We are Polly, Suki, Jenny, Kris and Chester, representing 5 typical Hong Kong teenagers that have a different characteristics and daily routines. However, we all come across a common point—we are all busy. Our series of photos are based on the idea of “A day of the Hong Kongers ". Hong Kong people has a very fast pace of life. They walk fast, eat fast, work fast, and live fast. "Time is money" is their norm of living, and they believe that working efficiently is the key to success.
We come across with many tasks in our life. In the university, it is called being “chur”. We “chur” for many things with different objectives, for example, we work part-time because we want to earn money. However, how long has we ever take rest? We perform the same task again and again, but don’t we think of being tired?
Maybe living too busy will lead to both personal and social drawbacks, e.g. deterioration of relationship. In our project, we reveal the Hong Kong people’s busy way of life as well as the consequences of living in such way in the photograph. We capture the floating moment of running and jumping in order to show the Hong Kong people that this is the how they look like in daily life. We want to make the time to stop at a certain moment and give them an opportunity for all of us to stop and think. We hope to arouse the public attention towards the drawbacks of living too busy, and bring out the message of work life balance ultimately.
After viewing the whole photo album, you may wonder: I am so tired to see so many moving images, can we stop now? Before asking us, you may better ask yourself first—How long have you ever been landing on the ground? The answer can be sarcastic.
Artistic View towards the photo album
“Floating” models
From the perspective of arts, each photograph is dynamic as every model is floating. That’s match with the nature of life-- life is dynamic. Another noticeable fact is that we have different way to jump. Each person is unique. We express in different way because we have a different personality. Even with the same person, how he jump in different circumstances is actually representing his state of mind. We want to show that life is ever-changing.
Environmental Factors
The whole photo album is taken under different environment. We want to present the idea that time is chasing us wherever. We choose to use five models instead of one model to show that everyone has a different lifestyle and character, though we all be busy.
Photo Order
We take the photos in different period---in morning, afternoon and night. The arrangement of photo order from the earliest to the latest wants to shows a daily arrangement of ordinary people. Changing from one night to another morning represents the day is over and a new day comes, but our life is the same—we are still busy. It can also better represent the concept that “time is chasing us”
Story telling
Some photos have shown a causal relationship, i.e. consequences of being too busy:
1. A boy was looking at the notebook while entering into the classroom, and his clashed on the door.
2. A girl who was using a mobile can’t realize another girl coming across, and clashed on her in the library.
3. A girl is eating “xiumai” while busy using the mobile, and one “xiumai” accidentally being threw out.
4. A boy who was looking at the mobile while walking upstairs, dropped his mobile carelessly.
5. A boy made the letter throw out from the post office box because he was too hurry.
What difficulties we have encountered?
Firstly, since not every group mates got the professional camera that is suitable for taking photo of the moving object, so we have to use smart mobile instead. However, the shutter speed of smart phone is not as fast as the professional camera, and therefore some image are a bit bur. Later, we realize that those blur images turns out to be quite special which can give us a distinctive feelings of “extremely busy”, such as the photo showing a boy running in front of a coffee shop.
Secondly, as we are not a professional model, posing for running and jumping is a challenging task for us. Therefore, we have to take a numbers of shots in order to get one satisfactory photo. Although it is not an easy task, we sincerely think that we have gain a lot of fun from accomplishing this project.
