Photoessay: Observations at the Menora Tunnel

yzhensiang
12 minutes ago
2 min read

I was caught in an unexpectedly bad traffic jam when I was on my way to Ipoh for a client meeting last week. The experience was frankly quite frustrating and tiring, stretching a 8km route passing the Menora Tunnel to almost an hour. In between being stucked in a confined space, podcasts playing in the background, and multiple spinning thoughts, time slowed down in a way it rarely does. Looking at the brighter side of things, I was given the chance to observe, admire and photograph the Menora Tunnel.

Being stuck inside the tunnel gave me the opportunity to study its construction more closely. The layers of concrete, the curvature of the walls, the rhythm of lights above, and the way vehicles moved slowly through the space felt almost cinematic. Some parts of the tunnel especially the cross-passage even reminded me of moments you would expect to see in an action movie — a kind of rare experience if I may add, considering we usually speed through this tunnel at 80-90km/h without a second glance.

This simple collection of images became a quiet study of shape, form, lines, and light within the Menora Tunnel. The repetition of structures, the leading lines pulling the eye forward, and the contrast between artificial light and shadow created reflections and compositions that would otherwise go uncaptured at normal driving speed. It's interesting to see what is often just a transitional space turned into a subject of its own.

All images were shot using the Huawei Mate X7 with minimal post processing. A month into using the phone with few thousand images shot, I honestly love the tonality straight out of the camera, especially with the X Image Profiling as they do look pleasing most of the time. The black-and-white rendering holds depth and contrast well, preserving details in both highlights and shadows without much effort.

Though I am not happy that this incident happened, but I am glad it did as it offered me with a rare opportunity for observations. Sometimes, slowing down — even when unplanned — allows us to see familiar places in entirely new ways.