吉姆 JIM HOFMAN | Photography Faces & places in China
Old People
Old Village Near Yangjiang
So, we went to an “old village” near Yangjiang yesterday. When someone tells you that you’re going to an “old village” in China it can mean several things. It could be a top-of-the-line preserved tourist village complete with gift shops – or – it could be an old village where people live. Yesterday’s village was the later, which I enjoyed.
Yangjiang Streets V2
I’m back for my second tour of Yangjiang on this trip and the weather improved a lot. There are actually shadows in these photos!
Qingxi Streets
Yet another weekend layover in Qingxi gave me some time at the central market for street photos. A very photogenic place if you can handle the smells.
Yangjiang Streets V1
I’m making two passes through Yangjiang on this trip. These are photos from pass number one.
Faces & Places in China – The Video
I’ve compiled the “Greatest Hits of 2013” into a five minute video along with some pithy commentary.
Yangjiang Street Photos
Everytime I come to Yangjiang I take a very long walk through the city. The same path each time. Each time I see totally different sites and people. It’s never the same twice.
Another Hong Kong Jet Lag Photo Walk
I’ll have to admit – I don’t remember taking these photos. I landed at HKG at 10PM. Got to my hotel in Kowloon at midnight. Slept for about 4 hours, then woke up and walked down to the harbor to take some early morning photos.
Creep Photography?
There’s probably a very fine line between street photography and creep photography.
Street Photos – Qingxi
Photographers are notorious for being poor judges of their own work. Selecting good from bad can be torture. What constitutes a good image is different for different people.
Hong Kong at 5AM
Jet lag can be a wonderful thing if your plan is to get some VERY early pre-sunrise street photos. It was a steamy morning wandering around the edge of the harbor observing and photographing the world waking up (and sleeping).
Hazy Hong Kong
Holy crap, there was a ton of smog on this trip. There was a dense cloud hanging over my stops in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. While I was in China the pollution in Beijing was off the charts.
Yangjiang Kite Festival – People
I estimate there were probably 5,000 people at the annual Yangjiang Kite Festival and after walking around the place for three hours I concluded I was the only non-Chinese person there. This made me a bit of a freak that earned me a 10 minute photo session with half of the Chinese school girls attending.
Temple Parade
Sometimes you have to go out and find great shots and sometimes the great shots find you. We were driving back to a factory after lunch and a few blocks from our destination we got jammed-up by a parade on the way to the village temple.
Art in the Chaos
Street photography is like a scavenger hunt. Sometimes you’re rewarded with the gift of an amazing image. A small slice of the temporal continuum is captured by a few million pixels. Someone’s ordinary life frozen in time for others to see. They may not consider that particular moment precious, but when removed from the context of their everyday existence it can become special. Perhaps art?
Ancient Stone Village
I had to kill a day between meetings so a group of us went to a couple tourist spots near Ninghai. One of them was an “ancient stone village” that was about 700 years old. It was an actual living village and not a museum.
Zhujiajiao
I went to Zhujiajiao today. It’s a water town on the outskirts of Shanghai that was established about 1,700 years ago. It’s a tourist village these days, full of restaurants & shops. It was nice to escape the big city…
Shanghai I
Shanghai is huge. REALLY huge (23 million people). It’s ten times the size of Chicago. And this week is was hot. REALLY hot. There were lots of umbrellas on the streets to make-your-own-shade.
Nanjing
I just spent a couple days in Nanjing, which is a few hours west of Shanghai. It was my first trip there. I always seem to visit the same manufacturing hubs in China and it was nice to go somewhere new.
Market Sights
Sights from a couple market places in China (Qingxi + Yangjiang). I love to photograph these places. Lots of interesting sensory inputs: sights, sounds, smells, people, activities.
Sunday in the Park
While I was waiting for a late afternoon meeting with a factory representative I decided to kill some time at a local park in ChangAn. I sat at various benches for about 3 hours taking photos and meeting people.
Saturday Afternoon in the Village
I took these shots on a cool January afternoon on the weekend before the Chinese New Year holiday began. The overcast weather produced some nice flat outdoor lighting. The lighting in the meat market was a different story.
