Photos

I am going to interrupt my Turkey postings to add a photograph that I took last night. I was walking past The Peninsula hotel in Hong Kong after having dinner in Tsim Sha Tsui (no I didn’t stay at The Peninsula – I am not that wealthy) when I noticed the fountain in its forecourt changing colours and thought that would make a nice shot if I could get the exposure right. That was not easy because the contrast between the lights on the fountain and the building was quite considerable. I experimented with some different exposures and found that for most of the colours the fountain came out over-exposed or the building came out under-exposed, but when the fountain changed to blue, there was a short transition when there was not as much light on the fountain and it enabled me to take this shot with a reasonable balance between the exposure of the fountain and the building in the background. Exposure was one second at f6.3. Composition was a bit of a challenge too as I did not have a tripod with me so had to rest the camera on the fountain wall. I tried a few different POVs and this one turned out to be the most pleasing in terms of balance.

The Peninsula is one of the most famous luxury hotels in the world. It was built overlooking Hong Kong harbour in 1928 and for decades was regarded as the best hotel anywhere in Asia. It was the place where the rich and famous stayed whenever they traveled to the Far East, and it was featured in the James Bond movie ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’. On Christmas Day, 1941, Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese on the third floor of The Peninsula. The Japanese had taken it over as their headquarters and had renamed it the Matsumoto Hotel. Needless to say it reverted to its former name at the end of World War II. The hotel is still regarded as one of the best in Hong Kong, and it has a fleet of Roll Royces to transfer its guests from the airport (the front of one can be seen behind the hedge, in front of the stone dragon, on the left of the photo).

Only PP was cropping and USM.