Dear Vicky: Dragon, Moon And Fire
And My Doomed Attempt at Becoming A Photographer
Happy Mid-Autumn Day, everyone!
Last Saturday, my wife and I took our son to a nearby park. On our way back, we stopped at a Starbucks. The coffee machine broke, so the Starbucks couldn’t serve any coffee drink. The staff there didn’t seem to see the ridiculousness of the situation. Anyway.
Today is the mid-autumn festival, the 15th day of the eighth month on the lunar calendar. It is one of the three most important festivals in Chinese culture, along with the dragon boat festival and the spring festival, aka the lunar new year. There are many ways to celebrate the festival, most of which revolves around eating. Mooncakes are to be eaten by all. And in Hong Kong, Mid-Autumn is celebrated with fire dragon dances.
I went to the fire dragon dance one year. It is an insanely busy, sensory overload kind of event. I was there to photograph the event for an online magazine in Hong Kong. It was my first ever paid photography work, the beginning of a doomed journey for me to make it in the world of freelance photographers.
So today, I thought, it’d be a fitting time to post the photos I shot over three nights of the fire dragon dance from two different locations on Hong Kong Island: Tai Hang, an area just outside our dear Vicky Park in Causeway Bay, and Pok Fu Lam village on the western end of the island. The Tai Hang event was the bigger of the two, attended by many. Roads were blocked and it felt like half of Hong Kong’s population crammed into just a few narrow streets, a crazy thing to contemplate in the already densely populated Hong Kong. The one in Pok Fu Lam was smaller in scale, but spectators got to participate more, which was fun.
The events took place at night, which means there was almost no light to speak of. I shot all photos at ISO 3200, which I almost never use unless absolutely necessary. Still, most of the photos were shot at slower shutter speeds between 1/10 and 1/30 seconds. So don’t blame me for blurry photos. Not that the photos were good otherwise, but don’t blame me for the slow shutters.
Sit back, and relax coz this is gonna be a long one.
I forgot to mention, in case you haven’t noticed, the fire came from thousands of incense sticks.
Day 2 at Pok Fu Lam Village.
Back in Tai Hang for the final day.
Throwing the remnants of the dragon into the harbour marked the end of this days-long extravaganza. If there’s one thing you take away from this post-given you’ve come this far-, it’s that it’s crazy. The amount of fire, smoke, action, and the crowd, every aspect of it is crazy. I am not a big fan of crowds, which made this whole thing less enjoyable. But now, I kinda miss the craziness.
If you are still here, why? And then thank you for coming along down this memory lane with me. Happy mooncake day! Go look at the moon! It’s supposed to be spectacular. Till we meet again!
As I've never seen photos of this celebration before, I look at the photos not knowing about possible angles and if this photo report has journalistic value; I can only look at the images themselves. Firstly, there's some motion blur (that I think nobody will blame you for) that works well in some images, like the one with the caption "blast", and less in others. If you would have wanted to freeze motion, you'd have chosen a higher ISO and shutter speed, but you didn't. The liveliness of celebrations can be captured in different ways, and (some) motion blur is one of the most effective in my view. There are some interesting portraits and detail shots (like the one with the firecrackers on the street) and even some interesting compositions, which is rarely easy when photographing a festival or any other live event with lots of people around. The only issue that one could argue is the exclusive use of b&w; some of these photos could possibly look better in color, but that is an artistic choice that is up to the photographer, unless you agreed to produce color images.
Bring out the mooncakes! Great series! I think my favourite is the little lantern girl! However, you captured the intensity of it all so well. I can smell the incense...