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.