All these shots were taken at 200mm on a 1.6 cropped sensor. These pictures are cropped. I experimented with aperture and exposure

This shot is my favourite; I think I overexposed the light part and it gave this glow that’s like a special effect. I am totally printing this out and sticking it on my wall or something.

Note: All these pictures are protected by copyright. You are free to share provided you do not crop my watermark and you MUST attribute it to me.

We started the session with a short presentation on the theory portion; what is the best lighting, what different kinds of composition there is, there dos and don’ts of food photography. We then proceeded on with a practical session.

This is our set up, and fortunately BMPL has a large space with large windows for natural lighting.

And that is the photographer instructor Bene (pronounce Benny)! There were about 18 -20 of us, and we all took turns to take pictures of fruits and food. Below I shall show some of the pictures I took.

Green apples.

More green apples.

Tarts.

Strawberries.

kueh.

The lighting was so fantastically set up it was a surreal moment for me when I reviewed my photos. Let’s just say I now know what I need to get better pictures of my baked goodies and all. I really enjoyed myself this session, and got to talk to some photography aficionados. It’s certainly fun to throw terms like stops and metering around without feeling like a total jackass or a total fool.

Now, you may ask me, how and where do I look for and sign up for free workshops offered by the libraries? Simple, go to GoLibrary and browse through the selection of upcoming events and sign up online!

This scenery instills a certain sense of calmness. Nice.

POTW is so lapsed I am embarass. So a little iPhone photography from last evening at Colbar, near Wessex Estate, near Portsdown. It’s so rustic and retro! This estate used to be military barracks and buildings, and are now converted to various restaurants and multi-purpose buildings. It’s out of the way, the food is not really worth the drive there in my opinion, but if you want to escape run-of-the-mill oddball eateries this is a not-bad place to go.

Taken from iPhone with Hipstamatic app.

I know, I’m cheating this week. This photo is of a box of soap roses I got as a gift with purchase from a certain brand. I thought the pretty blue tones will lend well to a lomo-esque feel.

Pentax K-x, Tamron 18-200, 200mm, ISO3200, f6.3, 1/640s, cropped

Not sure why I took this at ISO3200. I gather it’s because I shot on Tv mode and to boost 1/640s it happily upped the ISO. Got this shot at the Chingay Parade at the Singapore Flyer, thought that the half moon is real pretty. There are more visible craters on this, compared to the previous moonshot I have. All in all, it is OK to take moon shots handheld since the shutter speed is so high. I find taking at 1/640s much sharper than 1/320s.

I was helping out at the Stages booth at PA’s Got Talent Art Fair at the F1 Pit Building/ Singapore Flyer area on Friday and Saturday, and I stayed for the main Chingay Parade on Saturday to take some pictures.

*Warning – picture-heavy post*

A performer with the Bornfire Community Circus troupe. I love the backdrop, but I wish the colour weren’t so washed out. It was semi-cloudy at that time with impending rain, but fortunately it didn’t rain on Saturday!

Samba Percussion group at the pre-Chingay event. I tried out this diagonal shot for fun, I really quite hate this angle.

Stilt-walkers with pyrotechnics. When the main event started it was quite crowded, so I took a plastic chair from our booth and stood on it to get at least some semi-decent shots. I love how all the performers have their own lighting (either LED-embellished or carrying some pyrotechnics), so I can post-process shadows.

Gods of Fortune. They were throwing some gold nugget chocolates (I assume) to the audience.

See the eager crowd!

I positively heart this LED lion. So ahbeng, you know?

This is one of my favourite procession. The peacock is so brilliant and beautiful.

I found this car mildly disturbing; it was staring at us!

This is one happy dancer (out of the many, of course).

The RWS oceanic-themed procession was some kind of pretty as well.

SOKA’s animal-themed procession was real cute, even though the blue LED eyes of the giraffe are freaky.

More fire-play.

University cheerleaders from Taiwan.

The CDC float is so… rainbow connection. In the Chingay way, of course.

Apart from happy people, this shot exemplifies “because I got here early to stand next to the barricade so I can so a crappy pocksai cell phone camera to take pictures”. Survival of the earliest, in other words.

Frankly, I got bored halfway through the procession. Troupes after troupes of dancers in different costumes, nothing exciting. They exhausted the exciting acts too early in the show. I got down from my chair about two-thirds into the show and went back to our booth to relak. Then the fireworks went off. You know my attitude towards fireworks – basically I can find a more enduring way to burn money.

What really miffed me about this Chingay is how they let off hundreds of plastic lanterns; some fueled by heat from lamps and some are plastic-covered helium balloons. They float off in the direction of the marina; I bet there will be hundreds of stranded plastic bags on the water come this week. Then what? Are they going to get volunteers to search and recover these plastic bags? Are they sure there’s no damage done to the eco-system and marine life with such an act? I vaguely recall how we were forbidden from letting go helium balloons back in school in the East. One wonders what kind of double standards we are dealing with, if any.

Paint with light

My niece was playing with sparklers on one of the Chinese New Year nights, giving me the perfect opportunity to do some basic light painting shots. I had to darken the image a fair bit in post-processing, hence no EXIF for reference (inaccurate anyway). The key, for those curious, is low ISO (100-200) and long exposure (1 second and longer). Sparklers are really bright and give a better effect compared to cellphone and cheap LED in my opinion.

Pentax K-x, Tamron 18-200, 33mm, ISO400, f4.5, 1/13s, cropped

This suggests CNY is just round the corner. Whee.

Lunar

Pentax K-x, Tamron 18-200, 200mm, ISO200, f6.3, 1/320s, cropped + minimal PP

HANDHELD.

The moon is this round once a month, shot this on 18th January, 15th day of the Chinese lunar month. My itchy hands coupled with lazy bones gives this insane attempt of shooting the moon handheld out of my high-rise window with my lens balanced on the window grills. 200mm is barely adequate for moon shots according to some, unless coupled with a superb sensor. Well, I forgot to tweak my image setting to the highest, so the JPEG is a tinge fuzzy when cropped. What to do? Lazy bones, lazy bones.