Sham Shui Po Rooftop Huts
Fourteen huts built on top of one tenement block, each with its own water tank, aerial and washing line.
Victoria Harbour, Signal Three
Shot the morning the typhoon signal went up, when the ferries stopped and the water turned the colour of pewter.
Neon Over Nathan Road
What is left of the old signs throws a warm layer that sits about ten metres above the shopfronts.
Choi Hung Estate Courts
The painted blocks and the rooftop courts read as one flat colour chart from directly overhead.
Kwai Tsing Terminals Before Rain
Fifteen minutes ahead of the front, when the container stacks lose their shadows and become a grid.
The Long Shadow, Central 06:40
One tower lays a shadow across nine blocks for about eleven minutes each morning, then loses it.
Lion Rock Above the Cloud Layer
Thirty second exposure from the ridge, with the city underneath showing only as a glow in the cloud.
Storm Cell Over the Outer Islands
Shot on the way back in, forty kilometres out, where the sea still reads as one flat sheet.
Last Light on Tsing Ma Bridge
The bridge cables hold the light about four minutes longer than the water underneath them does.
Khlong Toei Water Tanks
Nine years, one spool
Helix Drift is a two person archive working over Hong Kong from helicopters, cranes, ridgelines and whatever rooftop a building manager will open. We started in 2017 with a single roll of Portra and a borrowed harness, and we have not changed the method much since.
The collection is kept in the order it was shot rather than sorted into folders, which is why this page winds rather than scrolls. Plates are printed to order at 40 by 25 cm on cotton rag, and the negatives stay with us.
- Founded
- 2017
- Plates held
- 1,284
- Highest frame
- 410 m
- Studio
- Sheung Wan
Prints, licensing and commissions
Print orders and licensing enquiries are answered within two working days. Commissions are booked a season ahead, since most of the work depends on weather windows and building access rather than on our calendar.