With the emergence of Shanghai as a premiere metropolitan city in the world, Shanghai attracts a lot of attention in the fashion world along with many international photographers flocking into the city. Photography is a booming business in Shanghai and other major cities in China. Shanghai consists of foreigner photographers that tailor their work to international companies and local photographers tailor to the vast market of local and foreign clients, yet we are scratching just the tip of the iceberg in this market.
China is still a developing country that is obsessed with luxury goods and China sells more luxury good than any other countries. With the significance in the fashion industry and the excessive demand for luxury good, Shanghai is the ideal place to start a photography career yet it has soon become a competitive playground for photographers.
Shanghai is also a perfect location for architectural photography with its ongoing construction of new creative architecture buildings. Shanghai will inaugurate the second tallest building in the world this Summer 2015, the Shanghai Tower, towering a staggering 632 meters. Shanghai hosts one of the tallest skyscrapers in China and the Jin Mao tower and the Shanghai World Finance building is among them next to the Shanghai tower. Shanghai intertwines old traditional and modern architecture in its landscapes making it an unique and aesthetic sight.
I have started film photography back in college when digital photography was still in its infancy. My first SLR was the Nikon F that my dad gave me. This fully mechanical camera without using any battery is a tank. My dad acquired it from an American soldier during the Vietnam War and it was very popular among journalist. It has captured all our family photographs and I carried on the legacy of our family with this camera.
The first digital camera I have encountered was in 1999 during a visit in Beijing but I wasn’t too convinced. The quality of the photos of the initial consumer digital cameras was not useful so I have abandoned the world of photography for a while. During a trip to Santa Cruz a friend of mine showed me his new acquired digital Nikon camera with 12 megapixel and during that time it was a ground-breaking breakthrough in digital photography and I liked what I see. Soon after this encounter I bought this camera and revive a renaissance of photography again. Though the digital photography was still in development I felt I needed to catch up a lot with my absence of 5-6 years. I didn’t embark on the commercial photography journey until I moved from San Francisco to Shanghai. When opportunity arose, I started to build up a professional portfolio to enter the commercial photography business. With almost 6 years in Shanghai approaching, I have established myself as a hotel and architecture photographer along with some fashion and other commercial photography assignments.