Shi Kang - Wall Street Journal

If you happen to look at the Wall Street Journal today, keep an eye out for a few images of mine that are online and in print. I recently had the opportunity to spend the day with Chinese author, Shi Kang, on a shoot for the Wall Street Journal. The story has been published today. Read it here.

Shi Kang is a fascinating character. He writes mostly about the disillusioned lives of young Chinese and is now a household name, due to the success of his novels. I spent the day with him photographing his daily life and chatted with him a lot about his writings and his thoughts about modern China. Watch the video below, by Angela Yeoh, to get a further glimpse into Shi Kang’s life…

- Alex Webb, Magnum Photos

There’s been a fair amount of talk recently about China’s clampdown on ‘western influences’. From the new censorship measures imposed on the number of foreign shows on television, to president Hu Jintao’s recent comments, “we must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of westernising and dividing China.” Strong talk.

Living in Beijing, it is pretty clear that western influences are well and truly ‘infiltrating’, in the cities at least. Western movie stars in billboard advertisements loom over shoppers, magazine racks are peppered with western sports stars’ faces and foreign movies are available to buy from hawkers outside most subway stations.

Talking to young urban Chinese people, it seems that there is hope for a better future. They are more aware of what’s happening in the world than many people think. They are aware of many of the restrictions placed upon them.

As this younger generation starts to move into positions where they can make things happen, things will hopefully change for the better. It might be a slow process though. The next 20-30 years are going to be interesting times. Stay tuned…

Time to edit…yesterday I posted an update en route to a shoot here in Beijing. It was a glorious afternoon in the capital and there was perfect light for the portraits.

Now, it’s the morning after the shoot and I find myself in the less glamorous side of photography which takes place mostly in front of the computer…editing.

I actually quite enjoy the editing process. The days of waiting for film to be processed are few and far between now, but I always like to wait a little time until I view my images from a shoot. That’s as long as the client doesn’t need them straight away!

I use Photomechanic to do all of my editing. It really is a great program which takes out a lot of the hassle of going through a sizeable number of images.

Now, I am waiting for the RAWs to convert to Jpegs. Looks like Photomechanic has breezed through them. Time to refine the edit and then head into Photoshop.

Stay tuned later this week for which images were selected for publication and find out who I was photographing!

Just to quickly prove that the skies in Beijing are not always grey and awful, this picture was taken a few minutes ago in the city’s downtown CBD. A ‘blue sky day’, for sure.

I’m heading to an afternoon portrait shoot. Got to run….

As regular readers of this blog will of noticed, I was in Hong Kong a couple of weeks ago, shooting around the city and speaking to students at Hong Kong university.

I was just going through some images from the trip and came across this image of Victoria harbor, taken from the 100th(!) floor of the International Commerce Center, the world’s 4th tallest building.

If you are in Hong Kong, this is by far the best place to get what can only be described as an utterly breathtaking view. The above image was taken in a (roughly) south-west direction from central HK, whilst the image below was taken in the opposite north-easterly direction.

It’s quite a view, whichever way you are looking!

- Ansel Adams

Learn more about the life and works of Ansel Adams in this excellent PBS documentary…

- Joel Meyerowitz

-Ernst Haas – Colour Photography

Here’s a really interesting interview between Aidan Sullivan of Getty Images and Ernst Haas’s son, Alex Haas. Well worth a listen…

Hong Kong residents and tourists walk past the famous Hong Kong skyline. 2008

This weekend I head south to the amazing city of Hong Kong! It’s my first serious travel of the year and I’m looking forward to getting away from the bitter cold of Beijing, for the warmer climes of the South China Sea.

I last went to Hong Kong in 2008 and was really blown away by the energy of the city and the mix of east and west. As a former British colony, it still has many British influences, which obviously make me feel at home being a Brit myself.

I shall be speaking at the University of Hong Kong during my time in the city, dropping in to give a presentation to some of the students there. I’ll also be shooting around the city, adding some images to the National Geographic Image Collection hopefully. So, I have a few days to wander around the city and try to capture that energy which captivated me last time. Will try to post updates during my week.

If you have visited Hong Kong before and have some reccomendations of places that MUST be photographed, please do let me know. Happy to hear suggestions!