I have returned to Hong Kong enough times now that my camera roll is mostly the same subjects seen again. This is the checklist I work through on the first full day, ordered roughly by how early in the walk I get to them.
1. Footbridge decks
The upper walkway level is a second ground floor, with shops, queues and people crossing above the traffic. Shoot from the deck itself rather than at it; the frames that work are the ones where the crowd sits between you and the towers.
2. Tower bases and setbacks
Marks for where the building narrows going up show how the footprint was traded against daylight rules below. Stand far enough back to catch the whole pinch, because a tight crop turns the step into a random ledge.
3. Tram wires overhead
On Hong Kong Island the catenary forms a grid across the street, which gives any image a horizon when the sky is overcast. Trams pass every few minutes, so a two-minute wait is usually enough.
4. Construction hoardings
The city rebuilds constantly, and the boards show the next version of the block before it exists. Note the dates on them: on two of my trips a hoarding I photographed was gone within six months.
5. Air-conditioning stacks
Rows of units on older residential façades tell you more about how a building is used than the lobby does. They also explain the noise, which is worth knowing before you book a room on a main street.
6. Ferry pier timetables
The printed boards are clear, current and photographable, and they are the fastest way to understand how much of the city still moves by water. I keep a shot of every pier board I use; two of them have saved me an hour of walking.
7. Market awnings at eye level
Upward shots make the skyline; level ones make the street. Fabric awnings, crates and the wet pavement under them give the scale that towers remove.
8. Signs in two languages
Older shop signs carry both scripts, newer ones do not, and the ratio changes block by block. It is a slow way to read a district without checking a map every five minutes.
What I do with a day like this
The checklist only works if the walking is paced, so here is the shape of the day that produced it. Start at eight, when the market awnings are going up and the office towers are still half dark; that hour gives you eye-level frames without the commuter blur. Two hours of streets, then breakfast for under three euros at the dai pai dong under the flyover, which is where the pier timetables and the tram wires meet anyway.
Midday belongs indoors. The heat between eleven and three turns the slopes into a slow grind and the reflections off glass are too hard to work with, so I spent that block in museums, libraries and the air-conditioned sections of the malls, then came out for the last light. It also keeps the battery for the evening, because half the shots on this list arrive after six.
Photography notes, since most of these subjects are fiddly: expose for the shadows in the market and let the sky go, keep the lens at eye height rather than lifting it for the towers, and shoot the pier board straight on so the times are readable later. I carry one body and a 35mm equivalent, which is wide enough for a footbridge deck and long enough to crop a façade without standing in traffic.
The vertical part of the city is also the expensive part to reach. The mid-levels escalator runs downhill in the morning and up in the evening, which saves a climb of about twenty minutes, and the walkway connects three districts without touching a road. Everything on this list is reachable on foot from that spine, provided you accept that distances here are measured in steps and slopes rather than in kilometres.
By the end of the first day the list stops feeling like a list and starts feeling like how you read the city anyway: you look up at the bridge deck, across at the tower base, then down at the timetable before deciding where to walk next. That shift is the whole reason I keep it written down, because without it I default to the skyline and miss the street entirely, which is exactly what the first three trips looked like before I started writing the list down each morning.
Two more habits are worth borrowing. First, I keep a note of the street names as I go, because the numbered avenues repeat and the phone loses signal in the covered markets. Second, I shoot one frame of every bus or ferry timetable I rely on, which has twice saved an hour of walking back to check a time I had already forgotten.
Budget for the day: about thirty euros including food if you eat where the queue is short, transport on the octopus card, and nothing for the walking. The card itself saves money everywhere - ferries, trams, shops - and stops the small daily decision about coins.
9. The harbour edge at the end
Finish by the water, when the towers turn into a lit wall. Practically: last light gives the best balance, and the walk back along the promenade is flat after a day of slopes.