I took these photos in June and August of 2018. A number of them were taken after I went to an opening night event for an exhibition of photos by one of my faviourite photographers Michael Kenna, who was also at the opening for a Q&A. I arrived at Blue Lotus Gallery’s location in Chai Wan, on the very Eastern end of Hong Kong, on time for when the event was starting only to find out that the event and exhibition wasn’t there — but rather it was a pop up in Central, at the other end of the island. Thankfully there was someone from the gallery still there to tell me where I should be, and she let me ride in her taxi to the exhibition.

I arrived after the Q&A had finished so I went up to Kenna for a quick chat — I don’t remember exactly what was said, but I do remember that he patiently listened to me nervously ramble mostly about my own photography, and I found out that he’d also found that it was partiucularly hard to get your film hand checked at airports in South Korea. After having a good look at the exhibition, I headed out into the city feeling quite inspired and took some of the above photos.

I bought a mini tripod while I was in Hong Kong, but only after I’d taken most of these photos so for those I had to improvise ways to stabalise the camera well enough for a long exposure. I had to find walls or sometimes bins on which I could rest my camera, using my rucksack to angle the camera correctly. The mini tripod I bought didn’t come with a tripod head, so even once I had that it was still awkward.

Every photo in the series was shot on my Hasselblad 500C/M with either a 60mm f/3.5 CF or 150mm f/4 CF lens using Ilford HP5+ shot at ISO 800 and developed in Ilfotec HC 1:49 for 11 minutes. I scanned them with an Epson V800 and edited them in darktable.