Cluttered (This week's Photo Hunt theme)

If truth be told, one very easy way for me to get appropriate photos for this week's Photo Hunt would have been to go about snapping shots of the cluttered interior of my apartment. But rather than doing that, here's presenting more interesting and colorful sights found while strolling about in Hong Kong!

Looking at those photos as well as around me as I write this entry, I got to thinking how there can be a fine line between clutter and outright mess; and how although the photographed street scene and shop store front may look to have many jumbled up elements at first glance, it also is so that there actually is an order to the overall pictures -- a method to the apparent madness, if you will.

In the case of the street scene, its cluttered "feel" comes from such a narrow vertical space having so many horizontal layers. Put another way, take away the individual store signs hanging one or more floors above street levels and the similar profusion of shop awnings that protect the space below from sun and rain and that area surely won't feel that cluttered!

As for the store in the second photo: I'm sure its manager/proprietor knows exactly what is where and will be able to locate an item from that clutter very quickly should a customer ask for something it stocks and sells (even if the customer might feel too visually overwhelmed to find it him- or herself)!

Something else to consider is that people unaccustomed to viewing Hong Kong shop displays are likely to be thrown off by how many street-level shops here have open store fronts and regularly maximize their floor and overall display space by putting things right up front. To me, this says something not only about how space is at a premium in this part of the world but, also, how unlikely it is here that someone would think to take criminal advantage of this display propensity to shoplift or run off with an item or more off those front displays -- thus showing in one more way how Hong Kong really is a place with a very low crime rate (touch wood! But, more seriously though, yes, it's something for which I do regularly feel very grateful).