Dear d70

Thanks to you, I could not post any pictures in time for the arrival of 2008. I know it has been a long year for you. Ever since I bought you, you have taken no less than 16000 pictures. You've been put through difficult times, under the rain, baked in the sun, exposed to gusts of sand in the outbacks of Australia, and not a moment of rest from the 3 weddings you've shot. I understand, it's tough, but dun do this to me ever again.

I've spent an hour and a half travelling to punggol, waited another few hours just for the last sunset of the year. And then you formatted my card. Without warning somemore. What are you thinking? You wanna go on strike? I know it's new years eve, but this is your responsibility. You ought to be ashamed of the Nikon badge you wear.

Now you have to force my 3 year old laptop to work OT, putting back the pieces of wadever is left in the card. He did not get a good night's sleep. People just recovered from a heart (disk) failure and you want to torture him. Naughty fella!

Now, go back into the dry box and think through what you've done. If you ever repeat this mistake again, you shall be relegated to back-up status. I'll just have to find someone else to get the job done.

A day through my window

What happens when I mentioned that I have nothing on tdy? A pail, rag and bottle-o-detergent appeared in front of me, together with an order - clean all the windows.

我不入地狱，谁入地狱？Started cleaning from 1030.. continued after lunch... till 3+. As the windows are tinted, I got a good gauge of how the sky will appear through an ND filter. And I saw a great ray-of-light phenomenon spread across the whole west coast. Camera out, naturally =)

As I continued to clean another set of windows with my Nikon within grasp, it started to rain... while the sun was still strong. My instincts (or experience, or science knowledge) told me a rainbow should be appearing anytime soon. The good thing about a window cleaner is that u get to pay attention to anything happening outside, every minute (duh). Lo and behold - a full arc appeared, so close I thought I could spot the pot of gold at the base of the arc.
I couldn't take the whole arc due to stupid HDB obstructions in front... the rain grew heavier, but I snapped on, risking my gear (or perhaps hoping to damage it so i could get a new one XD).

Rain gone, rainbow's gone, 2 more sets of windows to clean. Its already 5+ (trust me, cleaning windows manually is no mean feat). The sun was out strong, and birds began to sing. Looking out of the window (where else can I look...) I spotted birds of breeds less seen. Perhaps because I was already at the window so long, they thought I was part of the scenery. I was lucky to be this close, since 200mm is my longest telephoto available.
Finally finished all windows by 1830, and stopped to admire the scenery before me. It is interesting how good it looks when the grills are open. As the sun sets, I was treated to a red glow from the only energy source in this universe.
Did the calendar mentioned that tdy is a 吉日 for window cleaning?

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。

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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.

Through thick and thin

Such is the value of love

Am I going emo again? Maybe... but one thing is for sure - I've settled upon a favourite black and white conversion process. Be prepared to see more BnW pictures in the future. To me, monochrome removes the distraction of colour, forcing the viewer to focus on the mood. This in turn makes it more engaging.

Emotions gone wild

This is a scary and dangerous thing, as we tend to commit mistakes in such situations. It isn't exactly healthy too. I'm saying this because i just witnessed a wild party during the SPH Txy internal camp. People just went mad, fueled by music and occasional SIA planes flying over. Studious looking people can gyrate so hard as if to shake their pants off, girls screaming non stop as if they have whistles built into their throats, boys behaving like girls and vice versa...

Ok, I admit this is just a very moderate campfire party night. I know there are much much worse cases. But the thing i couldn't understand is, how come people can get so high? Is our society getting so stressed people must resort to such activities to let lose? Or issit because we are born at a time where upholding our moral values is no longer as important?

Wordless Wednesday

posted on a Thursday

Grey days

Yet another RANT

I've finally come to the last wedding pictures for this "season". As usual, I'll do a de-brief of things I learnt.

Where I failed:

• Too tight crops of subjects. I was a little too desperate to capture certain expressions, so much so that I zoomed right into their faces. Not only does it look weird to have 6mpx worth of a face, the picture also fails to tell a story. Why did this person laugh? Why the funny expression? An excuse I can come up with is that with a small and dark viewfinder, I tend to zoom in more closely to look at the expressions. Crap, another excuse for a d300.
• Too much tilt shots. This is getting out of hand. An occasional tilt adds life to the set, but overdoing it resulted in a hap-hazard presentation. Stupid. In my tries for the perfect tilt, I screwed up many shots that would otherwise be ok. In addition, having too much tilt shots also shows that i lack maturity and proper composition skills.
• Poor focus. Can't be helped, I'll get the solution should a new wedding assignment draws near.
• Not observant of light. Mounting a flash results in being totally insensitive to light. I should also learn to add more direction to where my flash is bounced, but have to watch where I blast it at.
• Bias towards family members. I shot so many pictures of my relatives I find them sick. Should have paid more attention to other people. I still lack professionalism.
• Lazy. Somewhere into the dinner, I felt tired and began to think I've got enough shots. But the truth is, the later into the night, the livelier the crowd becomes, and the more opportunities there are. Haiz.

Where I improved:

• Expression. Of course as I mentioned I get too tight expressions, but having expressions is still better than none at all. At least there is a little more variety compared to previous weddings.
• Exposure. Although I have no fast lens and hot bodies, I do have a good flash, helping me nail the exposure for the bread and butter group shots. I need to develop a way to flash without getting reflections from glasses though. An option would be off hand lighting, which is cumbersome.
• Workflow. I learnt to be more organized in picking out the better pictures and developing them, saving time (as if i'm in a hurry...lol)

Enough said. To the average joe, my pics might look ok, even great. But I know where I stand - NOOB

Should I just stop here?

Another rant post, without photos. Weather isn't spectacular, and i'm not really in the mood to shoot anyway.

Almost done editing photos from the penang shoot. Thinking through what i've did so far, I'm forced to ask myself this qn: Should I stop?

I'm a cheapo. I keep holding back my purchases despite knowing how much they can help me improve. I keep thinking that I can shoot like a pro without the need for pro equipment, so long as i develop proper skills. All these because I know I will not go pro, and my equipment will never pay for itself.

Conventional, photojournalistic, documentary shots are now not much a problem. But they aren't challenging. Any bloke owning the right gear would nail them. To go beyond and shine, i'll really need to pump in big bucks.

1) Fast lens. At least a 2.8 zoom, or go for primes. I can contend myself with the flat flashed images, or go get some primes to shoot the really outstanding mood shots. The cheapest 2.8 zoom retails for 600++, and good primes will cost in excess of 1k.

2) Hot body. Either a d300, or get a canon 40d. I've seen how much a hot bod can help nail the shot. Not only with their fast fps, the superior AF system and low ISO noise will give me lots of advantages. Pros can laugh, quoting how they one-shot-one-killed in many situations, but they end up sporting a d2/1d series anyway.

3) Stable tripod. Call me a cheapo, but i'm still waiting for the super steady ballhead tripod retailing below 200 bucks.

But being a cheapo, I'm reluctant to spend. I don't want people to think I dunno how to prioritise my needs, buying exotic equipment just to get photos that don't earn money. It's all about satisfaction. It's just a hobby. Maybe I should just forget about all these and contend myself with normal pictures any tom dick and harry would get.

Verdict - No D300, No more weddings!

It may sound really extreme. There are pros out there shooting d200 weddings, and maybe some d100/d70 pros as well. But in my case, i couldn't be more pissed than missing so many shots because of a body.

Smiles, kisses, handshakes, laughters; the very moments of joy and jubilation that defines a wedding reception all took place spontaneously and without warning. To me, it's like walking into a battlefield. Everywhere i turn, there's a scene crying to be shot, rare and precious memories waiting to be captured. I cannot fail. It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

While I am still far from psychic, I expect my equipment to be at least be as responsive as myself. When I point it at a face, it should lock focus, ok, at least try to achieve focus. But NO. The cam900 system took 0.5sec to START moving the focus, and then another 0.5-1sec to lock focus (if it managed to lock at all) This is like a gun that fires a sec after u pulled the trigger. I'm be better off dead.

The lower resolution of the cameras doesn't make them the ideal choice for group shots as well, especially when the iso1600 noise obscures the fine details.

Fortunately, Nikon's D300 seems like its made specially for the job. With its d2-beating AF system, and noise comparable to a Canon, it is the ideal and most logical upgrade for me. Sadly, very sadly, it retails for SGD2700, and it's unlikely to drop price anytime soon. Looks like i'll have to turn down wedding assignments till i saved up enough for the new toy.