12.14.2009

This Old Home (in the city)

"Busy" is an understatement when it comes to describing my life right now. I don't have time to do the fashion-oriented shoots at the moment, but there are other topics of conversation. I took hundreds of pictures when I was in Hong Kong. What good are those pictures if they're not shared? Here's another installment in the series; hope you'll enjoy it.

Because Hong Kong is such a tiny place, there is nowhere to expand but up. Particularly with public housing, older buildings get torn down, replaced by even taller residential towers. Even though the newer buildings are gleaming and modern, I do miss the character and soul of the older buildings.

During my trip, I got to see a mix urban architecture. Here's a selection of pictures of residential buildings that fascinated me, a comparison of the old and new:

Urban sprawl


Pastel trim



The Makeover (you just don't see this age-old setup of bamboo scaffolding in the U.S.)


Junior Mints


Not to Scale


Mean Green


Fading away
[Edit: Oops...after zooming up close and seeing some of the signs, I just realized that these might be light manufacturing units. I thought they looked residential because the layout resembles American apartment complexes.]








[Edit: As an aside, the car in the third picture has one of those incredibly expensive and hard to get license plates that allow the car to be driven around both in Hong Kong and in Mainland China; such plates are primarily for people who do business on both sides of the border, so getting through customs won't be such a pain. Even though it's now the same country, it isn't like the U.S., where it's OK for the short term to drive with California plates into other states, and vice versa, without going through special procedures.

Oh, the things I discover by zooming up close...I didn't even spot these little things when I was actually there, because it was too far away for me to see the details.]

A bit Gaudi


Out to Dry

5 comments:

vc said...

Good pictures, what camera did you use. Did you ever buy that camera you wanted? I am still working on my pix from SF. Hope you check them out when I post them.

ThatBeeGirl said...

love the shots of all the high rises. i'd love to visit HK at some point.

Sales Rack Raider said...

CC--Thanks! I never did get a chance to get a DSLR. I still use a Canon PowerShot A570IS, which is a few years old but does the trick. The manual mode controls are really awesome for a point-and-shoot type of camera.

Bee--Thanks. These are just the residential buildings. I shot some commercial/industrial buildings too; they deserve a separate post later on.

Jenny said...

i love your pics !
xoxo from France

Wholesale news said...

Good collection of Old home you have did a good job..