Photographer Feature: JolesWong

These photos were taken between July and September of 2022, my first summer back in Hong Kong after leaving to study in the UK. It was during that first year I was in the UK that I discovered photography and really got into it. Something about holding a camera just completely changes how you experience the world and reconfigures your vision to look for the photo in every environment. In those scorching hot summers of Hong Kong, light is in such abundance (except for rainy/typhoon-y August), so I really tried to exploit that in my pictures using film. What I’ve gotten used to with film is that it loves the light; and light is what allows us to see color, so I think those two components are what my pictures from this summer revel in.

I remember when my mom saw the ‘Orange Tree’ boat picture over my shoulder at home and said “huh, you don’t usually see a color like that in Hong Kong” - which I just think is so telling about who I was and what circumstances that photo was taken in. Before Summer 2022 I don’t think I ever really grasped the beauty of the city while I lived in it.

I never really knew anywhere else but Hong Kong, so I lacked the perspective to see its uniqueness before. After going away for a year, I was so desperate to feel at home again, but the feeling of coming home was not the wave of relief that I thought would just come over me as soon as I stepped off the plane. I had to really look for those feelings and those moments.

It was because I wasn’t coming home blind but with a kind of trace - like I had a sketch in my memory of what the city looked like and what it meant to me from childhood - and now I’ve grown up a little, I have the skills to refine that sketch and turn it into something closer to a real picture.

And so, with a camera always in my hands, I looked for all the things that made me feel at home, and simultaneously captured unexpected sights that Pre-Summer 2022 would never have noticed. Everything

I shot here was during one walk from Causeway Bay to the area near my childhood home, ending at the Central-Western bypass which had a nice small park decorated for Mid-Autumn festival. When I look at these photos, I feel really lucky that I took it during that special occasion and got to experience a side of the community that has grown here since I’ve left.

Photography is special in that it expresses something unique to that short and fleeting moment a photo is taken in, imbued with the particular set of circumstances the person holding the camera was in at the time.

So for me, these photos will always make me feel the heat and humidity under my shirt in September, the rumble under a highway, a motorcycle revving, the specific blinking sound of Hong Kong traffic lights, little kids talking in cantonese, the smell of saltwater, and the warmth of the sunset that tells me it’s another day closer to when I’ll say goodbye again.

Joshua Karthik is one of the co-founders of ‘Stories by Joseph Radhik’ - India’s internationally renowned wedding photography firm. With half a billion views for the work they’ve created, and with 460 shoots in 35 countries around the world, Stories has created a significant impact on the world of wedding photography in India and elsewhere. He has been acknowledged as an expert in the world of wedding photography — specifically with focus on the business. He has also created a very beautiful video called ‘Where the heart is’ (on Youtube), which has now reached 350 million views and counting. He’s been featured in the Netflix series, The Big Day, as an expert of wedding photography. He is also one of the producers of Food Stories on Vice.

Questions: How did you start your photography career?

I think more interesting to talk about is how I started my photography journey. Because i don’t know if the career is relevant to everybody who’s reading a magazine, what’s more interesting probably is how got started for photography: The story is my brother had asked me to try out a new lens, I have never tried a 50mm lens before, so he said “Why don’t you take it and just try to take some pictures with it?” So the first set of photos I took gave me so much joy, I just kept experimenting, and kept working at it. And that’s what actually led me to this 11 years ago – when I actually shot my first photo, and now you can actually see my work, right? So that’s my photography journey. I think anyone can start with photography. It’s a medium of expression; one of your thoughts carrying in your head, what it is you have to say. It’s a great way to express yourself without having to write, without having to sit down without telling people. It’s a great way to also understand what you are feeling at that moment and try to translate it into an image. The lesson here I would like people to take away is that you will never be able to accomplish anything if you don’t ever start, by taking the first step. In a lot of things we never take the first step and we all want to become ‘x’ or ‘y’, we wanna become the best writer or an incredible songwriter, get on stage and sing to tons of people. But if you never sing your first song, or you never write your first piece, or you never start your first magazine, I don’t think any other stuff will happen. I think this is my photography journey, just to pick your first photo, and trust yourself, and keep pushing, keep pushing consistently, and potentially you can get somewhere. That’s my photographer journey.

And how did I start my photography career? My brother Joseph and I, we found this company 9 years & 11 months ago, has this global impact in the arts field, which is wedding photography. It started again with the first step; saying the yes, I will be courageous enough to go shoot the first wedding. I was courageous enough to actually say yes to an opportunity, then not stopping that. A lot of people might say yes to the first opportunity, but what do you do as the next step? In the last 10 years we shot nearly 500 weddings, which means we didn’t sleep much, we’ve been working hard, and we’ve been trying to improve with each wedding we shoot. And every shoot that we do, we’re trying to actually be better than the shoot that we did in the past. That is what got us to being published all around the world and being on Netflix, etc. It’s one thing to think about the first step, it’s another to be consistent and be better at every step you proceed along your journey.

What made you fall in love with photography?

It’s a medium of expression. It’s incredible because you don’t have to be a good writer, you don’t have to do anything- if you can just click the button, you can have the photo. As simple as that right?

I think that in the last decade, photography has democratized because of this whole thing; the smart phone. The fact that a highly capable camera can be in your hands at all times. They didn’t exist 11, 12 years ago. When the iPhone was new, photography wasn’t a big ___. The camera lenses were really, really bad. When the iPhone got better, it became so easy to just be able to take photos and capture what you’re seeing with a very high degree of resolution. I think it’s an incredible time of life; if you guys are growing up at this age you already have phones like that, it’s incredible. Because you’re growing up at the time that you have access to the phones that were not available 10 years ago. And you just have to press the shuttle. It’s all that takes. And that’s why I love photography, it’s beautiful.

What could you define home as? Where would you say your home is?

I’ve moved to a large part of India, I’ve traveled across and lived in multiple cities, and my parents actually live in Indonesia, which is not too far from Hong Kong. My siblings live in the US, all sorts of places around the world. One thing that’s certain– I do not think that home is a place; a building or an apartment or a specific structure. Home is for all the people to go home to, it’s the family that you love most, the people that you build the structure for. And secondly, home is where you actually feel safe. That does not have to be a specific structure. If you can tick those two boxes off, you can pretty much make home happen anywhere in the world wherever you are. So if home is the people in the family, or a place where you feel secure and safe, it could be on a journey as well, it could be anywhere, it doesn’t have to be a structure.

Do you have any words of wisdom to leave behind to aspiring young photographers?

Yes. When aspiring young photographers, I might look at their work and say this is incredible, this is amazing, reaching to the certain vision that I do not have. In a lot of cases, the difference between them and the legend is the amount of work the legend is putting in. Consistently, year after year, decade after decade. Like yes, of course, the readers see the world will be different. But as the young aspiring photographers never put in the work, they will never be able to sharpen their vision. It’s one thing to wish for something, it’s another to work for it.

And if I have one thing to tell the young photographers, it would have to be the consistency of work. The consistency of the idea, creating with your camera, the idea of observing the world around you, bringing up your camera and completing what you see, to frame in your camera. And you do it over and over again, even if you start with something that you do not believe is your idea, you at least sharpen that, you will at least get to a better place. I think a lot of young aspiring photographers never give themselves the opportunity to even get to the point where they consistently try. If you’re aspiring to be a photographer, your volume of work you create needs to show the heights that you want to get to. I still want to get better, I want to get even better than I am at this point. I would suggest you put in the work and be consistent with what you create. That’s what we want, to sharpen a craft.