Dragon Boys [Part 1]
Was just helping my friend to take some pictures for him and his friends, named as ‘Dragon Boys’. (Probably because of the Dragon zodiac, just a guess though). He is a really awesome photographer, so do check out his website! I still owe him a lot of photos from the shoot, those that I haven’t processed yet!
Here are some of the photos from the shoot, from what I edited. With all of these editing and my hectic schedule, I realized that the amount of photos I can finish per day is getting pretty low.
Nomadic Monologues - Cameron Highland Memories [Part 2]
Another update to my recent travel photos. Just trying to get a Zen-like peacefulness from the photos. It is quite a struggle though because I took most of the photos in a hurry and I am trying to make those photos as peaceful-looking as they could be!
On the bad right of the trip, a lot of my wide-angle shots are screwed because of the distortion. This is expected and it kind of makes me wish to get another lens (: Maybe the new Nikon 35 mm AF-S 1.4/F lens. Not that I have money to buy it but dreaming is allowed, right?
Nomadic Monologues - Cameron Highland Memories
I went to Cameron Highlands, Malaysia a few weeks ago with a friend for vacation. It was a great laid-back slow highland small town, full of its own unique charm with tea plantations, strawberry farms.
It’s one of the places where you can’t rush things to happen but need to fall into the pace of the life there. Things will start to look enjoyable once you take a break, slow down and look the life a bit differently.
One of the charms I fell in love was the weather there. Not extremely cold but it is still cooling enough to walk around, have fun without getting sweated! And of course, nothing really beats eating ice-creams in cold weather!! It just doesn’t melt!
I have a huge backlog of photos now, so I think the photos will probably come out at a slower pace. But anyway, I hope you guys would enjoy some photos that I finished processing.
I am putting all my travel photos under this project called ‘Nomadic Monologues’, hence for this series… ‘Cameron Highland Memories’. This series is inspired by this song called ‘Smoky mountain memories’. It’s a sad song but I only wanted to express the peacefulness and tranquility of a simple and slow-paced life.
Anyway, I hope you guys would enjoy the photos! With no further adieu…
Uptown Girl - You are my chemistry [Part 1]
This is one of the times I can’t think of a title for my Photoshoot series. The model friend of mine, Julia is wearing this really pretty pink-color dress which makes her looks like a pampered, care-free and charming princess. I wanted to use ‘Uptown girl’ as the main title…but still feel there is a missing piece somewhere. And the music I was listening to - the lyric part ‘Can you feel this chemistry?’ .. so there we go.. that’s how I come up with the title.
Lazy Sunday - Norwegian Wood
I started reading this book - Norwegian wood (Haruki Marakami) recently. It is a love story with autobiography feel to it. Initially I was reading a downloaded copy but ended up buying a paperback version because I really love the book.
I decided to go for a nice long coffee break today and read up the book. It was a really nice book and it would be nicer if I read slowly but ended reading up till I finished. I would read it again from time to time.
Anyway, some photos I took during my coffee break.
Lazy Sunday
Been a while since I last touch my lazy Sunday series. I am glad that I started out this series of photo and hopefully I would be able to continue it in the future.
Mid-Autumn Festival
Last week was mid-autumn festival period, more commonly known as Mooncake festival or lantern festival to others. I wasn’t able to go and see the decorations and lightups at China town last week, so I decided to go for a walk this Saturday early morning and to have my breakfast there as well.
Nothing much left there really but here are some of the picks.
A Casual Shoot
I was asked to do a casual shoot by a friend last Sunday. It came quite unexpected because I was supposing to meet him for lunch (Though he asked me to bring camera) and half-away through lunch, I realized that he actually asked me out for a photoshoot (not lunch, mind you). So, that’s how I ended up doing a shoot. It was the first time I actually shoot a male model.
Not really happy with the results, partly due to the fact that I was using my manual-focus lens (50mm f1.2) and also because the whole shoot got kick-started without any idea in mind.
I can’t think of any title and not really sure if I will be posting any more photos from the shoot, but here is one that I have.
Asian Civilizations [Part 2]
More photos from my recent visit to the museum. The low-light conditions inside the museum provided an ideal place to test out the low-light performance of my new 50mm f1.2 lens. The depth of field of the lens is really shallow with fantastic bokeh. At close focus distance, it really make creamy bokeh and the best part is due to the focal length being 50mm because there is no distortion or compression. The photos just look nature. In term of sharpness, it’s just nice. Not razor-sharp at wide open aperture but that makes all the more better - the sharpness is just nicely enough to go with the smooth bokeh. The manual focusing is also really wonderful and easy to do. The only tiring part is holding the camera while doing the manual focusing, being the camera too heavy and it could really get tiring after a while.
Asian Civilizations [Part 1]
Photos from my recent visit to Asian Civilization Museum. It was a good thing that I decided to go on a day when there is admission fees required, a lot less people in the museum. This is the first time testing my new Nikon 50 mm f1.2 lens.
Natsu Matsuri - Japanese Summer Festival
I’ve been waiting for the summer festival. I attended about two years ago with some friends and had a pretty good time. So, I am pretty excited this year when a friend reminded me about it.
I have been eyeing on Nikon 135 mm F2 DC lens for a very long time and coincidently, happened to rent it out to test how the lens perform… so there is another reason to look forward to the festival.
I used it throughout the entire shooting during the festival, so I can gather enough field data to make my decision. It is a really sharp and contrasty lens, not to mention about its fantastic bokeh… extremely smooth and pleasing to the eyes. Excellent color rendering as well. The depth of field is really shallow and wonderful as well. But this lens is really a double-edge sword, being a very shallow depth-of-field, it is hard to make sure that I get an exact & accurate focusing. If I nail down the focusing, the result is nothing short of stunning. The sharpness at wide-opened aperture (f2) is good and improved a lot at f2.8 and f4 onward. However, AF is quite slow especially if compared to Nikon AFS 70-200 f2.8 VRII and there are a lot of shots spoiled because the AF point acquisition is slow. Not having VR system really makes this lens crippled. Now I have a lot to think about whether this is the lens for me.
Anyway, here are the photos. There are a lot of blurred shots and out-of-focus shots, so nothing much to share.
Yes, I do! Until death do us part. [Part 2]
More photos that I took during Glenn’s Pre-wedding photo-shoot. He is an amazing photographer, so please do check out his website and give him a call if you wish to know more about the services.
Here are the photos. Do let me know what you guys think!
花と少女 Hana to Shōjo
Actually the shoot is done quite some time ago, organized by Alan & Peter from our Viewfinders group. It is supposed to be a lingerie shoot but I twisted the concept a little bit during the shoot. The shoot is titled as ‘Hana to Shōjo’ which means - Flower and Girl, an attempts to express the beauty and elegance of feminine figure in comparison with a flower.
