ast weekend I was commissioned by French magazine Le Point to shoot a series on wet markets. It seems they were hoping that I’d get shots of live animals preferably exotic wild creatures, but the fact is that wet markets in Shanghai are tightly controlled. I thought I’d at least find live chickens, but it turns out that they are banned at all markets at this time of year due to other bird related outbreaks. Apart from the live bullfrogs, multitudes of live seafood and shellfish, the largest of the four wet markets I visited reminded me of the Queen Victoria Market In Melbourne, despite some less sanitary storage of meat at the butcher shops. There has been some hysteria in the western media about wet markets reopening in China. Even Paul McCartney weighed in, calling Chinese wet markets “medieval”. I really can’t imagine that Sir Paul ever visited Chinese wet market. I can only imagine what he thinks must go on at them.
Read MorePhotographer in Melbourne, Australia
Shanghai coronavirus diary: The new normal
A few weeks ago the weather warmed and Shanghai had successive days of clear skies. This would normally be around the time that Shanghai Fashion Week takes place, but of course all that has been cancelled. None of this seemed to stop some people from making an extra effort to dress up. Since I’ve shot street fashion in Shanghai for Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) every year since 2012, I thought as may as well keep doing it. I also thought it was an optimistic story on people coming out on the other side of the city’s coronavirus lockdown.
Read MoreCan China's coronavirus numbers be trusted?
As I’ve mentioned before, Shanghai is around two months ahead of the health crisis that is hitting the rest of the world right now. People have asked me whether I think China’s figures on coronavirus cases are reliable. It’s impossible to say when information is so strictly controlled by the state. I can really only speak for what I’ve seen in Shanghai, but if Shanghai is a reflection of much of the rest of China then I guess the figures are somewhat plausible (82,867 cases, 3,339 deaths, sixth globally behind France, Germany, Italy, Spain and USA), but only based on the number of people who have actually been tested.
Read MoreIs China racist?
Since last week I’ve been hearing reports of foreigners in China being barred from shops, restaurants and bars. This has been both in local social media chatter on WeChat and Facebook as well as media reports.
Read MoreShanghai: Nightclubbing in the time of coronavirus
As I mentioned last week, Shanghai is currently a couple of months ahead of what is unfolding outside China. While the rest of the world is attempting to isolate themselves down as the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic hits, the wave has ebbed in China. Here in Shanghai, the lock down is easing in and spring has arrived.
Read MoreEven more coronavirus photography from Shanghai
It’s interesting to now see the coronavirus outbreak unfold beyond China. As former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently wrote in the Guardian, China’s January and February is now Australia’s March and April. I feel this holds for most of the rest of the world too.
Read MoreThoughts on the Fujifilm Professional GA645
The GA series are unique camera because they are (sort of) pocketable autofocus rangefinder that shoots medium format film in 6x4.5cm frames. The GA645 is the first generation of the line that started in 1995 finished with a zoom version, the GA645Zi, which came out three years later. The GA645 has a semi-wide 60mm f4 lens, which is equivalent to a 35mm lens on 35mm film camera.
Read MoreMore coronavirus photography in Shanghai
Things are still pretty quiet here in Shanghai, which is giving me an opportunity to update my blog fairy regularly. Although it seems that the coronavirus situation has more or less stabilised in China, it threatens to get out of control beyond these borders. Here, restaurants are slowly starting to open, but there is still a ban on public gatherings so major events are still on ice. As someone who is mainly a location based commercial photographer, this makes things tough and when this situation will change is anyone’s guess.
Read MoreUpdate on Paper Tigers Exhibition at Head On photography festival, Sydney
The other day, I found out which of my six submitted images was selected for Paper Tigers, an anthology of Australian photojournalism that Head On head honcho Moshe Rosenzweig and Cairns-based photojournalist Brian Cassey have put together. It will kick off on the first of May at Paddington Town Hall.
Read MorePhotographic fun with the Nikon 35Ti
I thought I’d take the time to update my blog with a few thoughts on one of my favourite point and shoot film cameras, the Nikon 35Ti. I’d been interested in this camera ever since I first handled one when I bought my Olympus mju II in 2003. I picked up my first one in 2017 when a photographer friend in Shanghai decided to sell one of his. At this stage I had been unable to track down my old mju II and I was after a film camera I could slip into my pocket and take on holiday.
Read MoreInterview with Inside Imaging
Interview with Inside Imaging on the coronavirus and its impact on commercial photography in Shanghai and China
Read MoreYangtze panoramas at Head On in Sydney this May
At this moment in Shanghai it seems most things are at a standstill. Commercial photography projects are either cancelled or on indefinite hold. It’s hard to make plans in these circumstances, but I’m still intending to be in Sydney for the Head On photography festival, which kicks off on May 1st.
Read MoreFront page of The Australian Financial Review
With commercial photography in Shanghai at a standstill, it’s nice to pick up a bit of press work. This job for The Australian Financial Review was very last minute. I got the call and basically had two hours to shoot the photos, edit, caption and send them to the photo desk in Sydney.
Read MoreLifestyle photography for W Guangzhou
I just updated my website with some work I did with Vanessa, my fiancee, for the W Guangzhou back in July last year. I’ve done fair bit of work for Marriott Luxury Brands, the luxury hotel family to which W Hotels belong. Over the last few years, I’ve shot things for every brand in their stable. This is the kind of work that I’m really looking forward to doing again once things return to normal after the coronavirus subsides. It’s been a total brake on any commercial photography in China besides photojournalism.
Read MoreRecent work in Stern Magazine
I was happy to see that some portraits that I shot a while ago for Stern Magazine have finally been published. The story had been on the brink of running a few times over the past six months or so. All portraits apart from the opening double page spread were shot on film.
Read MoreShanghai: Decadence with Chinese Characteristics
I was interested in the theme of decadence in Shanghai from the first time I came to the city in 2010. In the 1920s and 1930s especially Shanghai had a bad reputation that preceded it - a kind of seedy glamour that was exploited in Hollywood films like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or Shanghai Triad in China.
Read MoreDown by the China-Vietnam border
I got back from the Vietnam-China border in Guangxi Province a little over a week ago. I handed my nine rolls from the over to Sdodo at his laneway lab back as soon as I got back Shanghai. I was happy to get the scans back within three days.
Vanessa, my fiancee, and I had set aside five days to travel from the Detian Waterfalls right on the border and then work our way east all the way to the end of the border where a river delta meets the South China Sea. However, the ongoing coronavirus outbreak threw a spanner in the works. All tourist sites were shut down and many towns with border crossings were closed off from outsiders. In the end, we made the journey in three days.
The first image in the gallery below is of the Chongzuo Leaning Pagoda, a tower built on an island on the Zuojiang River during the Ming Dynasty in 1621 AD. The tower leans around 1 metre from its base. We had no idea it was there. I just turned off a provincial road after seeing a stone aqueduct, which from a distance, I thought was an old bridge. That’s the kind of thing I really love about these kinds of trips. You can plan and research, but almost everything that happens out there is improvised and unexpected.
Still, I know that the most important borders are all the eight remaining ones. I had a feeling that I’d shot enough in three productive days and thought it was better to save my film for a big trip out west in the summer.
More work at www.davetacon.com
Photographing the ongoing coronavirus outbreak in Shanghai and beyond
It’s a pretty strange time to be in China right now. Things usually take a little while to get back up to speed in Shanghai after the Chinese New Year, but it has been eerily quiet here as people stay indoors to avoid contagion.
Read MoreHasselblad Xpan
The unique selling point of the Xpan is that it will shoot true panoramas with 35mm film. Basically, you get almost double the frame width in panoramic mode, so instead of a regular 24 x 36mm film format, your film is 24mm x 65mm. This means the resolution is almost twice as good as a regular 35mm camera, so photographs have a quality closer to medium format film. You can switch between formats on the same roll, but people love the Xpan as a panoramic camera.
Read MoreAn alien in Shanghai
The work is an unusual kind of series for me, since it’s really a series of portraits around Shanghai staged as documentary images. One thing that struck me about so many people we encountered is that they didn’t bat an eyelid. It was like he wasn’t even dressed as an alien.
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