#037: Street View - KL
COVID-19 hit our shores in January. Malaysia has been in what the government has been calling a Movement Control Order (MCO) since mid-March. This has meant that all public gatherings, work, travel have all been restricted, save for only the bare essential trips to the supermarket or to the hospitals/clinic. These restrictions however have begun to ease this past month of May, and some people have been heading back to work, and life on the streets is picking up again.
Ever since the MCO started, I haven’t been out and about at all. A few short trips to the supermarket is all that I have accomplished over the past weeks since it all began. I have also been working from home. It took a little bit of adjusting, work time, and family time all blur into one, especially with the baby constantly demanding attention at home when she’s awake.
In the last few weeks, as work finally slowed down a little, I had me some time to do other things. I decided to embark on a street photography project, one that I could do from the comfort of my dining room table. This idea has always been there, at the back of my mind, and now I finally had the time and the opportunity to do it. This small project isn’t anything new. There have been many others who have done something very similar. But to my knowledge, I haven’t seen anyone do it for the street of KL yet.
This little project involved the use of Google Street View. What I’ve done is I’ve screen-captured frames from the browser and processed in Lightroom to give it the look and feel that I wanted. Street photography from the couch, I suppose is what you’d called this. Most of them show regular everyday scenes around KL. Scenes where social distancing was not even heard of before. On Google Street View you can go down some of the grittier back alleys of KL too, and in broad daylight, it gives a glimpse into sides of KL that you would almost never see. Unless you’re a roaming street photographer on the prowl for a shot.
It was fun and interesting to go down the streets I would normally walk along with friends when we’re out and about taking photos, but this time through the lens of Street View. And due to the angle from where the Street View photos were captured, there is a weird unnatural feel to some of the photos. An angle I would never have been able to get naturally when I’m on the streets. There are a few fun ones showing the street-side stalls that are all over the city. In fact I have been able to gather a nice collection of street stalls on Google Street View, and maybe that might be a separate post just dedicated to the street food culture here.
I hope you enjoy the street captured here. Let me know what you think.
Stay safe everyone.
Selamat Hari Raya / Eid Mubarak
Cheers.
