Streets in Hong Kong themselves have a very unique outlook. But what adds to that uniqueness is how freely available reflections are throughout the city.
Here are 5 spots with the best mirrors hidden in the metropolis - they are totally organic, you just need to find them!
Happy shooting xx
Sham Shui Po
Photographed in Sham Shui Po, this is but one of the wonders that can be seen on a rainy day on Hong Kong streets. Having been paved in earlier decades, many pavements in Hong Kong have not been rebuilt ever since– they stayed the way they used to be after all these years of bearing the weight of the city. It is very common that roads have uneven surfaces, be it caused by missing bricks or slanting cement slopes. Whenever it rains, puddles come in all shapes and sizes– from tiny ones that are trapped between the double-yellow lines, to large ones that cover an area greater than a car.
It is always interesting to combine the dense architecture with reflections from a pool of water– it creates an extra sense of intensity to the already packed streets. Although the spectacle of endless blocks can only be photographed at a certain angle because of the laws of reflection (trying hard to refer back to the obscure memory of my physics studies as you may have noticed), it is generally the case that the closer you place your camera to the water, the more you see reflected in the puddle. Next time when you see a puddle, squat as low as you can so that your camera is barely above the water. Hopefully you will get a satisfactory reflection from the puddle!
Connaught Road Central
As the road sign suggests, this was photographed at Connaught Road Central, Hong Kong. To me, this capture was really a memorable one. Prior to finding this location, I always had the impression that Central is a bad place to snap photos because we all knew too well what it entailed– homogenous, metallic, dull skyscrapers one after another lined next to the Victoria Harbour. I regarded it as a boring place because it is lacking the number one quality that visually pleases me in a photo– colourfulness. Everything is in uninteresting, cold colours around central, at least during day time. I believed that I could not find one single spot that captivated the photographer’s eye.
But I was dead wrong, apparently.
To be fair, this shot was not easy to spot. It is not one of the spots that spread their arms so widely that you notice them from afar. Even when you are presented with it, there is nothing more than a mere sense of familiarity. It feels like you know where it is, but you can’t recall where exactly. I reckon that is because you have indeed seen a version of it from a passer-by’s perspective, which is too similar to forget, but too different to recognise.
It is neither physically easy to capture it. If you would make use of your imagination, the footbridge from which I got this shot has a reflective glass fence, slightly slanted inwards. I lifted myself onto the platform on the edge of the bridge, which left me in a physically strained position. Now here is the last and most important step: hover your body against the slanted glass, bring your camera so that it is outside the bridge, and wait for the perfect moment to come.
Instagram Pier
Yet another scene that is all too familiar to a photograph enthusiast in Hong Kong– photographed at the Instagram Pier, also known as ‘the mirror of the sky’. Because of a dent in the ground, rainwater is effectively collected at the pier forming a pool, which turns into a mirror that conveniently reflects the endless sky into the Earth.
People used to play all sorts of tricks– young ladies would come forward in groups posing for photos that signifies friendship; musicians would bring along their ukuleles and make music by the sea; fishermen would spread their nets along the coastline; and young men would perform jumps in various postures in the risky territory of the edge of the pier– all of which became the photographer’s affectionate subjects, together with their identical shadows on the water.
Until recently when the pier was renovated. The dent in the ground was filled properly so that the floor no longer holds water when it rains. Together with the dent, the mirror gradually faded away as time passes. Although there have been attempts by individual photographers trying to reconstruct the mirror by pouring water manually onto the ground, the mirror was notoriously smaller; it has completely lost its flare.
Despite the fact that the ‘mirror of the sky’, once a place that connected thousands of Hong Kong people, is falling away just like many of history’s empires and states, a small bunch still find immense joy in photographing other elements found at the pier, such as bamboo lumps, cargoes, graffiti etc. It may no longer be an accessible mirror to Hong Kong people; nevertheless, it is still worth a mention.
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