Racetrack

This is the Hong Kong horse racing track -- the place is HUGE and a lot of races take place at night (usually on Wednesdays). Most impressive horse-racing track I've ever seen, but then this isn't too surprising considering that this is Hong Kong. There's nothing particularly nice about this shot -- it's just here to give a sense of scale to the race horse pictures. Nikon D70, AF Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8 ED

Harbor

Shot from the same vantage point as the other two pictures below, ie at the car park of the Marco Polo Hotel in Hong Kong. Nikon D70, AF-S Nikkor 12-24mm f/4

Star Cruise

Believe it or not, even though this is Hong Kong harbour, the ship moored here is actually the Star Cruise ship from Malaysia. Nikon D70, AF-S Nikkor 12-24mm f/4

Everybody's Idea of Hong Kong

Okay, so I was in Hong Kong recently and managed to take a number of pictures. This night shot is what everyone's idea of Hong Kong is, but as you'll soon see from the photos above, that's not really the case. Nikon D70, AF-S Nikkor 12-24mm f/4

Sydney Opera House III

I don't usually use filters, but all throughout my trip in Sydney, the sky was incredibly drab and grey all the time. In this case, I digitally applied a light graduated filter on the sky to make the scene more interesting. As for the shot, I noticed this guy in a red shirt walking about and waited for him to get into just the right position and snapped this shot. I also walked around the area to find some unusual angles to take a picture of the Opera House. Taking a good picture sometimes seems accidental, but actually requires a lot of patience and observation on the part of the photographer. Nikon D70, AF-S Nikkor 12-24mm f/4

Piping hot

A street performer playing bagpipes in Australia?! Shot slightly cropped. Nikon D70, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Sydney Opera House II

The view of the Opera House from my hotel window. Unfortunately, I was only in Sydney for about a day and a half, so there was little time to walk around and explore. Nikon D70, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Sydney Opera House

A view of the Sydney Opera House from a public pool/restaurant near Luna Park. Nikon D70, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Scariest

Those eyes! They keep following me! Geez man, I'm gonna have nightmares about those eyes. Nikon D70, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Scarier

Didn't think the last picture was scary? How about this one? Nikon D70, AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8

Scary

Isn't this the scariest thing you ever saw? In fact this whole amusement park, called Luna Park in Sydney has some rather disturbing images. Unfortunately it was too late in the day to go inside. Nikon D70, AF-S Nikkor 12-24mm f/4

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