PHOTOGRAPHY enthusiast Kasan Ho Chi-yuen has collected more than 400 books on the subject in the past decade. He set up the first free photography library in the SAR five years ago because he felt there were few places for people interested in such books.
'No one believed they could come and read the books for free, without paying any membership fee, when the library first opened,' Ho recalls. 'People thought I was joking.'
The 35-year-old was smitten by the process while he was a secondary school student and, on his Web site, describes it as an ongoing love affair.
After finishing an engineering course at the Wong Hak King Technical Institute (now part of the Institute of Vocational Education), he continued to take photography courses. However, he realised that his knowledge of the subject was inadequate when he attended night classes and a one-year course at the Kwun Tong Vocational Training Centre in 1987 and 1988, respectively. The two courses changed his attitude towards the discipline.
'I used to think it was cool to be a photographer - you could make a fortune and you'd be surrounded by beautiful things and people all day,' he says.
After completing the two courses, he discovered that fame and fortune were not what he wanted from photography. Three years later, he went to Japan to study photographic art at the Tokyo College of Photography.
