Mui Wo, Lantau Island, Hong Kong, 4th August 2017
Pentax K-x, 18-125mm lens @ 45mm, 1/100 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200.

Mui Wo, Lantau Island, Hong Kong, 4th August 2017
Pentax K-x, 18-125mm lens @ 20mm, 1/60 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100.

Victoria Harbour from the Lantau Island ferry, Hong Kong, 4th August 2017
Pentax K-x, 18-125mm lens @ 20mm, 1/60 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100.

 

HK in August, so the humidity is simply too much. I escape the city for an afternoon, to Lantau Island. It’s a bit away from the crowded streets of Central or Wan Chai. Indeed, it seems incongruous that such an area should sit so close to the urban singularity of HK, but there it is. Opposites don’t always contradict. Indeed, HK Island itself has its areas of forest: mostly, I suspect, on sites too steep to build on.

Lantau, in contrast, is small towns and villages straggling out to farmland, country houses, temples, mountains, old roads, abandoned bicycles. With no real plan, I walked around, pleased to be surrounded by fields. And, eventually, the edge of the forest, a river, a waterfall. The path goes on. I don’t have time for a long walk, I need to be back in town to see an opera that evening, but I keep onwards. There’s always the urge to look around one last corner, see one last skyline. The temple signposted ahead. A field with a striking arrangement of trees and hills.

Eventually I head back to the ferry, and to the city. By the time I get to Central, the light is golden.

 

Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong, 4th August 2017
Pentax K-x, 18-125mm lens @ 98mm, 1/100 sec, f/6.3, ISO 100.