A worthy companion

Ideal compact – When one has shot DSLR (and larger) cameras long enough, this term will start appearing in the back of your mind. Nope, I’ve not found THE ideal compact yet, but I’ve got something close enough =) [long post. Beware..]

无言

Sitting under the deep blue sky, watching the clouds roll by… singing to myself, and dreaming of yesterday…

Light you don’t normally see…

Finally gotten around to do some IR pictures. Shot this handheld while on the way to school. It takes quite a bit of estimation to compose this picture, as you can’t see through the R72 filter.

I admit this picture has nothing special, but i missed the IR tonality…

Nice blue skies today!

These are the few of my favourite things

My current obsessions - square crop, infrared, frames. Shot this photo while walking back to the car from the merlion sunrise. The lush and tall trees made me want to frame everything up, and then i saw this building. It was framed so delicately by the trees around me I forced myself to setup the already stowed tripod for this shot. The IR tones further enhances the British flavour of the colonial building. It is a picture which I derived most pleasure in post processing. Finally, the square crop just made it perfect.

It would have been a little better, if the vegetation on the left were a little thicker... but this is already good enough. 知足常乐嘛！

With my BENRO and my NIKON and mEEeeEE

好久好久没有独自户外拍摄了。 今天心血来潮，带着为自己新买的圣诞礼物 - Benro 三脚架，到裕华园做红外线拍摄。如果没记错的话，我应该有7-8年没到裕华园了。公园里宁静的湖水，再配上细心栽种的树木，使这里成为红外拍摄的最佳地点。

单独拍摄，感觉好像在旅行。自由自在，毫无干涉地欣赏公园里的美景，也可算是人生一大乐趣。没有人在身边，就不用浪费精力做无益的交谈，不用浪费时间等别人拍照，思想也不会因别人的照片而受干扰。在这种情况下，一个人的想象力才能得到充分的发挥。大多数有名的山水摄影师，不就都是单独拍摄的吗？

当然，单独拍摄也使我感到蛮寂寞的。夕阳西下后，孤零零地回家时，我突然想找个人陪伴。咳！人生本来就矛盾。

-----------

Omg... that took me 40 mins to write.

What is hairy in front, and bald at the back?

Opportunity
- When it approaches u head-on,
You have no idea what it is.
The moment it passes-by,
There is nothing behind to cling onto.

I remembered when I first shot this photo - a hazy afternoon, gloomy and sad. When there was a sudden break in the sky, I scrambled downstairs for this shot (see post one). It was the first IR shot I ever made, and because I planned it long before-hand, it was a success.

But just because it was a shot taken from a park downstairs, I did not treasure it, and failed to backup. A recent hard-disk crash erased it, and now it was gone.

As year end approaches, I decided to compile my best landscape photos taken this year into a 2008 calender. Browsing through the pictures on my blog, I came to realise that this, together with many other IR shots, were one of the best landscapes I could have had. Perhaps due to the trouble of setting up such a picture, each shot was elaborately planned, resulting in almost 80% keeper rate (thats a lot!). Omfg.. all the original IR shots were lost.

In my bid to retrieve at least one picture, I waited for a gloomy afternoon, and went down to the exact same location for a re-shoot. To my horror, the table is already partly damaged, and a large tree to the right uprooted sometime ago.

Moral of story - nothing is permanent. Backup all pictures you like if you haven't already done so. What is gone can never be retrieved again.

IR @ marina south - Finally

Made it a point to visit this place during the weekend. I've noticed that it always rains in the afternoon, so i got there in the late morning.

The above picture is a composite of IR (background) and normal (sundial) pictures. The angle was inspired by a fellow CSer (forgot the name liao), but i lack the super wide lens he had. I decided to create an illusion by increasing the width of the picture, but fading out the sides... at least it worked for me.

I was quite shagged already when i shot this second picture. The weather was getting really hot.

The algae around the water didn't look special to me, until i converted it to IR. It now looks as if there were ice floating... haha. Now i know what picture to use for christmas cards this coming season.

#4 an unexpected HIT

I wasn't expecting much good comments when i posted the IR pics at clubsnap forum. Much less with this picture. It was just a casual snap, with some underexposure. The colour, and contrast were all lacking. As this was a lousier pic, i posted it as the 4th (last) pic.

Much to my surprise, the post-processing i did to the pic made it quite a hit. Received many praises for this pic. Some even thought i had the patience to use long shutter speed to create the dreamy effects. I was paiseh that all i did was applying effects. Well, i guess its a trade i've acquired from experimenting with photoshop.

Enjoy! 

Fort canning through the R72

The haze is away and the sun is shining. The shutter is open and signals flowing. Let there be light. 

First blood... in white

This is my first ever shot in Infra-Red. To me, IR opens a whole new world of photography in the green (now white) city of Singapore. Ever wondered how would singapore look like during winter? Well, IR would be the closest effect i can come up with.

This shot is taken at a park below my block. There is only 1 hr of sunshine today due to the nasty haze.