Our Forests The Pylons of High Tension Wires

Street level: Slightly more interesting...

After my trip around Bristol, and taking photos of random, yet eye catching graffiti, I have started paying way more attention to little things you tend to see about cities. In Shanghai it's usually the bicycles that always stick out in my mind, particularly as there isn't a whole lot of street art. Not that there isn't, it's usually just a little harder to see so much. But it's not only that; I think it is also the way you see certain things, juxtaposed to others. There is a sign on a wall I used to walk past fairly regularly in Oxford saying: 

Bill Stickers 

Will Be 

Prosecuted 

and underneath someone has scrawled 'Bill Stickers is innocent'. It's just one of those things that makes you smile. Unfortunately I never got round to getting a photo of it, but you can see it here. 

I like things like this. It was written on to the window of a bar/club thing that I walked past. And since I love cities, I'm a bit of a sucker for things like this.

I'm annoyed that this is slightly out of focus, but never mind. I think they are cooking oil and paint canisters, but I honestly have no idea.

Rock on.

With all the buildings, and rather confined space, you get these pretty cool looking short alleys. The fisheye helps I guess.

Same goes for this one really, although, I like this one a little more because of the way the scene is busy just in one corner, but you still get the light coming down across the wall.

I just like the colours here. And the lines look like they might not be parallel.

I always notice these, and I guess that's the point. It's hardly advertising, or maybe it is, and I must confess I always like to read them. This lamp post is at the bottom of a steep set of stairs so you end up fairly close to it, and at eye level.

No Bills, but drawing on the walls is ok obviously.

Cheerio.

Cityscape

When I went to Hong Kong, I wasn't sure what to expect from a photographic aspect. Obviously there are loads to see in cities, so there wasn't going to be a lack of things, but I just not sure. I have been there before, indeed lived there briefly yonks ago, but I wasn't entirely sure after a 13 year absence. I had a very good time whilst I was there either way. I pretty much wandered around for 4 days with two cameras slung around my neck and just kind of had a nose around. 

I only really have one other photo from a city in this kind of way and that was from New York, where I basically took one picture of buildings at funny angles. Here I was trying to do the same kind of thing.

Hong Kong island is a bit hilly (really hilly in fact), and you can kind of get a sense of the gradient by the distance of the people in the left hand side of this picture, but what I was more interested in is the bamboo on the right. I love the fact that you will always see bamboo on construction.

Cookie cutter concrete jungle. 

Right, this is the observation platform on Victoria Peak. The picture's a little grainy, and even though it is pretty empty as a photo, but I was pretty fortunate to get the plane in it.

All the land in the bottom is reclaimed land. 

Hong Kong will be great when they're finished building it.

The alleys are pretty cool to use a fish eye lens on. Just to get the street level and the tops of buildings in one shot. You get a much better idea of the scale of things.

So I've probably ripped off loads of other photos here, but whatever.

Whoever lives here is really bloody lucky. The views are great. Not that you can tell from the picture, but I was on the Peak, looking down, and you get a great view of Kowloon.

This view in fact...