Fading Bind

Its been ages since my last project so here it is! These were shot in a few places during my trip to the UK. I cant write too much at the moment as I am still busy editing wedding assignments. I haven't even had enough time to sort the photos from my trip but I hope to put them up here soon. I was going to post this on Halloween but I will be away so I hope you enjoy the photos!

Urbanization

 Credits

Model : Nadine

Assistant : Mahira

I went through my archive and decided that I wanted to dig up some photos from a shoot done about three years ago. It gave me a chance to go through photos that I may have missed out and give them the look that I actually wanted to at the time but did not know how. I shot these with my old faithful Canon EOS 1000D with the EF-S 18-55mm kit lens. Lighting was done with a lot of help from Mahira holding up a reflector. The shots remind me of how extremely hot the location was. Credits to Nadine for not even complaining about it as much as we were. Lol.

Try to get the best out of your equipment; be it a cheap or expensive camera by learning its functions in depth. Once you know what you're doing, you can concentrate all your efforts on making great pictures. I have always considered technique and execution to play an important role in photography. It ties the other important factors like lighting, subject, and background of a photograph together.

No amount of editing in Photoshop can turn a badly taken photo into something even worthy of a professional standard. It is important to put more effort into getting everything right straight out of the camera first, and then use Photoshop to complete the look of the image if you must. I tend to envision my edits even before the shoot. Editing is part of the creative process, it depends on what the photographer wants to achieve.

Panorama

This is a panoramic composite of almost all of the firework photos I shot this Chinese new year on the roof. It was a little crazy but I took each firework individually from each photo and pasted them into their proper positions in this panorama. It was a lot of work and it took about 2 hours to complete but I thought it was a cool idea to show everything in a single photo.

Cityscape Disaster : Transformers

Okay so I went a little crazy and decided to add another photo to the Cityscape Disaster series. The older series was about natural disasters and this one is just... highly unlikely. It was heaps of work but hey, I would be lying if I said it wasn't fun to make. I learned a lot since I did the previous series but this took me a whopping 3 hours to finish. Most of the editing time was taken up by the little details added for realism.

Admittedly, it does not look consistent to the style of the previous series because I decided to retain more natural colors on this one. And sticking to the movie, I decided not to break tradition and added the excessive trademark lens flares. The background photo was taken at the Lintas highway.

Note: I haven't mentioned it but this semester's exams are over! It has been since Friday :D Interestingly, the Tsunami photo which is the first from the series, was also made right after my exam last year.

Here are the links to the previous posts from the Cityscape Disaster series.
Cityscape Disaster : Tsunami
Cityscape Disaster : Tornado
Cityscape Disaster : Meteor Strike

Somewhere Between the Mind and Universe

 Happy Easter everyone! :D

Shot these at the same location as the previous post. I wanted to post these sooner but I completely forgot. I have been studying for my exam this coming Monday and Tuesday.

Which reminds me, I have to go study now.

Nokia Ad

☻EXAMS ARE OVER!!☻

The exams are finally out of the way and I'm free to continue posting :D My last exam paper was today and it was tough but I think it went okay.

Now this is an ad I made for the Nokia 5130 Xpressmusic. Lighting was simple, just one light from camera left and a reflector beside the phone.

Impossible Is Nothing

These were shot about a week ago. I wasn't too sure of what to do with the original and Bernard suggested to create an ad for Adidas.

We did this just for fun. Lighting used was a Canon 430 EX II Speedlite on camera bounced off a white wall on camera left. I'm not sure which one I like better so I decided to post two versions.

I played futsal several days ago with Bernard and Ki Choy. It had only been barely 15 minutes into the game until I got slide tackled (a major no-no in futsal) by a player from the opposing team while I was about to kick the ball . I got injured and so I had to leave the court to try and recover.

It had been a long time since I scored in a futsal match so I wasn't going to let the injury stop me. I got back in the game for the last 15 minutes and scored 4 times.

Now I'm having to deal with a severely bruised right foot around the metatarsal and phalange areas. It's getting better but I limp when I walk because the joints still hurt.

Heroes

It has been pretty boring recently with the lack of futsal and stuff so I decided to have this shoot with Bernard, revisiting a project I did the last time around click here. The idea of course is based on the television series, Heroes.

Credits to Bernard for coming up with the idea for my pose with the red and blue fire.

oh and Selamat Hari Raya to all muslims :)

Shangri-La Tanjung Aru Resort Shoot

Ikhwan, My sister, Joanna, and I went for a last minute photo shoot at the Shangri-La Tanjung Aru Resort. It was literally confirmed on the night before (sorry Derek). Ki Choy couldnt make it to the shoot because of a transport problem.

It was a really nice day but we arrived quite late at around 8am. By then the sun was already quite hot and we had to go in and out of the shade to avoid getting sunburned.

The clouds covered the sun several times so it presented a real challenge to keep the photos consistent in contrast and exposure.

The shoot ended at about 11am.

The Dream

Finally after a whole week stressing about midterms and quizzes, missing out on the UPC photo shoot, I decided to go for a little photo shoot with my sister and my neighbor.

I decided to shoot against the sunlight. And no, a reflector was not needed for this. I love shooting under natural light. It was an incredible shoot, I was feeling very inspired especially since I haven't joined any for a long time.

Thanks to my sis and Bernard, you guys were amazing. :)

The last two photos are my favourite :)

All of these were shot at f/1.8 with my 50mm lens

Glee

I don't always I post photos of myself on this blog, but here it is :)

I tried to get the lighting like the poster photos that they did for the Glee series. I'm not sure if I got it close enough though.

Don't laugh at me or call me kampung style because I don't have professional equipment. I can definitely do much better when I have the right lights. This is just an experiment anyways.

The main light was a DIY Softbox I made fitted on a light which was to the left of me, A fill light from a fluorescent tube directly ahead of me and a foam board reflector to my right.

The rest was done with Adobe Photoshop to create the background color and the text.

Lighting Test

These photos of Bernard were taken last month. All shot in my computer room, with the same settings as before; using a single fluorescent tube as a light source and a home made reflector.

Yeah I know, Improvised stuff, because studio equipment are expensive =/

It was still fairly dark and I was forced to use ISO400 and one of these was shot with ISO 800. Both were shot with an aperture of f/2.8

All I that was left to do was Color Correction in post processing.

Anamorphic Lens Flare

It's been ages since I wanted to take a photo with this type of flare. People usually try to avoid flares, but in some cases, it adds something extra to the photo.

Since I have absolutely no clue on how to produce this flare naturally, I just created it in post processing.

The plug-in used to create this is called Knoll Light Factory by Digital Anarchy. It's an awesome plug-in. It has loads of other flares to choose from too :D

This is Bernard in the photo which was taken in Starbucks of all places :)

BULLSEYE!

This is Ikhwan, and this photo was taken outside of his house. The actual picture was of him jumping onto a white wall, making it look like he was thrown onto it :D

The edit was incredibly simple, but time consuming. There was a lot of layer masking and the really easy part was making the bullseye itself.

The new semester in uni has just begun and I quickly find myself exhausted again. It's not that we have been given that much work to do, its just that I don't get enough rest.

Today was fun, after class at uni and a little discussion with the committee of our UNITAR photography club, we found ourselves jamming at Ikhwan's house.

After that, we went outside to take pictures around the house, while getting attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes which probably saw us as dinner :S

It got dark very quickly as we were taking photos so Ki Choy and I decided to call it a day and went home.

Happy New Year!! [Warehouse Photo Shoot]

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR!! It's already 2010 and I'm turning 20 very soon.

I feel old :p

On December the 28th 2009, me, Bernard, Ki Choy, Ikhwan, Gabby (Gabriela), Trish, Darryl, and Cheryl (my sister) went for a photo outing. The plan was first to go to the grassy, dried up used-to-be swamp area right beside Mesra Alam.

The place, at first glance looked like the perfect place for a photo shoot. Turns out I was wrong. Seeing as it used to be a swamp area, the earth was quite soft. Almost like walking on the squishy (not wet but just squishy) sand area of a beach. The weather that day was not the best and I too was not on my game as I was feeling completely uninspired.

It was incredibly hot. And at the same time, the sky was covered with grey clouds. We only lasted there for around 10 minutes before we decided we should move to another location for a shoot. Ki Choy saved the day as he discovered a warehouse area that we could use nearby the city.

The area was shaded and cool. We had so much of fun there and I got my inspiration back. The actual theme that I had in mind was sort of a masquerade style shoot, but I didn't have enough money to get the more nicer looking masks so we settled to using the masks that Bernard had in his house.

The shoot turned out to be a great success and big thanks to Gabby and Trish for being the models for the day, Thanks to Darryl for being funny :D , and huge thanks goes out to Ki Choy for saving the day, and for the ability of his car to be able to smuggle all of us around town xD

Following recent advice, I reduced the amount of post processing in the photos than I otherwise would have done. Sometimes I just edit the colors too much and don't realize it. I tend to overdo things when I discover something new.

One photo I would like to highlight in this post is the fourth photo from the top. It shows clones of Bernard and Gabby. It has been a long time since I have been wanting to do clones in photos and this is my first try. I wonder why it took me so long to have a go at it. I'll be definitely trying out other scenes with clones as well.

Before this post turns into a novel, I just want to end this post again wishing everyone a Happy New Year 2010!!

Boxing Day Special: Sitting on a Lollipop

This is a remake of the idea that I had before. I never got the chance to post that one up before it was stolen so this is the new one. I think this version has better color than the old one and just like the previous one, my sister is the model :D

There are flaws in the photo, but I really wanted to finish it quickly so I didn't get to notice the finer details. :p

The idea for this edit was really simple. All I needed was to take a photo of a lollipop and a photo of my sister and put them together in photoshop. :p shadow was added for more realism.

Ive been waiting for ages to post this up and it should be the last post this year. It's been a crazy year, filled with ups and downs. Hopefully next year will be better for those who had a bad one and an even better one for those who had a great one.

Trails at Dusk

This is kind of my first time attempting to take a shot like this. It is not often that I get to take these shots as I don't always have the chance to go up high buildings in the city during dusk or night time just to try something like this.

There weren't many cars driving by in the shot because the road wasn't that busy then... I had to take 7 pictures with 5 seconds per exposure and used layer masks in Adobe Photoshop to combine all those lights into one picture.

Even then I still didnt get enough light trails to make enough of an impact on the image... :(
I still like the flare from the lamp posts tho :p

Better luck next time. :p

The Sushi Express

This was taken in a Japanese Restaurant in City Mall with the Nikon Coolpix S210. I was trying to make the sushi train look like a real train. hahaha. I used the Alien Skin: Bokeh plug-in for adobe photoshop to blur the background.

I just got back home. There's so many things to do tomorrow; I gotta pay my semester fee which I completely forgot about, pass up my assignment, get a haircut, and get ready for the Unitar Annual Dinner which was themed:"Hollywood Red Carpet" coming up this Saturday.

And right after the annual dinner, im switching to Study Mode. It feels so dangerous going to class totally unable to focus.

Well not all classes just two...

okay maybe just one...

DOH!

Dreaming In Sepia

I took this picture in my kitchen with the Nikon S210. The vase was actually on top of a fridge so I used stamp the tool in Adobe Photoshop to blend it into the yellow wall behind it. This was inspired by a photo I saw while browsing through the internet so I decided to give it a try.

I was going for a vintage sepia look. Well im not sure if it worked. The noise is deliberate from the Alien Skin Exposure II plug-in [click on the photos to see larger version as the grain is not visible from the small thumbnail]. The old paper effect was done with paper textures :)

But, the more I look at it, the more I start to think that something is missing...

Is it Bokeh?

Now, obviously a compact like the Nikon S210 isn't going to achieve this much bokeh in this kind of situation. The alternative that's closest to real bokeh can be achieved by using the Alien Skin Bokeh plug-in.

Just a little info for those that do not know what bokeh means:

Bokeh comes from the Japanese language that means blur. Its a term used for foreground/background blur in photography.


Cheers :)