Category — Articles

When I get bored in Singapore, I would go for short holiday trips (2-3 days) to Malaysia. My favorites are Malaysia’s beach resorts along its east and west coasts. Pulau Pangkor (Pangkor Island) is one of destinations.

Located 40mins by ferry from Lumut town, Pulau Pangkor hosts a series of chalets and resorts on its various beaches.  Here are 2 of my sunset photos taken during my last trip there.

Sunset at Pulau Pangkor

Sunset at Pulau Pangkor

To learn how to shoot on sunset/sunrise photos, read my tips or enrol in my Foundation Photography course.

If you have spent time and money on a DSLR, why not spend abit more on a photography course? I am happy to be your mentor by guiding you.  Join my Foundation Photography Course and start to create amazing photos.

What do you get? 5 lessons including 2 field trips.

Lesson 1 The basic of photography

• Knowing your camera equipment
• Understanding Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO
• Understanding Focal length
• Understanding Composition Rules
• Homework Assignment

Lesson 2 Photography Techniques

• Review of Homework assignment
• Techniques in daylight photography
• Techniques in low light photography
• Techniques in travel photography

Lesson 3 Morning Field Trip

• To practise some of the techniques learnt on lesson 2 at one of the parks in Singapore

Lesson 4 Review and Image Editing

• Review photos taken in lesson 3
• Basic Image management and  editing demostration

Lesson 5 Night Field Trip
To practise some of the low light techniques learnt

What will it cost you : S$200 and your time 
Pls send any inquiries to contact@photoblogtalk.com 

Take Amazing Portraits

Handle Low Light Photography with ease!

Depsite recent media reports that the number of Taoists has declined, folk Taoism events can still be seen often in the heartlands.

Often, the event is to celebrate one of the Taoist deity birthday. One of the key highlights is know as ‘Yew kheng’ or a street procession. The procession is like a mini street parade. Mediums in trance, lion dance, lion dance, devotees carrying sedan chairs are all part of it.

Here are a few photos to share :

The tanki is particitating in the 'yew kheng'

Sedan Chair (koi) bearers jumped over a stove of burning charcoal

Holy Whip to drive away all evil forces

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Well, many times the photos that we took of buildings tends to suffer from a perspective problem. They look like they are falling backwards. This is usually due previous reasons : use of? a wide lens that we used, the angle of the lens tilt or standing too near the building.

If you could counter these by standing far away from the building and using a telephoto lens, then you could avoid these perspective problems. Otherwise some post photo editing is required.

Before Adjustments

Before adjustments, this building looks like it is falling backwards. So we will use Photoshop to make some adjustments.

If you have Photoshop CS3/2, you could do this :

Use the Lens Distortion Correction filter by selecting FILTER > DISTORT > LENS CORRECTION.

In the Transform box move the Vertical Perspective and Horizontal Perspective sliders until your image looks great.? You may need to perform some cropping after the Lens correction has been done. Wahaa! Done

After Adjustments

For those who are using a digital camera, what is the average number of shots you take when you go out for a day shoot? 50-100 maybe. How about if you go for a 10 days holiday tour ? 400-1000 maybe.

The question is what do you do with the shots you took? Some of us will simply upload them into the harddisk and never let them see daylight again. Some will upload the whole lot of shots into a photo sharing site  like http://www.multiply.com .

However if you are serious about photography, then you will spend some time to do some self critique before selecting a small set for processing and uploading. So how do I do my self critique? Here are some of the stuff that goes through my mind when i review my photographs.

1. Does this photograph tell a story by itself? Otherwise you may have to write a few hundred words to explain why you take this photograph.
2. Does it convey a message?  Is there a  message of peacefulness? Devotion? Love? Endurance?
3. Will I hang this photograph on my wall or publish it in a book? This usually goes for my nature shots
4. Is it technically well executed?  Did you control the sharpness or blurriness to the best effect? Did you exposed it correctly to the best effect?
5. Do I like this photograph?

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

ha… Nikon Singapore contributed to the Great Singapore Sale (GSS) by having some promotions. Let me focus on D300 as I am considering one for myself. One first look this seem to be of a good price as S$2999 has always been the Recommended Retail Price (RRP) and now we actually get a 50mmf1.8 lens frees! Of course there are some other freebies like the 4GB memory card.

Well, all I can say is that if you usually buy from the big departmental stores like COURTS, BEST DENKI, then this is a good buy. Else call those smaller photo shops and ask them for how much would a D300 body and a 50mmf1.8 lens cost if purchase separately.

Question : Why didn’t you take photographs recently?
Typical Answer : Nothing to shoot.

Is this true? I would say this is common among us photographers who has been shooting for quite a few years.?When we first started on our hobby, we shoot almost anything and anywhere.? After a few years, we have the “been there, done that” feeling. Then the?camera and?lens started to gather dust at home. ?

How to fix this? A few suggestions :

• Look in the papers for new events. The world is always changing. There is always different reasons to hold different events. Go shoot such events.
• Go at different time to the same old location. Different timing in the day or night gives you different level of light.
• Go with a different lens. Different lens give you different perspective. How about just shooting using ONLY 200mm focal length at the landscape or street scene. Challenge yourself.
• Try a different kind of camera. eg Rangefinder, Holga
• Go travelling
• Go to a different park to shoot your landscape or nature shots.

GIve me any other suggestions.