Ranan Samanya Photography
fashion runways, portraits & personal branding, environment, and documentary photography
Welcome to the Year of the Horse
We celebrated this year’s Chinese New Year right in the middle of Singapore’s centre of attraction in Chinatown. They have these giant lantern horses beautifully lit in red and white, and old Chinese gold coins flying around.
To be able to get better frames out of the crowd, I had to either poke my 70-200mm lens through a hole on the fence of Garden Bridge (top picture), shoot from the middle of the street when the traffic light turned red (second picture), climb many of the concrete blocks put there as weight for the extra electricity poles (second picture from the bottom), or shoot from a bridge 200m away (bottom picture).
So yes, welcome to the Year of the Horse, and may prosperity and good health linger around you!
Hong Kong: the airport express
If there is one thing that is very commendable about Hong Kong’s International Airport, it is its Airport Express trains. Running every 10 minutes, it is linking AsiaWorld Expo and the airport which is located in Lantau Island to Hong Kong’s centre of activities in Tsing Yi, Kowloon and Hong Kong MTR stations. It even has a city check in counters and free shuttle bus to major hotels in both Kowloon and Hong Kong stations.
From the airport it will take us a swift 20 minutes to reach the city. The staff at the ticketing counter is very helpful in answering tourist questions about the best shortest to take to our lodging. The train cabins are clean and modern. It is equipped with a television, and -most important- a free WiFi to accompany our short trip! And if you are worried as to when to go down, don’t, as on every door there is a LED indicator showing us where we are.
On the day when you return to the airport, don’t be so troubled in looking for Terminal 1 or Terminal 2. Unlike Singapore’s Changi trains, where you may have to jump to different trains before reaching your Terminal, Hong Kong’s airport express trains are designed such that whenever you are leaving the train at the airport, Terminal 1 will always be on your right exit, and Terminal 2 on your left. And out of the train, a row of neatly arranged trolleys are ready to carry all your excess luggage.
Here’s the route that we took to reach Mong Kok: jump out of the airport express at Tsing Yi station. Go down one level to level U1, take the Tung Chung line Concourse/Maritime Square MTR (yellow line), change MTR at Lai King (only 1 station), take the red line (direction Hong Kong station), and alight at Mong Kok, 6 stations away. There is an alternative route involving less train change, but you will need to walk quite a bit more between Hong Kong and Central stations through an underground. I would also recommend getting your Octopus card (electronic payment card for all MTR service in Hong Kong) when you purchase your airport express ticket.
Hong Kong: an avenue without stars
Everybody who goes to Hong Kong will want to go to the Avenue of Stars (and Disneyland, but this is another story). And I wonder why. I have walked the avenue with my family, starting from the Star Ferry Pier. The view is nice, we get to see the skyline of Hong Kong. But to expect the stars… well… the only star there last week was Bruce Lee, and he looked a bit odd without any shirt in the chilly 10 degrees Centigrade. And don’t talk about the Symphony of Lights. It is amazingly boring with a few green lasers flying by from the top of a few distant buildings.
So yes, do visit this place. Start from the Pier somewhere around 5pm. Or even earlier from 1881 Heritage. I spent around 2 hours taking pictures of the Heritage, if you are like me you may want to put enough time. The Pier and the Clock Tower are beautiful subjects to photograph just before sunset when the sun is golden (you may want to check sunset time from your GPS or online). Enjoy the view. But don’t expect anything spectacular at 8pm when the laser starts. Try not to visit it on weekends or public holidays, it’s a very favourite past-time place for locals and foreign workers as well.
It’s a new dawn…
Allow me to open 2014 with this short note. I took a shot of this panda in the Ocean Park Hong Kong, which I think has more value than Disneyland (more about this later). It is not bothered by spectators, and couldn’t stop eating the bamboo leaves provided in abundance.
So yes, it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, and I’m feeling good, and hoping that, wherever you are, you are feeling at least as good as, or even better, than I.
Here’s for a year full of exciting adventures!
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Season’s greetings!
Season’s greetings! May I wish you all a merry Christmas and a beautiful and bright 2014! It’s been a wonderful year for me and I hope it has also been to you. And thank you for reading all my postings this year!
This picture was taken from Muji Hong Kong display window. They are so adorable, aren’t they?
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Parapat, almost a ghost town
This picture of a Toyota Kijang turned a street stall at the side of Toba Lake in Parapat, north Sumatra, may well depict the condition of this town: old, rusty, and battered. With hotels encircling the Toba Lake, Parapat has practically created a concrete interface wall between the land and the water, separating the two ecosystem, and probably cutting off the exchange of micro-nutrients between the two.
Once full of tourists who enjoyed Toba Lake, this Town is now empty: empty hotels, empty streets, and empty excursion boats. The only place that show activity is the port of Tigaraja, serving ferries to Tomok and Tuktuk, the latter is now the base for most, if not all tourists who want to explore Toba Lake and Samosir island.
Parapat is a good example of a mismanaged tourist area. I blame improper city planning, and lack of law enforcement as the culprit: the uncontrolled boom of hotels are destroying what was once loved by the tourist industry. While the government is also to blame, I would like to think that the locals also took credit for the current situation. These, and the fact that local wisdom and knowledge of environmental issues are not used (or even understood).
The latest move by the government to change the center of activities for the Toba Lake Festival (used to be called Pesta Danau Toba) last September from Parapat to Samosir, instead of cleaning up the sickness of Parapat, made the whole situation more complex, and has provoked a particular sentiment of part of the community towards the government. The remedy? Local government and the community need to sit down together. Central government may need to jump in. Get an action plan. It’s in bold, meaning a real action plan, not just a piece of paper signed by too many parties inacted in a sort of decree that will only deplete budget without any realisation.
Dennis and Verlina: tears of happiness
Here’s what happened when two young emotional birds got married: A simple Chinese tradition where the groom needed to knock the door to his bride’s house, and rejected more than 10 times by his parents in law (to be precise, his mother in law), and to be let in only after a long poetic password has been spelled out correctly. A BIG smile from the groom when he finally got to see his bride. Then a simple church ceremony with tears in between… by the groom (and later by his parents in law). A few comforting words between the groom and the bride, also in between the tears. And finally, a smile from each of their family members.
That was part one. Add to that a torrential downpour that destroyed almost all the cute non-waterproof decorations, but failed to ruin their happiness, in the first ever Bintan Resorts Reservoir Park open-air wedding reception. A quick and fun tea-ceremony. Cakes and all. First dance! A kiss that was almost french (nope, I’m not showing it here). And yet another tears from the bride when the groom sang a song that apparently has a very deep meaning to both of them.
Phew! I’m lucky I was not the official photographer, or else I would have broken down in tears as well! Have a happy life with hopefully less tears, Dennis and Verlina!
Katy who…?
I was actually not aiming for this, and instead was focusing for the plants. Out of nowhere it came on one of the mangrove leaves. I refocus, and there it was, a katydid, staring at me as if it wanted to eat me alive! I changed to spot metering and took a few frames.
People often confuse katydids with grasshoppers, although they are more related to crickets. Katydid will have a much longer antennas compared to grasshoppers. They are mostly nocturnal. The sound that they produce comes not from their mouths, but from the rubbing of their wings together. And here’s the oddest of all: their hearing organs are located on their front legs! but then again, insects are known to have ears all over their part of the body: grasshoppers on their abdomens while lacewings have ears on their wings.
Thank you for stopping by and have a great week ahead!
Ranan Samanya Photography 
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