Photography in Singapore
Shophouses in Chinatown …shot with Nikon F4 and Sigma 24-70 f2.8 on Ilford PANF 50
Beyond the Postcard — why I photograph Singapore’s imperfections
If you scroll through Instagram’s #singapore hashtag you’ll drown in silky-smooth sunsets, Marina Bay Sands reflected in water polished to a mirror, and neon-blue long exposures that turn traffic into perfect light ribbons. Singapore looks immaculate, almost virtual — and that is exactly the problem: it is a city edited to death.
Yet walk ten minutes down the wrong alley and perfection frays. Paint peels, air-con vents cough, and puddles collect storm-dark water that smells faintly metallic. This is the Singapore I care about, and it begins with the photograph at the top of this page.
The beauty everyone shows
Just another beautiful skyline …
From a marketing standpoint the picture is flawless: balanced horizon, painterly sky, global icons in a single glance. It is also interchangeable. Thousands of photographers can (and do) reproduce that frame nightly because the composition is already solved for them. Technique replaces interpretation.
The beauty almost no one looks at
Now lower your gaze to the shophouses at street level - the cover-shot for this blogpost. . The contrast is harsh, the geometry slightly claustrophobic, and people drift through the shadows like afterthoughts. What matters here is tension: heritage timber fighting for sunlight against glass megastructures behind it. You feel humidity, commerce, daily grind — the city breathing under its designer skin.
The beauty most people refuse to see
This is a famous “insider” location - but all the images you see on the internet are symmetrical, clean, perfect mirrors. The illusion of perfection. But this is a dirty place, an old parking lot with stagnant puddles. No harmony. Street illumination is drifting in from the side between fences and garbage. A perfect place for starting a Batman Movie with “one of those places in Gotham City”. So, why not this broken reflection?
The reflection is not a postcard mirror; it’s fractured by debris, clouded by diesel-slick rainbow and rooftop grime. Symmetry fails, and that failure becomes narrative: an ageing façade keeping its chin up in tropical rain, stubbornly alive in a redevelopment city that prefers to gloss over the unkempt.
Why imperfection matters
Perfection makes a pleasant wallpaper; imperfection makes a story. When everything is orderly, the eye rests but the mind switches off. Introduce a crack, a blotch, a sudden shaft of ugly sodium light, and the viewer begins to ask why? Questions lead to memory; memory leads to emotional weight. That emotional weight is currency whether you are publishing editorial work, selling prints, or shooting a campaign for a brand that wants to feel authentic rather than aspirational-by-template.
wulfs-refined-rebellion and its advantage
I shoot the city the way it feels at street level — sticky, hectic, occasionally sublime, often contradictory. That approach does three things:
Creates scarcity. In a feed saturated by perfected clones, truthful grime stands out naturally; no algorithm hack required.
Invites identification. Locals recognise the Singapore they walk through every day, not the tourism-office fantasy.
Builds narrative capital. Brands, magazines, and collectors looking for fresh angles are drawn to images that hint at untold chapters instead of final drafts.
An invitation
Singapore is no theme park; it’s a living organism that sweats, reflects, and sometimes scowls. If your project, publication, or campaign is tired of manicured postcard clichés, let’s talk. I’ll bring the shadows and the puddles; you bring the curiosity—whether the story you need to tell lives in the city, on a runway, or inside a product shot.
