Just a little...

Here's just a little bit to keep your eyes bugged here =)

Shots taken in Thailand, Chiang Rai on my recent trip...



Lovely =)

And more Food! =)





Lightroom Madness. There's this flickr issue with colours and saturation, so they aren't turning out as well as they should...

Updates, A Magazine Offer and A Photoblog Feature =)

Just back from a missions trip to Thailand,

2200 shots in 7 days, I predict my macbook and lightroom will merrily be burning away this Christmas season...

And there's a youth camp next week.

The strudel shot has been selected for a magazine publication!





Yay =)

And the kitty shot has been featured on the cutebabyfix photoblog...



http://cutebabyfix.com/2007/12/08/kitty-pillow/

Tidbits

Here are little bits of eye candy while I'm busy.

I've discovered Lightroom. Yayness! =) It allows me to mass process stuff so much faster. Thumbs up on that.

I've been busy, despite the hols, I'm hardly home. I've been shooting alot my shutter count has crossed 15k, but finding little time to sit down and process stuff, and I'll be gone again on tuesday for a week to Thailand on missions, so hopefully I'll be back with great stuff, and time to process my shots...

So, enjoy these little bits. =)

Cold Steps


F/8 1/2s Iso 400, 28-135mm IS USM, Canon 300D

Chocolate Fondue Strawberries


F/5 1/13 Iso 200, 28-135mm IS USM, Canon 300D

Made by the guys for the girls on blue/pink evening.

Dribble dreams


F/8 1/500 Iso200, 28-135mm IS USM, Canon 300D

Shoot,chip,volley


F/8 1/800 Iso200, 28-135mm IS USM, Canon 300D

Friend on the rooftop of vivo city, candid, right off the floor shots. Leading lines and depth.


Here they are... for the time being...

Refreshers

Exams are over, lots of shoots lately, and posts will be up soon...

New hardware, ditched windoze for the just refreshed Santa Rosa white macbook finally, checking out lightroom first, which I'm inclined to use for now... I'm not sure about aperture yet. And its alot more accurate to edit images up on a mac, the display is simply mindblowing, and the colours are great...

Cafe Pralet =))

Just remembered I had some photos from an FCM outing to Cafe Pralet... Here are just little bits of it =) I didn't shoot much, heh, didn't know how they'll react to this guy with a massive dslr shooting at their stuff... =)

I don't think they have a website... but here's a link that shows the location...
http://www.hungrygowhere.com/caffe_pralet

The ambience in the place is really warm and cosy (at least in my opinion, I love warm lights, a yellow glowy interior, nice plush sofas, soft music...) And it wasn't crowded, just perfect for a place to chill out... Food prices are not too bad, you can get an entire decent meal at around ten bucks, (which includes dessert and a drink...) , and the proportions are quite alright... There's a cooking/baking school next door by the same people, so some of the creations I guess, come from next door... I can't remember the spread of cakes and stuff, but its a good variety, and some stuff is really rare, like the Irish Bailey Cream cake which I had...



Love the creative menu... Its a calendar stand thingy... =) Classy, modern, simple =)

Seafood baked rice! Really really good. ALOT OF CHEESE ON TOP =P```



THE BAILEY'S IRISH CREAM CHOCOLATE CAKE =))



Okay, it wasn't as great as I would have expected it to be... (cos the Irish cream taste wasn't that strong, and I'm an Irish Cream fan... Maybe the students baking it next door snuck some from the bottle. Grrr.)

I think I sound like a girl. Heh. Usually guys don't get this excited over pastries, cakes and chocolate. But it was good...

Had this sour plum cooler thingy for the drink... didn't snap pictures of it, but it was great... and they had real sour plums in it... (I got about 6 of them... heh, compared to the rest who got 3/4...) Thinking of it makes me thirsty...

WHO WANTS TO GO =)) I'll prob. find one day to org. an outing there to chill out and grab a meal after the exams...

Snippets of September

Just 2 more Shots before the month's end, due to schoolwork commitments, things might be a little slow here, but I promise to be back with loads during the holiday season =) I've got 1 overseas trip to thailand and 1 camp, so do expect more then! In the meantime...

Urban Decay vs Urban Development



Shot it, because of the contrast between the left and right walls, where the left shows and older side of town that's decaying, despite facelifts, and the right would be the MPH building... Its a pretty stark contrast between the two... and the light cuts nicely across the road... Is modernisation just a facade of urban decay? Or does it just simply delay decay? =)

Just a simple backlane shot from near SMU, in the city hall area. Backlanes have always sparked a little curiousity in me to wander through them and see what goes on =) This lane had loads of graffiti here and there, and it was surprisingly neat and well kept despite the old buildings.

Workspace =)


here's a little peep of the wall beside my desk. Its decorated with my bright little moo cards to cheer up the day, along with letters, and various little postcards that livens up the place =)
And oh! there's still like 40-50+ moo cards if anyone needs little one-of-a-kind bookmarks =)

Shot yesterday for a combined FCM meeting, Most are people-shots, and I won't be posting them up here... Unless they give me their explicit permission of course... =) I have a certain flair of unglam photography. Or at least, few people appreciate the candid and portrait shots I shoot. It's about capturing expressions and emotions.

Perhaps because, I myself lack these two at times.

Don’t look for “depth” but instead search for subject aspects which prove the presence of depth. -Andreas Feininger

Flickers of September...

I've been pretty busy this month to process much photos, and yups, being a bit lazy on that... heh.
Anyway, here are a few little glimpses of september's little endeavours...

Depths of the Kitchen Table


Canon300D F/3.5, Ex 1/50, Iso400, 28-135mm IS USM

It was a pretty fun afternoon as we attempted italian cuisine =)


Carbonara!


Bolognaise...

We ran outta sauces in the end...

And one random shot from the past which I missed out on posting...
Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry


Canon300d, F/22, Ex 1/40, Iso 200, 28-235mm IS USM

This is one vehicle with character in it =)

Fireworks Fest 07' - Team Spain

It was a pretty wonderful experience to be able to shoot the fireworks fest from the panoramic view @ tanjong rhu, except for the fact that the team decided to concentrate majority, if not almost all of their bursts to be closer to the skyline then to the platform... It was a drizzly overcast evening, but thankfully the rain stopped at 7...
Thankfully got a life from Cecil, and hiked there with him and Eric(edgedale) for around 15 minutes to grab a pretty nice spot... Setup shop on the less-wet rocks there, and realised my tripod doesn't actually allow you to go very low... Was taught on how to do manual focusing by Cecil, and spent like 70 shots zeroing in on several buildings till I eventually got the sharpest that I could with my relatively old 300D...

Decided on the settings of 5-6seconds of exposure per shot, F/11, and Iso 100 of course, the widest lens I had was the 28-135mm IS USM, shot at the widest focal length... I guess its a tricky part now knowing how the team would organise their shots to appear... otherwise I would have scoped in closer...

Anyway, team Spain was relatively conservative I think? or maybe they're just saving up for the internationals in Malaysia in a week's time... Alot of low level sprays and bursts, and there were several moments went everyone went "tio con!" opening our shutters to realise that they were just gonna do a whole stretch of low level sprays... Heh, we ended up speculating that Team China would probably do better cos they have cheaper fireworks and cos they better practice hard for the beijing olympics...

This is the first batch, out of a total of over 120+ shots, not including the zeroing ones which would total it to 180+ for the whole night's shoot..

RED was a dominant colour that night =)

Images are best viewed large, from the flickr gallery... and my humble apologies if it takes some time to load... but it'll be worth it =)



One of my favourites... and one of their largest releases... Burn da launchas amigos!

This one's distinctly green tipped and shot individually...





This trio is spectacular... distinctly shot and it opens up to a very nice "saturn" like spread..

This is a distinctly large bouquet... not too messy, and very nice streaks...





This is one of the more intense releases, very nicely shot with bits of stardust around it...

This one's a very distinct bouquet, where you can see the individual bursts, nicely framed with stardust again...





Purple-pink is one of the rarer colours seen... beautiful !

Orange bursts with purple tips... breathtaking... its a good colour combination in my opinion...





This is how they look, in the early stage before a full blast... nice streaks...

Nice framing idea, a little strange cos of the green rain behind it, but still spectacular =)





This one's a beautiful spread to end it all off for this batch, a shower of diverse colours...

I'll be post processing more if there's time in the week, and yes, my Moo cards are here! =)

Media! Nowpublic.com =)

Okay, I'm quite surprised and happy that nowpublic.com grabbed a shot up for their news article =)
I'm in the media! Lols =)

http://www.nowpublic.com/singaporeans-celebrate-national-day

Do head there and take a read, its a contribution-based sort of news site, so you get to see various opinions of particular featured issues and stories... Not just the usual controlled media that's restricted...

Here's the shot again, entitled Rainbow Burst!



City of possibilites? Duh! There's always possibilities anywhere, everywhere.
I think its a subtle move to sort of propagate to the masses that we're an "open" country...
Ironically, we're known to be in a place renowned for feeding the young to grind through the education system...

Fireworks!

Yesterday was national day... After much debate, decided to head down to the esplanade at around 6, which was terribly late compared to the thousands of kiasu singaporeans who probably have been camping there since lunch time...

I had little wish of joining the crowd, even if it meant getting a clearer spot, it probably meant quite a fair bit of wasted hours... anyway, ended up at a nearby park opposite the esplanade, beside the war memorial, found a spot, which was pretty difficult, being jampacked , and where they had huge spreading trees around... Setup shop there, and was joined soon by a few other shooters, two american chaps, an indian national, and two nus guys...

I'll let the shots tell it all, it was difficult. We caught the side/rear end of the fireworks, accompanied by huge plumes of smoke from the rapid release... and the wind sort of wafted it all over the place... still managed to grab a few decent shots though...

Shots were taken with a tripod and the 28-135mm IS USM set at infiinty focus...





Cropped, and original...
Canon300d, f/8, 2.5seconds, 47mm focal length, Iso 100




Canon300d, f/8, 3.2 seconds, 47mm focal length, Iso100
National colours...



Canon300d, f/8, 2.5seconds, 47mm focal length, Iso100


It was a dodgy night, shot, and scooted out of there soon before the human floods enter the train station...

I'll post up more as soon as I get to post process more shots... =)

13 Lines of Death...

The 13 lines of LCD death have appeared on my laptop screen progressively over the weeks...

Yeah. And the 13th one appeared on Friday the 13th... =)

Time to change... Giving up on PCs... gonna head over to Mac=) It'll be much better for post processing anyway...

Grr. Waiting for Comex... which is end august -_-

http://www.comexshow.com.sg/

I'm hoping for freebies =)

Street Shoot partII...

Two more Shots from 11/7's walkabout shoot...

Unzip My Eyes...


300D, F/5.6, Ex 3/10, Iso400, w/28-135mm IS USM

After dinner, decided to walk down to the esplanade and sort of check out the platforms and stages built for national day, it was already pretty dark, decided to walk along esplanade bridge instead... This shot's taken from under the esplanade bridge, where the orange streetlights helped to cast this dim glow onto anything white, spotted this gap between the roads, and decided to venture a shot... It looks like giant zipper, with a building bring worked on in the distance...

Unzipping your eyes to the progress of society... where the physical is often too much an imaginary yardstick for the progress of the soul of society itself.

Esplanade...


300D, F/3.5, Ex 1/4, Iso200 w/28-135mm IS USM

Okay, I testify of Canon's Image stabilisation... managed to take a decent night shot at Iso200 =)
Shot this while on the esplanade bridge, somehow, it actually looks pretty beautiful with all the lights on... despite the harsh criticism of it being the durian... from certain angles it actually looks fine... (especially at night...) I think during the day it looks alot less impressive from the outside...

That's all for now... School's starting, so there'll be alot less shots for a while... perhaps.

Street Shoot...

Walked about town yesterday, ran down to college to dump my duffel, and brought along the cam... took a bus down to city hall and sort of wandered to the Bugis area... there's alot of hidden nooks and crannies around, old buildings, backlanes that are worth walking around to explore... And I found this...

Have A Break...


Canon 300D F5.6, Ex1/100, Iso200 w/28-135mm IS USM

Chanced upon a sidelane near bugis junction, somewhere between that and the old NAFA building... spotted a whole row of rickshaws, and quite a number of rickshaw riders there taking a break, snoozing and socializing in their little social circles... Shot this kneeling on the road, where thankfully cars didn't turn right into me... The hanging towel and sleeping uncle on it lent quite a fair bit of depth and meaning to the scene... The world has changed alot, where the iron men of the past toiled physically in the open streets, and today's silicon warriors hide in towers of glass and steel staring at little screens... Such symbols are vanishing...

Received several weird looks from the uncles and one young ah beng rickshaw guy,a typical golden lion maned one, stood out from the rest of the greying uncles like parking an evo amongst several benzes. (The context must be ah beng, lols, I don't wanto say sore thumb. I don't think sore thumbs actually, literally stick out. Considering the fact that its your shortest finger.) Received glaring stares from him and several uncles, especially when they spotted this gina doing a high kneel on the side road, with the bulky cam. Decided not to shoot him.

Alone...


Canon300D, F/8, Ex1/25, Iso100 w/28-135 IS USM

Walked further down to where the old NAFA building/campus used to be... Saw this fella all tarped up and neglected... That street corner was a little out of place, facing buildings like raffles hospital and the bugis junction stretch where and old world faces the new across a single street...

Will post more soon... =) Really sleepy now... Zzz... Even though its dinner time...

Randomness from Church Camp

Here are some random shots from Church camp... =)

Flicker

Canon300d F1.8 Ex1/800 Iso400 using the 50mm 1:8 Prime

Shot this while we were having dinner by the beach... was absolutely fascinated by the tikki lamps they put up, and especially so where they used glasses on them, instead of traditionally using kerosene or oil containers in bottles... Ventured a shot in the wind, and it gave some interesting shapes to the flickering flame =)

Surf's Up!

Canon300d F/3.5 Ex1/500 Iso400 w/ 28-135mm IS USM

Shot at the beach, they had surfboards on the beach stuck into the sand for decorative purposes. Warning tongue twister- They had surfboards there without sufficient surf for serious surfers to do some serious surfing =))
*cue applause* Lols...

Corridor

Canon300d F/1.8 Ex1/50 Iso400 w/ 50mm 1:8 prime

Taken whilst walking back at night, the ambience was typically beach-resort kinda, with warm lights, but it was really quiet here, and a little eerie on hindsight...

Kayaks & Canoes

Canon 300D, F/3.5, Ex1/80, Iso400 w/ 28-135mm IS USM

At the beach, spotted a whole stack of canoes sporting interesting colours other then your standard yellow/reds...

Friends!





Whiffer and Cream bananas have an uncanny resemblance. Dale has anime-like eyes that are waaayy huge. Plushies united! They still need the warmth and comfort of friends whilst stuck in a cold conference room... =)

Hurricane Lamp...

This was shot in batam, just when we were having our dinner by the beach @ sundown...



Shot w/Canon 300D, f/3.5, ex 1/1000, Iso400, focal length30mm, w/ 28-135mm IS USM

If you look closely, the orange glow on the left is cast by the remnant rays of sunset, and the lights at the base of the lamp reflects the lights on the beach where others are having dinner, as well as the brighter lit sky behind...

Thought I lost this photo along with some others, somehow windows messed up by displaying them with another image, until you actually preview them. One more reason to be change to mac =)

Posted it on flickr. 5 hours later, this morning, I've got 22 comments and a 100+ views, which was a pleasant thing to wake up to... =) I'll be posting more...

More Hearts to Serve...

More photos of the lovely spoons!








I love playing with the 50mm and Depth of field... =)
Boosted up the saturation and contrast to give it a little more emphasis and depth =)

A Heart To Serve

A Heart To Serve, originally uploaded by jamestraceur.

Shot with a Canon300D, F/1.8, Ex 1/640, Iso400, 50mm 1:8 Prime

After 20+ tries at it, I think this is one of the best few shots =) Our youth fellowship's 9th anniversary souvenir, based on the theme "a heart to serve" spoons were chosen to represent the theme...

In the process, I've learnt how to pain cute little red hearts... (thanks to the 2 very patient art teachers...) Heh. In their opinion my hearts are way too slim (despite my protests that my hearts were healthy, unlike their sugar loaded fat ones) But you've got to admit, little wide, fat hearts brings the cuteness factor up by way more then a notch =)

I'll post more in time to come once I'm done with some post processing... =)

Walkabout shoot 28/06/06

Romped around parts of the city hall area... Walked along the backlanes near the philatelic (I think it spells this way) museum near wesley methodist, back down to the central fire station...

An Angel Landed...



Shot at the Armenian Church, from a rear gate looking into the courtyard... Decided to put it in Sepia =)
Canon300D, F/16, Ex 1/50, Iso200, 28-135mm IS USM

Masonic Bouquet...



Canon300D, F/4, Ex 1/800, Iso200, 28-135mm IS USM
I walked past the masonic lodge, (into it actually) and shot this at their restaurant. Cool. Never knew they had a restaurant... Mrph. At least those freemasons didn't have security or stuff like that. Very foreboding place.

Arrowed Door...



Canon300D, F8, Ex 1/320, Iso200, 28-135 IS USM
Thought this door looked interesting... Shot it off one of the backlanes across from SMU near the cheers store...

More to come =) All photos linked to my Flickr Page