Portraiture: Teluk Likas

It's been days since I wanted to take a picture here in Teluk Likas, which quite recently has been beautified with lots of flowers and trees into a park where people come to have picnics or just to hang out.

Going past the place one day I noticed these pillars and I was inspired to take pictures there. We finally went there today and my sister volunteered to be the model. We didn't have much time, plus it was really hot in the afternoon. The shoot barely took 10 minutes when we left and this is my favourite one. :)

Shooting The Hallways

I took this picture in one of the hallways in my new university :)
This is Ki Choy in the photo. We were there till late evening trying to put up the bulletin board for the photography club.

[The Board]

After that, we got carried away taking photos around the place that by the time we were done, we realised that it was already 7pm. Surprisingly, the lighting in the hallways created for an interesting effect to take photos.

Portraits

Yeah so I haven't been posting many portraits recently so... TADA!.

ahem...

anyways this is a picture of my sister at... guess where... One Borneo, Just outside Starbucks on the ground floor. We were just leaving when I saw these decorative lights along the way so I got my sis to pose beside it. There was another color which was blue but then I didn't really get good shots beside those...

Maybe I should start posting more portraits... :)

Anyways, I dont have too much to write... Im too exhausted right now because I spent the whole day going around town doing stuff for the photography club with Ki Choy and my Sister.

Mission Impossible:
We were out from 9am to 7pm, and later I really want to watch the Champions League Final at 2am and tomorrow I've got Orientation at UNITAR so thats going to be from 8am to 5pm, and then later in the evening I might have to go to the prayer group at CMI.

Help me :(

Scorpionida

This morning as I was heading out to church with my family, we found a dead scorpion beside the car before leaving and we could only assume that our dog, Chester had somehow killed it because Happy, our other dog had been chained far away from the scorpion.

Exactly how he did it will remain a mystery to us. We're just lucky he wasn't stung by it, well he doesn't seem to have been stung but its night time now and he's still running around so I guess he's fine.


update:
Ok just to be clear for some people who seem concerned about chaining dogs, we only chain the dogs when necessary, we know when to let them go

example:

- when opening the front gate, so that they dont escape [and then let them go when the gate closes]

- at night or when we are not at home, we only chain Happy because shes small enough to squeeze through the fence and run out of the house compound.

Nikon Coolpix S210

Mum got herself a new camera today :) its the Nikon Coolpix S210. I havent got round to try it out too much yet but the first few pics are really good. [I took this pic after getting home]


[Below is an article from dpreview.com]

January 29, 2008, Tokyo — Nikon Corporation is pleased to announce the introduction of the COOLPIX S210, a stylish new camera that’s a pleasure to carry and a joy to shoot with. Built on a custom application of Nikon's innovative EXPEED digital image processing concept and incorporating the precision optics of a NIKKOR lens, the COOLPIX S210 places advanced shooting functions comfortably in the hand for greater fun with photography.

Outstanding imaging ability begins with 8.0 effective megapixels of sharp resolution. It gets even better with its digital image processing engine that faithfully reproduces fine details and subtle tones, delivers quick response, and maintains image quality and clarity when taking advantage of extended light sensitivity settings as high as ISO 2000. And completing the triad is the clarity and precision provided by a 3x Zoom-NIKKOR lens that covers a practical range from 38-114mm (35mm format equivalent) to ably capture everything from group shots to close-up portraits. Electronic VR image stabilization adds extra reassurance that the results will be sharper and clearer, especially in lower light or when shooting moving subjects.

As befits a fine photographic tool, the COOLPIX S210 is housed in a slim, quality-crafted aluminum body with gentle contours that fit comfortably in the hand. Functional beauty and classic camera appeal are the theme throughout, from the hairline treatment on the face to the clean design of the back with large control buttons and the user-friendly rotary multi selector carefully positioned to provide intuitive operation.

Unitar Registration Day

[Unitar Building]

Just registered today for the May student intake. It took quite a while getting through all the registration papers which left my hand sore from writing. When we paid and sorted everything all out, they gave a Unitar shirt, bag, and neckstrap, which left my sister jealous cause she didn't get any of these when she registered last year :p . Before we left I decided to take a picture of the building. Semester starts on the 1st of June.

[Free Stuffs :D]

Canon Advertisement

[original shot]

Lighting setup:
main light to the left and reflector on the right.

Just to be clear, I wasn't hired to make an ad for Canon. :P
It started out as a plain update photo for an earlier post.

But then, as ideas seemed to flow along in photoshop, I continued to add more to the photo, slowly morphing it into some sort of advertisement.
I dunno, it seemed like a fun idea to create one :)

And then I thought it looked a bit plain...
So I added a little something...

[Final Image]

I hope Canon won't mind... :D

Roses for Mary

I took this picture last night when I was at the Mary Immaculate Church. This is the grotto [a place where people come to pray or put flowers] at around 7pm. I was there with my family for the Intercession [Prayer Group]. So anyways, we arrived early so we decided to visit the grotto for the first time [we've always walked by but never stopped there].

When we got there we saw a friend from the intercession sitting there and my sister and my mum went and sat on the bench too. I took my camera out just to see whether I could get some good photos and as I walked towards the bench, a sudden flash of inspiration hit me when I saw the silhouettes and the shadows created by the grotto, I instantly imagined what the scene would look like if it were rendered in High Dynamic Range.I got to work trying to get pictures of the scene, but then, armed with no tripod whatsoever and in the dark, it was difficult to get a clear and bright shot of the scene.

All I could do was improvise and sat on the ground, used my knee as a mount like a tripod and out of desperation for faster shutter speed, I hit ISO 1600 and took the photos in raw mode with exposure bracketing. I knew the noise and quality would haunt me in post later but all I could think of was getting all 3 exposures perfectly.

When I was done taking the pictures and walked towards them, my sister told me that she saw an apparition of Mother Mary wearing a white robe and blue veil walk towards them and then vanished. The grotto has always been a place where many people have had extraordinary experiences and I guess my sister was lucky to be one of those who are able to witness such a miracle.

When I got home, sure enough the noise was horrifying and it took alot of work in photoshop to remove all the noise after Tone Mapping the 3 pictures in Photomatix.

Settings:
Av mode
F-Stop: f/1.8
ISO Speed: ISO-1600
Focal Length: 50mm

Viva La Cobra

Of all the poisonous insects like centipedes and scorpions that sometimes appear around the compound of my house, I really didn't expect a baby cobra to suddenly land on that list.

My mum was the one who noticed it because my dog, Happy, had been barking and jumping around the bushes for most of the morning chasing something, and when she went to have a look, she saw the little cobra hissing trying to fight back at Happy.

Once we brought Happy away from the cobra, I went closer and took photos of it. It started to back away and hiss and it somewhat jumped a few times, while mum bravely took a leaf picker [I'm not really sure what it is but it picks things up] and went closer to the fleeing cobra.

My first impression was that she was going to use it as a weapon, but then she caught it and after I got more shots of it, she brought the cobra far from the compound of the house and released it into the wild.

Lens Hood

Bought a new lens hood today :) I got it for rm 50 at a shop called Investline in front of Center Point. A lens hood is a device used on the end of a lens to block the sun or other light source in order to prevent glare and lens flare. And it looks cool too ;p

I used my sister's 2.1mp Nikon Coolpix 775 to take this photo, which came out pretty good even though its quite an old camera ;p

Update: Turns out, I cant use it with my Kit Lens [Pictured Above] because the hood rotates with the front element of the lens as the lens focuses [rendering the hood useless]. So then I bought a 52mm to 58mm step up adapter so that my 50mm lens can use the hood instead :)

Zombie

This was an effect I havent tried creating before so I decided to test myself. It took a few grunge brushes, some filters, dodging and burning, an image of a skull I found on google, and an old pic of myself :)

Soccerball 2

This is a photo of Ki Choy's cousin [Taken by Ki Choy], and I asked him to give me a crazy idea to edit this picture with, so he asked me to use the soccerball from one of my earlier posts and then just to make it fun we found this picture of his foot buried somewhere in his hard drive and thought that it would be perfect to make it look like it was kicking the ball into the air. xD

I honestly didnt know what to name this post xD
I laugh everytime I see this, its such a truly happy face he made xD

MSJ Photography Photoshoot

Reflector man xD

This is Rocky in a bag xD

Rocky is so tiny xDAudrey knocked her head on one of the beams.

These are some pics from the photoshoot yesterday,as well as the photographers and some shots of Rocky :) [not my dog]

We were split into 2 groups and went around the beach in search for the perfect place to shoot the pictures. Carrying a bunch of katanas, we were lucky there were no policemen around otherwise they would think we were trying to stir up some trouble :) .

The shoot started at around 3.30pm and was supposed to finish at sundown but I had to leave at 5pm cause I was already there since 12pm and I was really getting tired.


Models: Audrey & Jenny

Location: Tanjung Aru Beach 2

Theme: Martial Arts

Shooting Style: Free