Chinese New Year Through a Smoky Lens
There's a moment on Chinese New Year's Eve when the world stops being the world you know, and becomes something else entirely.
I spent this year's celebrations with my family in a small village on the outskirts of Guangzhou, not the gleaming towers of the city center, but one of those old residential clusters where the streets are narrow, the buildings lean close together, and the neighbors have been setting off fireworks from the same rooftops for generations.
The Atmosphere
After the customary family celebration dinner, as midnight approached, the village erupted. People filled the normally quiet streets, firecrackers from every direction, aerial fireworks bursting directly above the rooftops, sparks drifting down between the buildings. The air filled with smoke almost instantly, and it didn't clear. It hung in the streets like fog, thick and warm, catching the light from lanterns and neon signs and turning everything into something that didn't quite feel real, like living in a dream.
The narrow alleys, the diffused colored light cutting through haze, the silhouettes of people moving through smoke. As a cinema enthusiast, it felt like walking onto the set of Blade Runner, one of my all time favorite movies. A retro-futurist dreamscape built not by a production designer, but by centuries of tradition and a few thousand firecrackers.
Walking the Streets
I grabbed my camera and went out, excited like a kid opening his presents on Christmas day. People celebrating with firecrackers and motorcycles running through the haze turned every corner into a new composition.
The light did impossible things. Red lanterns glow diffused through the haze created deep, warm tones that seemed to pulse. The occasional flash of a firework overhead would illuminate a whole alleyway for a split second
I shot handheld, bumped my ISO, used the wider aperture and worked fast. No time to set up a tripod or compose carefully, it was all about living the instant, these scenes were alive and disappearing. The smoke would shift, silhouette would appear and vanish in the night. It was street photography in its purest form: react, frame, shoot, move.
Why This Night Mattered
Every photographer chases light. But what I found that night in Guangzhou wasn't just light, it was an entire atmosphere. The smoke didn't obscure the scene; it became the scene. It softened hard edges, layered depth into every frame, and created a mood that no amount of post-processing could replicate. Hollywood is paying millions to create vibrant science fiction sets, and just for the span of an hour it was all there, waiting for me, and a camera to capture the joy and mystery of the celebration.
There's something deeply moving about being inside a tradition that's bigger than you. The villagers weren't performing for cameras. They were celebrating, for their families, for luck, for the turning of a year. I was just there, quietly, with a camera, trying to hold onto something that by its nature was already disappearing.
From the Streets to Prints
Some of the images from that night are among my favorite work. They capture something I can only describe as beautiful chaos, the collision of tradition and a kind of cinematic surrealism.
Several of these photographs will be joining the PeakLight Chronicles print collection in the coming weeks. If you're drawn to scenes that feel like they exist somewhere between memory and imagination, keep an eye on the shop.
Bertrand Renaud is an award-winning French photographer based in Hong Kong. His work focuses on street photography and landscapes across South China.
