Summer diaries Part 6.4: Street photography in China Town

Today I went for breakfast with AikBeng Chia (ABC) in Little India, where he recently shot a photo book (about Little India) at night , solely using his iPhone and afterwards I joined a group of street photographers from Singapore for some street shooting in China Town and some other areas.

First of all, I owe ABC and Raymond Tanhueco, Allan Portilla, Joel Domingo, Paul P. Ngalanco, Juan Brujo, Mailman Logbook, Rhoel Dilag, William Henry Tejada Reodica (I hope I did not forget anybody!) a big thank you for being so accommodating and letting me tag along. I had a great time today. So: thank you guys – whenever you are in the Atlanta area, be sure to ping me and let me return the favor. Make sure to check out their work – it is truly amazing and very inspiring – and look out for them, I am sure there is more to come!

So I met with ABC around 10 in Little India and we chatted about street photograhy, gear, and the recent BBC documentary of Vivian Maier’s work and our take on it. We also briefly talked about his photo book “Tonight The Streets Are Ours” of Little India at night. What is astonishing about it is that it was taken solely with an iPhone – but let’s not make it about the gear: it is about everything else but gear. Just check out the composition and the moments captured – you can see a preview here as well as in Eric Kim’s recent interview with ABC.

While having breakfast we met some of his friends, Raymond Tanhueco, Allan Portilla, Joel Domingo, Paul P. Ngalanco, Juan Brujo, Mailman Logbook, Rhoel Dilag, William Henry Tejada Reodica, being out doing some street photography and I joined them for the better part of the morning until 1pm, seeing and shooting the streets of Singapore in places that I would probably not ended by myself – some of the shots you will see below. We went through a couple of areas including China Town and I got a pretty good feel for the other Singapore, that is usually non-existent when people talk about it.

When it comes to street shooting, I am somewhat of a hit-and-run shooter and sacrifice my geometric OCDness which I usually totally surrender to for the sake of getting the moment right. I guess I can only do very fast or very slow with little degree of moderation in between. I used my coolpix A for which I created a street shooting preset turning the nikon into a very capable machine – my leica is already on its way back to the US to protect it from the harsh and insecure conditions on the upcoming parts of my travel. The nikon has a fixed 28mm (equivalent) lens and at 28mm you have to be really close (about 1.5 meters). You are effectively right in the middle of the scene… Lots of fun! TSJ