Catching some air

My best skateboard shot from a number of shots taken on a recent trip to Bondi beach in Sydney, Australia. I turned on the flash here to help fill in the shadows in the face. Nikon D70, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8.

Tiger orchids

My father has had a lifelong interest in orchids and has a number of really interesting ones in his garden. This one, I think, is called a Tiger orchid. The thing about this orchid is that because of its long, spindly petals, it's rather difficult to shoot a really nice picture of it without making it look inconsequential in the overall shot. I shot a number of these pictures, each time thinking about the angle and the background before finally hitting on this particular composition. I realised early on that there's no need to include the complete flower in the shot -- as long as a good portion of it is in there, it's good enough. I think what makes the shot is the little curved petal at the top which is repeated by the slightly out of focus flower in the background. Nikon D70, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Red on white

This shot worked rather well I thought. The D70's 3D Matrix Metering coped rather well this the exposure in this shot, I think, properly exposing for the white and red flowers without underexposure. Shot slightly cropped on the right. Nikon D70, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Magenta flowers

Not sure what these flowers are called, but again, they were tiny -- smaller even than the smal cactus flower in the previous post. Shot handheld with no tripod. Nikon D70, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Cactus flower 2

While the last picture was of a large cactus flower, this one is a small one, with the flower only as big as my thumb nail. I shot this picture using a tripod and used the Depth-of-field preview button on the camera to check the area of focus -- something I very rarely do in general photography. However in this case, it was very important to get the flower just right while still throwing some of the background out of focus. Nikon D70, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Cactus flower 1

My dad's garden is just filled with all kinds of interesting plants and flowers and usually during Chinese New Year in January or February, the plants are in full bloom. This is a cactus with some huge flowers as big as my hand. Nikon D70, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 

Doggies

Slow photo week -- been too busy with work recently to go out shooting pictures so I'm just posting a cute photo of my dogs. Nevertheless, I'm currently testing the fantastic Nikon D200 with a number of wireless flash units, so expect to see some photos here taken with the camera soon. This picture: Nikon D70, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

KyongBok Palace

This is a digital panoramic of Seoul's KyongBok Palace. I shot a series of shots handheld with the intention to stitch them together later and this is the result. I think this covers about 180-degrees, since I was standing pretty close to the front of the palace (behind me was already the road). I could have corrected the distortion, but I kind of like it this way. What do you think? This image is a huge mega-megapixel image but only appears this tiny because Picasa resizes it into this tiny image even when you click on the image. Fujifilm S2Pro, AF Nikkor 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5

Orange woman

You can tell that this woman selling oranges was not too happy that I was taking pictures of her. She was verbally abusing me right after this shot, but since I don't understand Korean, I was blissfully unaware of it all -- I was later told by my friend who spoke Korean that she wasn't saying very nice things about me. According to my friend, she would probably have been more accomadating if she knew I was a tourist. Haha. Fujifilm S2Pro, AF Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5

Pseudo-Euro

Modern Korean architecture is more European than it is traditional Korean. This shot was taken again while on walkabout on a crisp, sunny, cloudless winter afternoon. Fujifilm S2Pro, AF Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5

Korean spread

A typical Korean food spread. Koreans like to have a variety of tiny dishes and yes, most of them involve kimchi of some kind. I love Korean food -- I'd say it's about as tasty and spicy as Malaysian and Thai food. Fujifilm S2Pro, AF Nikkor 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5

Arms to the sky

A grab shot taken while on walkabout in Seoul. I can't really say where it was -- all I remember was that it's near one of the more famous universities in Seoul. Fujifilm S2Pro, AF Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5

Seoul Tower and moon

An image of Seoul Tower, again, early in the morning, with the moon still visible at the top right hand. Fujifilm S2Pro, AF Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5

Early morning, Seoul

I was just looking through my blog, and I just realised that for some reason, I'd never posted up pictures I took in Korea a while back, so here they are. This was shot out of the window of my taxi as it was heading towards my hotel on a misty early morning in Korea.
Fujifilm S2Pro, AF Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5

Flood of memories

I'm interrupting my usual impresonal photoblog with some news.

I'm sure most Malaysians would have heard of it, but for those not from my country, several states in Malaysia (Kelantan, Terengganu, Perlis and Kedah) were hit by major floods a couple of days ago, including my hometown of Jitra, in the state of Kedah.

The Muda dam overflowed due to the heavy rain this past week and the flood is pretty bad, but luckily there has been no loss of life as yet in my hometown. My parents are okay (they were -- and still are -- holidaying in Cameron Highlands as I write this), and my house, which is on pretty high ground, has so far been spared.

Anyway, I was not there to record the events, but if you're interested, you can check out some pictures taken by my good friend Joe, who is still stranded there right now (my hometown is now an island, at least till the waters recede).

Check it out here

Manic Mandarin

This Mandarin Duck was taken at the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park at the Lake Gardens. Shooting animals and birds, you're lucky if you come back with one nice shot, since they are so unpredictable. The real trick is to be patient and take a picture of the animal/bird doing something interesting, otherwise your shots will just look like run-of-the-mill record shots you find in reference books.

This is what I always strive for when taking pictures of animals. I learned this from Thom Hogan, who took one of the most amazing pictures of a capuchin monkey at the zoo that I'd ever seen.

I sat watching this duck grooming itself for a while before I got what I wanted. Since it was busily grooming itself over and over again, I could take my time to shoot and refine the framing with each subsequent shot until it was just right and the duck got into just the right position.
Nikon D70, AF Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8

Red flowers

One of the first shots I took at the orchid farm. This took a few tries on a tripod to get right -- the focussing is quite critical here since I had to use a wide enough aperture to keep the distracting background as out of focus as possible.Nikon D70, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Odd man out

The idea for this shot was originally from my cousin Jason who was also at the orchid farm with me. He took a bunch of very nice shots of these multicoloured rocks at the farm and this one is my best shot (he took a few that were better). Nikon D70, AF-Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Final lillies

I think this works best in the series of lilly shots that I took. I decided to leave the other shots in this series to illustrate the progression -- from the first, more regular framing to the next one with the idea of a row of lillies and finally to this one where I develop the idea further. This one was taken with an Olympus E-500 with a 14-45mm Zuiko lens, ISO100.

Orchid-ese

No orchid farm shot would be complete without pictures of orchids. I've always been fascinated with taking pictures of flowers and bugs, so a good macro lens has always been one of my top priorities when considering lens purchases. The 60mm Micro-Nikkor is one of the sharpest lenses I've ever used. Nikon D70, AF-Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Lillies all in a row

Another shot of the same lillies.
Nikon D70, AF-Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Lillies

A recent trip to the orchid park in the Lake Gardens produced this shot. The only interesting thing about this is that you can see a little flying bee over the further flower, and a little ladybird on the stem. Can you find them? Nikon D70, AF-Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Tea Lights

This was just a grab shot taken when I was bored to death at the launching of a new PDA. Amazingly this shot was taken handheld with fill-in flash -- I just popped up the built-in flash on my D70 and shot off in full TTL mode and it turned out EXACTLY like I wanted it to.
Nikon D70, AF-Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

How to read a Tachymetre

Okay this is pretty interesting, at least to me -- I've had a Tachymetre scale on my stopwatches for a while now and the only thing I ever did with the scale was to calculate speed of cars. I just learned that the scale is actually a logarithmic scale which can calculate all kinds of things based on a "per hour" scale.

Examples:
1) To calculate the speed of a car over a known distance (say 1kilometre or even 1mile) press the top chronograph button when entering the fixed distance press it again when at the end of the fixed distance. If the time elapsed is 45 seconds the second hand points to the figure 80 on the Tachy scale. If the fixed distance is a Kilometre then the car is traveling 80 kilometres per hour. If the distance covered is a mile, then the speed is indicated in Miles per hour, in this example 80 MPH...

2) To calculate the output of a machine, start the chronograph and count a set number of units made, at the end of this number stop the chronograph. Say, a printing press produces 100 newspapers in 30 seconds -- when you stop the chronograph on the watch at 30secs, reading off the tachymetre scale, it says 120, which means that 100 x 120 = 12000 newspapers per hour.

Interesting huh? No? Oh well...

Omega Seahorse

You've probably seen tons of photos of a watch's front face, but did you know that the case back usually has a very interesting logo? This is the back of the Omega Speedmaster Day-Date, showing the seahorse (?) logo found in a lot of Omega watches. The actual logo is so small I can't even make out the details with my naked eye -- and in fact, taking a photo of it with my amazing 60mm Micro-Nikkor lens is the best way to really appreciate the details. The only Photoshopping here is to remove the serial number to protect the owner.
Nikon D70, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Alpha, Beta...Omega!

A shot of the Omega Speedmaster Day-Date. Taking closeups of shiny, tiny objects is really difficult because:
1) Small apertures required mean that you need to use a tripod and positioning the object just right is pretty difficult.
2) A flashgun is essential but causes problems of its own since you tend to get overexposed "hotspots" on shiny surfaces (like the bezel and crystal) if you're not careful. Strong shadows caused by lighting that's TOO directional is also a problem -- in this case, I had to use a piece of white card to bounce the light to create a more soft lighting effect and thus less strong shadows. I also had to take care that the watch's bezel and hands didn't cast a strong shadow which could happen if the lighting was at too extreme an angle to the watch's face.
3) Lastly, it's always a challenge trying to shoot an object in an interesting way that shows off its features yet is compositionally sound.

This shot is actually in colour and I intentionally shot it against a white background and controlled the lighting to make it as monochromatic as possibe. Look carefully at the hands and markers though and you'll notice a slight hint of green where the luminescent hands are glowing. Taken with the SB-600 flashgun, 1/60sec at f/11. Nikon D70, AF-Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8