a change of pace from just a two days earlier when I was watching the sunset from 40 miles away from the resthouse at Laban Rata.
I’ve no idea how far these folk sailed, if they ever sailed at all. It just appears so relaxing, sails stowed, mirror-calm waters, gin and tonics (hopefully), good friends, good conversations, worries packed away for another day.
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I believe I took the photo posted today of three school girls heading home somewhere near Kota Kinabalu but I’m having doubts.
From the shadows it’s clearly close to sunset as these thee girls pick their way along the shoreline at the base of the cliff. I’m left wondering if this was the normal route or just a more adventurous one. It would appear to be close to high tide so I’ guessing this route saves the girls a hike over the hill to whatever lies on the far side.
When I look at the old photos – mine and others – I’m left wondering what happened to these people. They’re probably in their early to mid-thirties as I write the post and may well have children of their own…
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Following from yesterday’s photo, here’s another taken around the same time a little further along the shore of other fishermen still waiting for the right conditions to launch and cast their nets.
The nets look quite large rolled up and stowed on the canoes. That leads me to wonder hoe easy they are to cast and recover. Since they take up most of the canoe they don’t seem to leave much space for the catch of the day suggesting that a lot of effort has to be expended for a relatively small return.
Although the distance here is compressed through the use of a telephoto lens, the relatively narrow stretch of water leaves me thinking the fishermen were waiting on some current or tidal effect as the best time to deploy their nets to catch the most fish.
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In today’s photo, two fishermen play the waiting game shortly after sunrise somewhere near Kota Kinabalu.
I’ve no idea what they were waiting for – maybe for the tide to turn or the breeze to die down or something.
It seems somewhat idyllic, just sitting on a boat moving gently with the swell, just passing the day. I’ve no photo of them actually fishing so I guess I moved on before whatever event they were waiting on occurred. My guess is that these two fishermen are enjoying the calm before the storm, so to speak. I’m sure that once it was time to cast their nets they’d be pretty busy. I also suspect it was a pretty challenging way to earn a living.
Yes, if you teach a man to fish he can feed himself for life (or until the waters are fished out) but I doubt these guys were ever going to have enough spare cash to spend the night in the hotel I was staying at. And maybe they’d never want to but I believe people generally prefer more to less and easier to harder, all other things being equal.
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013
I took this photo I’ve titled Faulty Shoreline somewhere near the the Shangri-La’s Tanjung Aru Resort and Spa in Kota Kinabalu but I can’t actually place it on the map.
It’s kind of nerdy but I’m channeling my inner geologist. That and my son has just completed a sixth grade science unit on faults and folds.
On the left is a classic reverse fault where the hanging wall to the right has pushed up relative to the foot wall on the left. There are other faults visible in the cliff wall as you pan to the right across the photo. Clearly the earth moved quite a bit here at some time in the past.
The dip of the layers coupled with the wave erosion has left a very rough floor. This photo was taken at low tide. It’s certainly not somewhere you would want to wander in bare feet. The different relative hardness of the sedimentary layers has led to different erosion rates and you can easily follow the rock layers from the cliff through the exposed sea floor.
From the chilly start to the day watching the sun rise from the summit of Mount Kinabalu at an altitude of 13,435 ft (4,095 m) to watching the sunset at sea level about 12 hours later, that was quite a change of pace. I felt I’d truly deserved my few nights of luxury at the resort and my memory of the previous night in a dorm in the Laban Rata resthouse quickly receded from my consciousness.
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by Richard Davis
[...] Royal Viking Sun was built in 1988, one year earlier, so like the Lippo Center Towers and the Bank of China Tower, she was essentially brand new at the time I took this [...]