Photography in Beijing is a bit difficult if you like to shoot colour but if you’re a black and white guy or girl, it should be right up your alley because it’s like seeing in black and white in Beijing.

Ok so a bit of an exaggeration, but apart from the few colour photos you’ve seen in this Beijing Destination Guide, everything I shot in Beijing was either shot with Ilford’s HP5, or on Fuji’s Acros simulation in the Fuji X-Pro2, or converted to black and white in post. Unless you get incredibly lucky, you’re not going to see any blue skies, have any magic hour light because the sun literally doesn’t shine in Beijing, so stick to black and white. On the plus side of photography in Beijing, if you like street photography and fancy yourself as the next Eric Kim, Beijing is quite a good place because there are so many people at the tourist attractions, you can go a whole morning and not be more than a few feet from someone. Also, because it’s so crowded, nobody will really notice you taking a photo a foot from their face.

Photography in Beijing can be quite interesting, I stress “quite” because as I’ve mentioned in other pages, there’s not a whole lot of iconic landmarks or places in Beijing with the exception of the Great Wall and you need to be extremely lucky to catch that on a clear day.   I think though, if you walked around the city (god help you), you could probably get some ok shots. Just bring a face mask and don’t expect too much.

For sure, if you haven’t been to Asia or China, and you get up early in the morning, some good photos could be had of some of the temples and palaces but even if you get into some of the more popular tourist attractions when they first open, it’s unlikely you’re going to have the place to yourself with the amount of people that live in China.  If you live in Asia then I can think of a hundred better places to take photos in.

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