On Vaccinations in the Hong Kong Event Industry

Recently, I’ve been asked several times on the low rate of vaccinations amongst vendors such as photographers, makeup artists and florists in the Hong Kong event industry.

At a recent wedding I worked at (not pictured), I was the only vaccinated vendor of close to a dozen vendors there.

Whilst this isn’t the space to pontificate or speculate as to why people involved the event industry here - who see more unmasked people than virtually anyone save the restaurant industry - still profess to not want to be vaccinated, clients of Justin Lim Photography have generally rested easy knowing that I was one of the first to put my hand up back in April when they became available.

That seemed to be the very least I could do, knowing the immense strains and pressures we have all been under working in high-end events in the last 18 months, with very little effective regulation or protection for external or third party vendors who do not work at the venue itself. Working 18-20 hour days in events totalling thousands of people, shooting dozens of Covid weddings from the early days of the virus onwards, has been one of the great challenges of my photographic career. However, in a sense the jab has at least provided a single plate of armour now.