Hong Kong in March 1993: A Day in Kowloon and Hong Kong Island
On March 15, 1993, I discovered Hong Kong during a long stopover before continuing to Australia. I had just one day to explore Kowloon and then Hong Kong Island, and to test a Canon TS-E 24mm that I had borrowed from Canon Pro.
A day in Hong Kong before continuing to Australia
On Monday, March 15, 1993, I stopped over in Hong Kong on my way to Australia. I was heading to Surfers Paradise, on Australia’s east coast, to cover Nigel Mansell’s first IndyCar race after winning the Formula 1 World Championship in 1992.
My stopover was originally supposed to last only two or three hours. I had asked the travel agency to change my itinerary so that I would arrive early in the morning and leave in the evening, giving me a full day to go into the city.
I had already been to Australia a few months earlier, to Perth in September 1992 for the WRC Rally Australia, but Hong Kong was my first destination in Asia.
The soundtrack to this trip was Life 'N Perspectives Of A Genuine Crossover by Urban Dance Squad.
From Kai Tak Airport to Kowloon
I remember taking a bus from Kai Tak Airport. Someone had advised me to go to Kowloon and, without any particular plan, I headed in that direction.
The photographs now make it possible to reconstruct the beginning of my route fairly accurately. I arrived in Tsim Sha Tsui, on the edge of Victoria Harbour, near the Star Ferry terminal.
I first walked along the waterfront, facing the buildings of Hong Kong Island, which appeared through a slightly hazy atmosphere. I then passed the Hong Kong Cultural Centre and the Hong Kong Museum of Art.
Hong Kong Museum of Art in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, March 15, 1993 - Photo © Sebastien Desnoulez
Nearby, I also photographed The Flying Frenchman, César’s monumental sculpture installed in front of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre.
The highly geometric architecture of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre and the Hong Kong Museum of Art already provided interesting subjects to photograph before crossing the harbour to Hong Kong Island.
The Star Ferry to Hong Kong Island
After photographing the area around the museum and the Kowloon waterfront, I went to the Star Ferry terminal to cross Victoria Harbour.
Star Ferry in front of the Hong Kong Island skyline, photographed from Kowloon in March 1993 - Photo © Sebastien Desnoulez
It only took a few minutes to travel from Tsim Sha Tsui to Central. Curiously, I cannot find any photographs taken during the crossing itself. The series resumes once I had reached Hong Kong Island.
Testing the Canon TS-E 24mm in Hong Kong
I had borrowed a Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L from Canon Pro so that I could use this day in Hong Kong to test the lens in a particularly vertical city.
It was the first time I had used a shift lens. The idea was precisely to photograph buildings without the usual low-angle perspective, particularly in the narrow streets of Hong Kong Island.
By shifting the lens upwards while keeping the camera body vertical, it was possible to include more of a building in the frame without tilting the camera and therefore without introducing the usual convergence of vertical lines.
The limitations of handheld shift photography
Some of the photographs also show the practical limitations of using a shift lens handheld, particularly when shooting film.
In the photograph below, I probably exaggerated the upward shift and then tilted the camera slightly downwards to obtain the framing I wanted. This combination produced the opposite effect of a low-angle shot: the verticals diverge towards the top of the frame, giving the image a high-angle perspective.
Excessive upward shift compensated for by tilting the camera slightly downwards, producing a high-angle effect - Hong Kong, March 1993 - Photo © Sebastien Desnoulez
In another image, the shift appears to have been pushed very far. The upper part of the photograph shows significant vignetting, probably caused by using the outer edge of the lens’s image circle.
A large amount of shift causes significant darkening in the upper part of the image - Hong Kong, March 1993 - Photo © Sebastien Desnoulez
When working handheld, I had to keep the camera in the correct position, adjust the shift and compose the image in the viewfinder at the same time. With film photography, there was no screen or electronic level to check the result immediately after taking the picture. These two photographs give a good idea of the care required to use this type of lens quickly and without a tripod.
The narrow streets of Sheung Wan
I particularly remember walking through the streets of Central and Sheung Wan, especially around Queen Street and Ko Shing Street.
The photographs show shops selling dried products: fish, shellfish, plants, but also snakes and various items whose exact nature I could not always identify.
Dried snakes for sale in a shop on Hong Kong Island, March 1993 - Photo © Sebastien Desnoulez
The goods were displayed in baskets, hung outside the shops or stacked right out onto the pavements.
Shops and street stalls on Hong Kong Island in March 1993 - Photo © Sebastien Desnoulez
Within just a few streets, the modern buildings lining the main roads gave way to passages and back streets that were much less well maintained.
A back street on Hong Kong Island, just a short distance from the main roads, March 1993 - Photo © Sebastien Desnoulez
Photographing Hong Kong from the trams
I then took one or two trams to continue exploring Hong Kong Island.
The double-decker trams made it possible to observe and photograph the streets from the upper deck. Some photographs were taken directly from the tram, while others were made at street level during my various stops.
Traffic, trams and the accumulation of signs in the streets of Hong Kong Island in March 1993 - Photo © Sebastien Desnoulez
Signs already covered much of the building façades, and the trams themselves were also used as advertising space. Many were completely decorated in an advertiser’s colours, adding even more colour to the streets.
Hong Kong trams were often completely wrapped in an advertiser’s colours - March 1993 - Photo © Sebastien Desnoulez
The traffic, tightly packed buildings and accumulation of signs created a particularly dense urban landscape. The photographs also provide a glimpse of Hong Kong’s public transport and vehicle fleet in the early 1990s.
The slides were digitized using a Nikon Z8. The latitude of the RAW files would now make it possible to brighten the shadows considerably, adjust the contrast or neutralize some colour casts. However, I chose to keep the rendering fairly close to the original Fujichrome RDP 100 slides, retaining their contrast and colour casts rather than trying to make them look like contemporary digital images.
Click on the photos below to view them full screen.
All the photos displayed on this website are copyright protected © Sebastien Desnoulez. No use is permitted without the author's written authorization. Legal notice
Hong Kong in 1993
I only spent a few hours in the city, but I have good memories of it. I also took my first photographs in Asia there and discovered firsthand both the possibilities and some of the limitations of the Canon TS-E 24mm.
After New York, which I had discovered and photographed in 1985, I found another very dense, lively and sometimes slightly dirty city. The atmosphere was very different, however, and I found Hong Kong friendly and fairly easy to explore despite having made no preparations for the stopover.
At the end of the day, I returned to the airport, where I had dinner in a restaurant on one of the upper floors of the terminal before taking my flight to Brisbane.
The following day, March 16, I was in Surfers Paradise, where I remained until March 21 for the IndyCar race assignment.
About the author
Sebastien Desnoulez is a photographer, author and image maker based in Paris. His work spans architectural photography, landscape photography and travel photography, with particular attention to composition, lines, light, blur and visual accidents. Trained in photography in the mid-1980s, he covered Formula 1 and reported from around the world before developing a fine art photography practice built around the tension between graphic rigour and visual instability. He also shares his technical experience through practical articles for passionate photographers, drawing on a strong visual culture acquired in both film and digital photography.
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