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My thoughts. Destination photography in HK will probably go the North Korean route. Your cameras will be inspected on arrival and offending images which don’t glorify the nation will be deleted for you on departure. IGers will point score for cheeky snaps of protest slogans.
The government has already been conducting a campaign to strip most of HK of neon signage for the last few years, ostensibly for “health and safety” reasons but in reality because these symbols weren’t “mainland enough” - and this presents a problem when bloggers crowd them.
Here’s a shot I did for a singer in 2015. A year later, these signs were gone
And this shot I did in Central of a wedding couple from SG in 2018. 6 months later, every sign was removed. Again, the idea is to make HK more bland, to fit in with the mainland aesthetic
When I shot for a NYC agency last year, the guy they sent over to babysit me was astonished how difficult it was to find actual neon locations in HK. He’d bought into the stereotype. Scenes like this from my IG below will become harder to shoot due to scarcity
It’s also amusing how brutalist or functional structures such as the Quarry Bay Transformer Bldg or Instagram Pier have found fame in spite of themselves. Yet the government is still keen to keep people away from these, despite them being a rare place for youngsters to create
https://twitter.com/steve_dunthorne/status/1263006258170179589?s=21 https://twitter.com/steve_dunthorne/status/1263006258170179589
Foreign clients often ask me where they can commission neon or vintage HK signage so they can take a piece of HK back with them when the go home. The answer is not clear since most of the neon artisans have retired/died. In their place are the gaudy LED Signage makers now.
We also know how hard certain people have been trying to rid HK of one of its most romantic symbols, the tram. Possibly next up for the chop. Photo is an outtake from my shoot for @AmericanAir last year
A high net worth client from London who dabbles in cinema asked me to tail him around HK for 4 days. He said he found most of HK’s landmarks like the Buddha dull and functional, and definitely not social media engagement worthy. He reserved most of his ire for LKF though 
Many lifestyle photographers have left HK for Bali, Cambodia, Taiwan and Thailand already. HK’s high costs of studio ownership and lack of truly inspiring lifestyle briefs probably means that only protest journalism thrives right now. Where to next for me?
