Excerpt from Light Gesture and Color:
You have certain prejdices whether or not you want them. At one point, I hated to take pictures of people that were "posing" for me.
I was in Hong Kong. I saw this guy and he spotted me about the same time.
He went into this stance seen here. It's a Goju-ryu karate move. It's called "cat-stance." All the weight is on the back foot so the front foot is light, ready to kick. This guy was perfect in every way. Not a finger our of place. I've done karate. About the time I took this I was a second-degree black belt. Fifty years later I'm a no-degree fat belt.
This was what was going through my mind in a nanosecond.
"He's posing for me and I hate photographing people who are posing for me, but he's obviously really good and he's offering me something, and if I dont take it he very well get offended and kick the shit out of me."
I finished my stream-of-consciousness moment and took the picture.
The whole episode was over in in a moment, but this guy and that picture really made me aware of gesture. Now I even take pictures of people who are posing for other people.
From the Hong Kong collection
I try not to do research before going to a new place. I do this not out of an egocentric need to see it, “my way.”
That comes later.
I simply do not want to “read the reviews” before I see the movie.
I want all the disorienting kaleidoscopic impressions that you get when you are faced with something new.
I remember the quote, but I don’t know from where that “You can’t get a first impression a second time.”
I really didn’t know much about Hong Kong before I got there. Once there I was exposed to what makes Hong Kong unique.
There was the density of people, the shrines, the thousands of shop keepers haggling, the lovers, the old rickshaws, the mirror finished marble driveways of luxury hotels, the graffiti, and the constantly changing ships, boats, junks and ferries of the harbor and the giant skyscrapers that used bamboo scaffolding in their construction.
So many surprises. Possibly the best was the ease of working due to the sophisticated indifference and acceptance of me as a photographer.
