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