Capturing the vibe of a street market with multiple exposure

The Market Tram

There’s an area in Hong Kong Island called North Point. Most people know it because of the so called “Monster Building” (infamous for some, iconic and instagrammable for people not living there). It’s a cluster of old residential blocks stacked so tightly together that they look like a single enormous structure. When you step into its courtyard, you are immediately overwhelmed by layers of objects stacked vertically: balconies facing balconies, laundry hanging like flags, air conditioners dripping, pipes crossing in every direction, windows of all sizes and conditions...

It feels like a vertical maze and it’s no surprise that tourists search for the perfect shot to post on their social and photographers visit it regularly (sometimes forgetting that behind those facades are people who might prefer a little more privacy).

For what I remember, I never had a photo session in that place: somehow I felt like I wanted to respect the place and leave to the residents the privacy they deserve.

But North Point has another place that became one of my favorite photographic spots: walk a little further and you arrive in a narrow street with a market that feels completely different from the cinematic drama of the Monster Building. As you can imagine, the place is filled with shops, fruit stands, hanging meat and people moving in every direction.

Well, this could be one of the many street markets in Asia, but what makes this place unique is what runs straight through its center: a tram line. Every few minutes a double-decker tram passes by, cutting through the crowd. People step aside, then flow back in and shopping continues.

There are other similar streets around Asia, where a tram or a train runs through a narrow lane lined with shops and cafés and people have to step aside as it passes. In Hanoi, for example, there’s a narrow street in the Old Quarter where a train runs between houses, squeezing past markets and cafés as people step aside. In Bangkok, the Maeklong Railway Market famously folds back umbrellas and goods whenever the train passes and this became also a tourist attraction.

To me these are the kind of places where you can spend hours without shooting the same scene twice: you walk the same ten meters back and forth and every time the scene is new.

Shooting it with a single exposure somehow felt a bit limiting for capturing this constant transformation, so that’s where multiple exposure really helps.

Shopping at North Point Market

Why multiple exposure belongs to this market

In a place like this market in North Point, I feel that it’s the street that suggests the technique.

When I tried shooting single frames, they always felt incomplete. Sure, they could be nice, technically correct and all…but something was missing. I just couldn’t convey the flow and movement of the place the way I wanted.

So, I started experimenting with multiple exposure, mixing 2, 3, even 4 shots together.

I tried different approaches: 3 shots in Average mode, just zooming back a little for each photo…2 shots, one fixed on the street and the other with a slow vertical camera movement to create my beloved “brush strokes” and give a more artistic touch...or 4 shots in Dark mode, rotating the camera 90° each time. The possibilities here are really endless.

…and I have to say, I came back with a lot of successful shots, and some of them are still among my favorites ones.

One of my experiments was almost life-threatening: yes, because I waited on purpose for the tram to arrive (after all, he’s the main protagonist of the scene, right?), and then I stood right in the middle of the road as it approached. I took 3 shots in rapid sequence while zooming out with my Sigma Art 24-105 (fantastic lens, btw!) and only stepped aside a few meters at the very last second, just before the tram could turn me into minced meat, accompanied by (perfectly understandable) honks from the driver!

Somehow it reminds me the video of November Rain by Guns N’ Roses, where Slash, while doing one of his iconic solos, is dangerously standing on a rail line, stepping aside at the last moment: in his case it was a special effect, in my case it was very real.

Jokes apart, the shot actually worked. It captured the vibrancy and chaos of the street perfectly and I think it’s one of the images that really conveys the energy of this place.

People and surreal patterns

With the same technique (3 shots overlapping and zooming out between the shots), I also shot the crowd passing, this time without tram: still, also this one it conveys the idea of movement and the noise of this place…you can almost hear the noises from the street, which is quite cool. When I shoot people in this way, the result is often a “vanishing” appearance, which I don’t dislike at all, but I realized someone might feel like those people are “ghosts” (…and also in this case I don’t mind it at all).

The Fourth Estate

Another shot I love from my North Point sessions was a combination of 4 shots in Average mode, using the tram lines as a key element in the composition. I photographed the same scene four times, rotating the camera 90° each time, and the result turned out being quite surreal: the curving rails almost formed a swastika-like pattern, while people walking toward the camera reminded me of Pellizza da Volpedo’s famous painting The Fourth Estate, which shows a determined group of workers marching forward together, silent but powerful. I decided to name my photo exactly like the painting, “The Fourth Estate” as a small tribute to that sense of movement and energy.

Final considerations

When shooting in a busy place like this, it’s easy to be lost and confused, without having a clear idea of what to shoot (…since you will want to shoot everything!).

And if you want to practice with multiple exposure, well, as always, my first advice is simple: take your time. Explore the place, walk across it back and forth, feel the rhythm of the place before even touching your camera and click the shutter button. Yes, before doing that you have to “feel” the place first and this takes a bit of time.

Then, choose your subject: can be the tram, the lines of the rail, the people, a stall with hanging meat outside… Start simple: 2 shots per sequence are usually enough and only increase that number once you feel more confident with the technique.

Above all, patience is all that matters in this kind of context more than speed and with multiple exposure you also need to multiply your patience exponentially! Even in a fast environment, this kind of photography is slow: you wait for the crowd to change, for the tram to arrive, for the right imbalance.