Life Voyage

My heartfelt congratulations to Sebastian and Joycelyn.

Yet again...

Yet again...after shooting more than 10 wedding assignments, I still enjoy it as much as my first. The enjoyment of being involved in once-in-a-lifetime happy occasions and the enjoyment of picturing down pieces of wonderful memories.

Among the types of photography assigment I have done so far - product, model, event, corporate function; wedding is still my favourite.

Still remember the anxiety before my first wedding assignment. The anxiety arising from the pressure to deliver what the couple expects of me, the anxiety from fear of equipment failure and the anxiety from worry of knowledge incompetency. All thrown to the back of my head when the moment arrives, after realizing the couple is more anxious than myself.

This time round I did it free-of-charge for a friend whom I have known for 10 years, except of course the lunch I had on his account in their newly furbished love-nest.

Now, allow me to introduce...

SEBASTIAN & JOYCELYN

Click HERE to view more, but first drop me an email(in my profile) to add you into my permit list.

Romance Singapore

A month long campaign starting this friday.

祝,有情人終成眷属

Cluster

clus·ter
n.
A group of the same or similar elements gathered or occurring closely together; a bunch: “She held out her hand, a small tight cluster of fingers” (Anne Tyler).
Linguistics. Two or more successive consonants in a word, as cl and st in the word cluster.

An Item

What makes a couple an item? Ingredients of love perhaps?

Ingredients of Love

a teaspoon of care
a slice of concern
a pinch of thought
a hand-full of time
stir well with a cup of well-mix understanding + forgiveness

Love Is In The Air

LOVE

A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.
A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance.
A love affair.
An intense emotional attachment, as for a pet or treasured object.
A person who is the object of deep or intense affection or attraction; beloved. Often used as a term of endearment.
An expression of one's affection: Send him my love.

A strong predilection or enthusiasm: a love of language.
The object of such an enthusiasm: The outdoors is her greatest love.

"Specially delicated for Mr Poh and Mrs Poh-to-be."

Looking Back...

Looking back...years back when I started my hobby in photography, there's a website I frequent - www.photosig.com; an inspiring site which kindled my interest to explore photography in greater depth. Click on the Photosig URL on the right to access. Visit the site with caution, not because of its adult content but because of the saying - Photography, one of the quickest way to financial ruin. ;)

With my first digital camera Olympus C730UZ on hand - a birthday gift from my elder sis and brother-in-law, I started roaming streets capture pictures of sceneries, people, plants, insects; basically anything that was of interest to me.

Posted a number of images on Photosig, mostly far from interesting and technically flawed. Extracted few decent ones, this one is my all-time favourite.



A long exposure abstract shot underneath the bridge next to Esplanade on a cloudy night. Heard someone won top prize in a photography competition last year using a similar shot. Should have participated it myself!

Some of the comments I gathered for the above shot in Photosig.

"Hello Jason, I think this is a very interesting photo. The colors seem to add a lot to the shapes, and the less noticed curved shapes seem to blend toward the more vivid colors. The sky showing through brings everything together. I would say it`s a pretty good effort, regards" - Jim

"A very enjoyable abstract. Very powerful in composition and so simplistic yet rich in interest. One for the wall. Regards" - Toby

"Very original image! Very nice work! This definitely works as an abstract, that's for sure! I like the tonality that you have applied overall as well. I'm not really sure what I could say exactly that would explain why I'm not giving you a perfect rating; there's just something slightly too dark about it all, but there's nothing that you could really change too much on the other hand either. (I hope that makes sense...) keep up the good work! Thanks for sharing." - Kevin

The memory card supported by Olympus C730UZ is XD or Smartmedia. A 256MB Olympus XD card which supports the panorama feature of the camera cost a whopping $300(almost half the price of the camera) at that time. Unable to afford it, I have to settle for the cheaper alternative without the panorama feature - Smartmedia. Smartmedia cards comes in the size of 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128MB maximum. Why only 128MB maximum? Design flaw. The thickness of the filmsy material restricts it to no more than 128MB.

In Yahoo Auction(SG), I came across a guy selling a panorama-enabled OEM Smartmedia card. Curious on how he did that, I start searching the internet for information on how to enable the "hidden" feature. After nights of research, the so-call hidden feature can actually be revealed by corrupting the card's partition table and reformat it using a specific model of Zio! card reader and downloaded software - by tricking the camera to recognise the card as Olympus-made by changing a value in the partition table.

Holding a note scribbled with the model number and component code of the chipset in the reader, I went hunting for it. After 2 days of search, my effort paid off. Found it in one of the shop in Sim Lim Square. Bought the last piece @ the price of $48 and anxiously rush home to try it out.

All hooked up with driver installed under Win98, next is the moment of truth. By clicking on the program's "Corrupt Partition" button, either I save myself $200 or $100 down the drain. No risk no gain, I pressed the button without much delibration.

Viola! I have with me a self-made panorama-enabled Smartmedia card. Some of the shots using my DIY panorama Smartmedia cards.





Taken along the pavement opposite Boat Quay, I named the above shot "Colors of the Night".

More shots extracted from my photo archive in Photosig, all shot using my departed trusty old friend Olympus C730UZ.











Top last 2 images were captured in Sentosa, shot using special effect filters attached to the front of the camera lens. One filter system I still have it with me over the years is the Cokin Filter System.



Hoya Prism 3 Pass and Star-Cross filters were used to achieve the above cloning and star effects.







So long my friend...Olympus C730UZ.

What are the must have filters?

1) Ultra-violet filter(multicoated) - protects your camera/lenses front lens element from fingerprints, dust and scratches. Cheaper to replace this piece of glass than your camera lens. Multicoating is to prevent flare from external light source bouncing off the filter creating overexposed area, works just like the multicoating on spectacles.

2) Circular Polarizer - held at an angle of 90 degrees from the ray of the sun, it intensifies the blue sky and greeneries. Making nature scenery more saturated in colour and improves the contrast. Another usefulness of it is to cut reflection from glasses or any surface that reflects light. One good example of this usage is to shoot someone wearing spectacles. Circular polarizers are required for auto focus cameras for the focus and exposure modes of the camera to operate correctly. Linear polarizers work well on all other cameras. Take note that polarizer removes 1.5 to 2 stops of light.

Top the chart in filter manufacturing is no other but B+W. Accept no substitution especially for Canon L lenses! ;)

Acquaintances

To my left is Dr H. Rahmat Shah and to my right is Mr Abdul Rahim. They are from Honorary Consul General of Turkey and Indonesia to Singapore respectively. Dr Rahmat is an avid photographer who had shot for Miss World Pageants. Nice and friendly men, ambassadors indeed!

My First Published Work

Featured in current issue of Wine and Dine(Aug/Sept) - IndoChine SummerFeast. A charity fine-dining gala dinner attended by the rich and famous. Amongst the attendees are prince/princess, ministers, celebrities, ambassadors and CEO of MNCs. Dim place with colourful disco lightings, spent alot of time compensating the colour and adjusting the strength of my flash lumination intensity to achieve the desired result. Here are the collages I created for IndoChine.

Singapore Celebrates 40th Years of Independence

My...another attempt in shooting fireworks.

Shooting fireworks holding a 2kg camera in one hand and cable release in another, maintaining it without the slightest handshake for continuous shots of two seconds shuttle speed curtain is no joke. Saving my back carrying a tripod? Not exactly. Had actually lent my dear friend Estee my travel tripod together with my one and only tripod head for her two months Euro trip.

Out of 30shots only manage to salvage 2 decent ones, not after much post processing.



Once a colleauge asked me, "What should your camera settings be to shoot fireworks?" Well, here's my personal recommendation.

Camera Mode: Manual
Aperture: f10
Shuttle Speed: 2 seconds min.(cable release trigger preferably)
Focus: Manual, set to maximum focus(infinity)
ISO: 100/200
Other: Tripod is a must!

Took the opportunity to shoot this moonlight cityscape shot.


This is the first time Singapore celebrates her National Day at decentralised locations - Jurong East, Marina Bay, Padang, Tampinese and Yishun.

Here are the shots I managed to capture standing on the concrete barrier along Benjamin Shears bridge highway, rubbing shoulders with the eager onlookers next to me.

Trekking

trek
intr.v. trekked, trek·king, treks
To make a slow or arduous journey.
To journey on foot, especially to hike through mountainous areas.
South African. To travel by ox wagon.

n.
A journey or leg of a journey, especially when slow or difficult.
South African. A journey by ox wagon, especially a migration such as that of the Boers from 1835 to 1837.

trekker n.
Word History: Though now most familiar to English-speakers and others in the title of the Star Trek television shows and movies, the word trek originally referred to a journey by a much slower mode of transportation than a starship. Trek was borrowed into English in South Africa, where the word was used by the Boers for a journey by ox wagon. A seminal event in the history of South Africa was the “Groot Trek” from 1835-1843, in which more than 10,000 Boers, the Voortrekkers, left the Cape Colony and traveled north and northeast because of economic problems, conflict with the Xhosa, and discontent with British colonial authorities, who had forbidden the slave trade and postulated the equality of whites and non-whites. The British, who seized control of South Africa from the Boers at the turn of the 20th century, seized the word trek during the 19th. Trek is recorded earliest in 1822 in the compound trektow, “a rope joining the wagon pole and the yoke to which oxen were fastened.” Trek in this compound is either the noun or the stem of the corresponding verb in Afrikaans, trekken. The earliest recorded use of the noun by itself is found in 1849, where it means “a stage in a journey by ox wagon.”

Stunned

stun
tr.v. stunned, stun·ning, stuns
To daze or render senseless, by or as if by a blow.
To overwhelm or daze with a loud noise.
To stupefy, as with the emotional impact of an experience; astound.

n.
A blow or shock that stupefies.

Stunned

adj 1: filled with the emotional impact of overwhelming surprise or shock; "an amazed audience gave the magician a standing ovation"; "I stood enthralled, astonished by the vastness and majesty of the cathedral"; "astounded viewers wept at the pictures from the Oklahoma City bombing"; "stood in stunned silence"; "stunned scientists found not one but at least three viruses" 2: knocked unconscious by a heavy blow 3: in a state of mental numbness especially as resulting from shock; "he had a dazed expression on his face"; "lay semiconscious, stunned (or stupefied) by the blow"; "was stupid from fatigue"

Macro

macro- or macr-pref.
Large: macronucleus.
Long: macrobiotics.
Inclusive: macroinstruction.

[Greek makro-, from makros, large. See mk- in Indo-European Roots.]


mac·ro
adj.
Of great size; large.
Large in scope or extent; large-scale: a macro analysis of many reports.