Food, Film & Fotography.
Pebble road leading to infinity.
This was part of the pineapple series a while back but I forgot to post it up. For this, I experimented with some composition tips I read about setting the horizon 1/3 from the top of the frame.
f8, 1/200s, 18mm.
Haven't posted food related stuff for a looong time. It was my grandma's birthday many weekends ago and we had 2 tables at a local restaurant for lunch. The composition sucks I know, but I didn't wanna make myself too stand-outish in a restaurant lunch. First course Longevity Noodles.
Next was the Cold Dish, which had jelly-fish, kong-bao chicken, siew mai, dumplings, fish cakes, etc.
Followed by a delicious Pih-Pah Duck.
After that a new dish of Squid wrapped in Plastic.
And then a double entree of Prawn Salad (yeah looks like some brain) and Butter Prawns.
Next the ubiquitious Steamed Fish.
And the aftermath of it.
Ending soon with a Basin Vegetables which includes mushrooms, sea cucumber, cabbage, pork knuckle, etc. Bad angle I realized.
Then to end it we "had" Pork Belly with Buns.
We also had Yam Paste but I was too busy eating it to take a photo of it. Oh yah, fruits also, if you are really detailed! :P
Blogger keeps having a lot of problems lately. Namely not updating my posts when I do some changes to them...
Anyway couldn't resist touching up one of the fashion show shots as a preview of what's to come. Enjoy!
FoodSceneriesSportsConcertsBirdsStreet lifeMisc.
I still can't say for sure which is my preferred subject to shoot or which subject suits my shooting style. This is important as you will know what lens to upgrade to. For instance if you are a keen on sceneries you will do good to invest in a AF-S DX 12-24mm f/4G IF-ED and if you are a macro shooter, a AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED.
Anyway, digressions aside, there must come a time when you can say to yourself that you've reached a certain milestone in your phototaking journey. For me this first step was reached yesterday when I joined a band of photographers to shoot a Singapore Fashion Festival show at Civic Plaza. Though I learn something new from every subject I've shot, I believe I've gained a tremendous amount of experience from this shoot, whether it is by observing the professional photographers or by taking note of my mistakes. I don't know what the next milestone will be but I am looking forward to learning more. Remember, it is always the photographer, not the camera that is in charge.
p.s. Though of course I am still aiming for a AF-S VR 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED and a SB-800 after my first paycheck. :Pp.p.s. Anyway, will be busy this following week, so look out for another mega photo post of the fashion show soon. Cheerios!
Decided to start this new series of photos. Obviously they will be portrait shots instead of my usual sceneries. But I don't foresee many of such photos due to my inclination for still objects.
f8, 1/500s, 300mm.Important: If you are or are related to the person in the photo and do not wish for it to be posted on the web, please let me know (before you chop me to bits) by posting a comment as well as a valid email address. Otherwise feel free to say hi! Thank you. =)
Bike in the Dust. Desaturated, adjusted Levels and Color Balance.
f5, 1/320s, 35mm.
A House.
First time I am doing a "Sceneries..." instead of a "Scenery..." because these two shots complement each other. Located in the grounds of a temple, it is used for staging chinese operas.
f5.6, 1/125s, 18mm.
On the 16th of March, I attended local singer Kelly Poon's campus concert at UCC with KQ. It was free so I thought, what the heck, just go and take some photos. We entered the courtyard area 15 mins before the show. Not too many people but apparently ticket holders are allowed in before the fan club ppl. Hmm... anyway we chose a vantage point and waited for the show. Hmmm... I saw two official photographers there also. One of them looked like my (distant) friend whom I din know was a pro photographer. Well, at least his kit looked pro.
The event started rather promptly at 6 with a 93.3 DJ playing the host (and who looked much nicer than Kelly). Kelly appeared soon after in a top which can only be described as frumpy looking. Trust me, the full body shot of her looks even worse... Sorry Kelly if you are reading this. You should discuss this wardrobe issue with your image consultant.
Oh the only saving grace, her heels looked nice.
Kelly sang some songs, played some games with the audience, you know those trivia Qs like what's the name of her album, etc. with the prizes being autographed posters.
Then in the middle of one song she started throwing rolled-up posters to the audience, which appeared out of nowhere. The posters I meant. And there was a minor frenzy. Anyway around 25 mins later it was announced that it was going to be her last song! WTH!!! Total concert lasting only 30 mins??? Man... so much for a free concert. I realized I didn't mention anything about her songs. They were nice but frankly I was too busy trying to get good photos than actually listening. :P
Sunset @ Kent Ridge. Taken by CY at Kent Ridge Park.
f8, 1/800s, ISO200, 18mm.
Was back in M'sia over the past weekend and managed to do some shooting in midst of the tight schedule. Woke up early in the morning to make the trip to this pineapple plantation some distance away from my home. I used my brand new 2GB Twinmos 66x SD card bought recently at the IT fair which performed remarkly fast. In fact, I couldnt tell the difference between it and my Sandisk Ultra II which is supposed to be faster. But there was a minor fiasco as my computer couldn't read it when I tried to download my photos. Had to resort to formatting it and then recovering via some utility program. Thankfully all the images were intact. Problem arose because I did not format it with a computer first before using it in the camera. Goes to show that you should always expect the worst when embarking on a photographic mission. Anyway lets have the photos do the talking.
A bridge apart.
A sea of young pineapples.
More of them!
An attempt at a more artistic shot.
A Fruit (with a crown).
f4, 1/160s, 50mm.
OK, I guess from all the teasers you can guess that this jumbo post has something to do with the beach. Well yeah, on the 4th of March I was lucky enough to be asked to cover the NUS Arts & Social Science Beach Fiesta. Can imagine how excited I was coz this was my first ever photographic assignment. No, I wasn't paid la, but the experience I got from shooting at a beach is priceless! Not many people can get to do it without kena hoot by over-protective boyfriends. Anyway I had some regrets though. But more of that later.
Just a short intro first to what this fiesta is all about. It's organized by the NUS Arts & Social Sci faculty and comprises of two parts. A beach volleyball tournament and a beach pageant. Reached Sentosa around 10+ and immediately started shooting. Received an official tag which served as a talisman to protect me from being hoot. Most of my shootings alternated between my 70-300mm and 18-55mm. Didn't wanna use my 50mm coz I thought it might be too restrictive and I didn't need the f1.8 anyway. Sigh if only I had a 70-200VR f2.8 or 80-200 f2.8.
Initially I thought that I would post the pageant photos here but dunnoleh... is it ethical to post their photos here without consent? Some of them can send to FHM one leh. And also since I don't have the habit of watermarking my photos, other ppl might use it for ulterior purposes like kidnapping or stalking. Then also they are ordinary students, no celebrities. So they might want privacy? But haha... I think very few people read this blog anyway. Update: I decided to post some non-controversial pics. I don't want to break any rules.
People post AV girls and bikini babes in their blogs, I post bikini hunks. Sure win NUS Best Blog one. Wahaha...
Managed to capture some dramatic shots.
Some volleyball pics.
Even a pseudo-artistic attempt.
Before the pageant began, there was a performance by this duo from a local music cafe. Imagine having to sing with a less than acceptable sound system at 12noon. They were hot, literally!
Here they are, all the contestants in a row to face the firing squad.
After 3 rounds of grilling under the sun, finally here is the King and Queen.
Actually I have many more shots of the pageant but I am not going to post them here. Want to leave them to your imagination mah. Haha... If you are keen in any of the photos which you think exists, contact the event organizers for it. I've send them all of the good ones.
After the pageant was over, my job was more or less done. After bumming around a while more, me and CY headed home, but not without trying the luge ride first. Hehe...
One major lesson I learnt was to always be prepared for the worst. Halfway through the pageant, my 1GB SD card was nearly full. I couldn't spare the time to get my 128MB card which was a distance away so I had to resort to changing to lower quality JPG and deleting some of my earlier volleyball photos. And while the judges were determining the winners, I had to run several hundred meters away to download the files to my notebook which had only several hundred MBs left, so I had to delete some other stuff from my notebook. Lesson learnt: Will be getting another SD card before my next major shoot and if I bring a notebook along, it had bloody better have some space in it.
Another lesson is to always experiment with the camera settings. I almost never applied the depth-of-field effect in all my shots. I think what was going through my mind was that setting a smaller aperture will result in shaper images, hence my settings were f8 and f11 for most parts of the day. This is true of course, but then I am shooting portraits, so less sharp images are not really a problem and a nice bokeh will be better instead. Also by setting aperture priority to small apertures, there are times when the shutter speed became too slow and some of my shots were blurry due to handshake. Normally the speed is still high enough but as I was using a long lens, the shaking was amplified. Lesson learnt: Experiment with large apertures as well as fast shutter speeds.
Third lesson is not to be lazy. There was a total of maybe 24 volleyball teams but lazy me only shot a maximum of 6 teams in action only. Why? Because the rest were in the area which had no shade so I was lazy to shoot there. WTF! How can I be so lazy?? Now ended up I don't have that many volleyball photos to show and most of them are kinda repetitive anyway. Lesson learnt: Be more hardworking and to slog it out.
Final lesson is to improve my warming up skills. What I mean is the ability to build a rapport with strangers and get them to pose for me. I noticed alot of event photography involves taking posed photos of people, either groups of friends, couples, etc. But I only took very few of them. And because I haven't warmed up yet when I first arrived, I missed the chance to take photos of the pageant contestants as they were having their hair and makeup done. Lesson learnt: Be brave!
Singapore Nightline
A shot that has been done to death but nonetheless, here it is.
f8, 1/2s, ISO1600, 18mm.
