Dreary days in Hong Kong.

A quick update for readers given that I’m on the road,  on a laptop and on a dodgy internet connection.  The title sums things up really.    I’m currently in Hong Kong, a lively, bustling city of about 7 million people,  a city I haven’t visited for many years. Sadly this is probably not the best time of year weather-wise to be here.  Overcast skies,  persistent drizzling rain and unexpectedly low temperatures.   Consequently,  so far on this trip, I’ve not seen as much as I would like.

Here are a few (of the few) photos that I’ve taken so far.  Given that these have been processed on the fly,  on the laptop,  I’ll present them just as an initial impression.  The mood and the subject matter has been dictated by the conditions and maybe by my resulting mood!

Above,  what might be described as a “fisherman” shot.   I saw the colourful background and lay in wait for someone or something to walk through the frame.    Careful hand-holding to maintain the background but a slow enough shutter speed to allow some movement in the anonymous pedestrian.

There are some occasions when you see something and immediately just lift the camera and click.  This was such an instance.   I saw the caricature umbrella,  complete with ears,  and just knew I had to get a shot.   The image above is actually a two shot composite,  the two frames being captured in burst mode.    In one frame the left side background was satisfying but not the right side.  In the other frame, the opposite was true.

Although a composite,  it is nonetheless a realistic depiction of what was there at the time.  As I’ve written on many occasions,  I’ve no qualms about compositing images where necessary,  however, I always openly acknowledge the process.

An abstract shot,  no sunny skies but plenty of reflections in puddles and on wet pavements.   I processed this shot both in colour,  which I may post at a later time,  and in toned monochrome as here.   My processing options on the laptop are limited as I previously pointed out.  In this case, I simply went with one of Lightroom’s default toning presets.

What appears to be a fairly straight forward photo actually posed a few questions in processing.   How do I present this image in such a way as to convey the feeling of the location and conditions at that time?    The mood of the image may seem rather “down”,  and probably won’t feature among anyone’s favourites,  but that was how I found it and interpreted it.

Website Statistics.

As regular readers will recall,  I became disenchanted with Google Analytics some time ago and actually abandoned that system as it was thoroughly compromised by spamming activities.   Following that,  I chose to install Clicky Web Analytics as an alternative.  It’s been an interesting experiment.

During the first couple of months, my visitor stats went through the floor,  not entirely unexpected as I recognized that the overwhelming majority of my “visits” as recorded by GA were,  of course,  totally fictitious!   What has been perplexing however has been a recent,  inexplicable,  spike in visitor numbers as reported by Clicky.    If the numbers are to be believed,  visitors numbers are up by about 1000% in the last couple of weeks!    Given that there has been virtually no commenting activity during the same period,  I can’t help but be suspicious!      Ho hum….  ~KD.

Update:   These images are part of the Hong Kong image gallery.  ~KD.