Hong Kong: A decisive moment — by Dr. Peter Lok, Division of Arts and Languages

Street photography is one of the most exciting genres of photography. Documenting our everyday life is challenging because it requires sensitivity, patience, imagination, and luck.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, the pioneer of street photography, once said,

There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.

Capturing the decisive moment is definitely the nature of street photography.   

I like using lens to represent Hong Kong in a new way, or see Hong Kong and its people through a fresh perspective we have never used before. I hope my street photos can make “familiar” become “unfamiliar” so as to make us more sensitive to the local landscape of Hong Kong. This is a kind of mood of localism that I really hope you can feel through my works.