Outing to Sungei Buloh

The 450D Club had it's outing to Sungi Buloh Wetlands Reserve (SBWR for short) on Sat morning. It was my first time there after more than 5 years, so everything felt unfamiliar.

Although we were forced to return to the Visitor Center and wait when it started raining in the mid-morning, the weather cleared up later, and we had a pretty good time there (Apart from the mosquitos, that is). Also, Joe and Ryu were amazing with their knowledge of insects and birds.

Here are some of my shots from the trip :

#1 - Grasshopper















#2 - Brown Butterfly














#3 - Wasp Butt















#4 - Crab on Leaf






















#5 - Mudskipper













Didn't really get many bird shots, mainly because my lens, at only 200mm, isn't the best for birding. Maybe I'll think about doing what Ryan did (100-400mm FTW)the next time I go to SBWR.

Here's a rather nice one, except that it's really blur and full of noise (heavily cropped too)...

Abandoned places in LCK

Went out with fellow 450D people yesterday to Lim Chu Kang to explore some old abandoned areas. Weather was wet, but at least it stopped raining when we arrived at the location. Some photos from the trip...

#1 - Numbered Past















#2 - Emptiness






















#3 - Towering Gloom






















#4 - Dark Corridors






















#5 - Stairway Mysteries






















Photos taken at the end of Lim Chu Kang will be in the next posting (though there isn't very much).

Sidetrack to Chinatown

After the "Glass/Reflection" themed Tangshooters outing on Sunday, when the whole group of us were on the way to the MRT station, we got sidetracked by the sunset, and headed for one of the HDB blocks facing the CBD. Went up to the 24th floor, then realized that the sunset was in the other direction. Then someone found that the roof access was open, and most of them went up to take a look. I, having a fear of heights, decided not to risk it. Instead, it took pictures of the direction of the CBD instead.

However, lacking tripod and a UWA lens, I didn't come up with anything really interesting. (To see my UWA shots, see my flickr - Chinatown Nights I and II)

I did experiment a bit, and managed this :






















(Not perfect, but I think it looks cool :D)

Glass : Reflections, Refractions, and Other Shiny Things

Went for yet another Tangshooters outing last evening. It was a rather major one, with over thirty people gathering together at Raffles Place. From there, we walked and shot all the way to Tanjong Pagar. I'm sure the people who were around must have wondered about our large group of photographers.

In any case, here's five of my photos which I'll also be posting on Clubsnap :

#1 - Twin Illuisions






















#2 - Visions In Stone






















#3 - Grid of Glass













#4 - Double Vision






















#5 - Warped Distortions






















Overall, it was a tiring, but really fun outing.

(The Chinatown minor-shoot will be posted separately)

And before I end this post, a special mention : Sprintist, the organizer of the outing :)

Of Circles and Trains... Part II

Here are a few more photos from the Circle Line "Open House"...

#1 - Ascend Towards The Light















#2 - Guzheng Gals






















#3 - The Watcher






















#4 - Word of Art

Of Circles and Trains...

Today, the Circle Line had it's "Open House", and I went for it with the Tangshooters. The first thing that I noticed upon arrival at the new entrance - The super long queue that had formed in front of the counter that was for online registered people. It took awhile, but we got in at around 0850 Hrs.

Took quite some photos, but ended up with a metaphorical ton of blurred images. The rest haven't been edited yet, so I'll need another post to do it.

But here's one, just for a "Preview" :














More to come soon.

Oh, one more thing to add about the "Open House" : Free train rides! (Okay, it was only the 5 stations)

DeviantMEET Singapore

I am so behind in posting again, I'll do a quick one before I get totally overwhelmed by the number of entries I will be typing in a few days time to keep things current.

I went for the DeviantMEET that was held yesterday by the DeviantART staff (Spyed and Heidi) on their World Tour. I was rather surprised at the number of people who turned up; it was really impressive. And although the sky remained grey and ominous throughout the time I was there (aprox. 4pm to 7pm), everyone there seemed to be having lots of fun.

Anyway, here's a photo of the four "VIPs" of the event :















(Left to right, going by DevART nicks : Artgerm, Heidi, Spyed, Zemotion)

Unfortunately, the shot was a little dark, so a lot of noise can be seen in the image :(

Okay, I'm done for today.

Cloudy Mornings

Decided to update my blog once more...

I went to the Marina Barrage with a group of photographers on Saturday morning to shoot the sunrise, but all we got was a cloudy sky, with barely any trace of the sun rising.

Some of the others managed rather nice looking images with longer exposures (probably because they had ND filters to cut light or something), but this was all that I got :






















I did have two or three images where I managed to capture the sun in the short instance where it did show from behind the clouds, but they didn't look very nice, so I won't post them here.

Two other of my "nicer" photos that I managed from the trip that morning :

#1 - Danger






















#2 - World






















I'll probably be heading back to the barrage before too long, since I still haven't managed to get the shots I wanted...

Buangkok Panorama

Went for a walk to Buangkok and back on Thursday, hoping to get a nice sunset. But the colours weren't very interesting in the end...

Thus, I decided to experiment with panoramas again, and this was the result :








Unfortunately with Blogger, Facebook and several other places where I've posted photos, Panoramas tend to show up extremely small. At least you can click the image to get it larger here.

In any case, the distortion in the combined panorama was really extreme... It's an interesting effect, I suppose, but I think that I'll probably be happier if I could figure out a way to straighten out the image.

Time to do some research.

Cats

For some unknown reason, I seem to like to photograph cats. Cats that you see at HDB void decks, in parks, and such. One evening last week, I took some photos of cats who were lingering around a block of flats...

















































Yes, unfortunately, as it was late in the evening, I used ISO 1600 to shoot, and that resulted in high noise levels... But when converted to black and white, as was done for two of the above photos, the grainy effect seems rather cool.

The above are the most recent cat photos. Maybe I'll find some opportunity to show some of the other cat photos that I have taken. Hmm...

Woodpecker

Went for a stroll at Punggol Park last evening, and spotted this bird :






















As I had my camera with me, I tried to take a photo of it. There were actually two or three of them, flying amongst the trees, so I had to follow them around. Took me quite a number of tries before I got a clear shot, which is the photo seen above.

Once home, I searched around online for info about the bird, and found it in Wikipedia.

The bird was a type of Woodpecker, known as the Common Flameback (Dinopium javanense)

Learned something new!

CHIJMES

Okay, this is a slightly backdated post; should have written it last week, but didn't, so I'm doing it now.

On the day that I got my CPL (the filter), I went to CHIJMES to try it out and take some shots. Below are two of the better shots that I took of the old church building.






















This is a relatively normal frontal shot of the building. Yes, I know that it isn't 100% front on, but that's because if I did so, Raffles City would be in the background (I have a few such shots, but I don't think I'll post them).






















I was trying a differeny perspective for this shot. From this angle, the church seems to tower over you. Interesting, no?

Anyway, the above shots look okay, but both need to be improved. Expecially the problem I seem to have with tilted subjects...

Explorations of Punggol

Yesterday afternoon, I went out on what was supposed to be a photo outing to Punggol with a few other CS-ers. We wanted to look for the places where several others had taken wonderful photos of, and take some photos ourselves.

However, it became one extremely long hike around a huge area of undeveloped Punggol and the coastline. I didn't realise that such a large area of undeveloped land still existed. We didn't take any photos while on the "hike", but we sure got lots of exercise.

When we finally ended up at Punggol beach, we were all pretty exhausted. But it was at the beach that we got our first and only subject to photograph:






















According to a friend, it's a Collared Kingfisher. We got quite a number of shots, as it was flying around the rocks, presumably searching for it's dinner.






















As the maximum range of my lens was only 200mm, I had to do plently of cropping to get the above images, so they're not as nice as it would have been if I had a longer lens of 300mm and above.

Well, plans for the future, I guess.

Punggol Beach

Went to Punggol Beach on Sunday with the family. We met my sister's friends while there, and I and my sis went with them to take photos.

Some of the shots that I took:

Flowers :





















Rusted Cans :





















Trees :





















Then there was the sunset, which was in a way, the "Highlight" of the day.

Once more, I combined photos to get my final images. I seem to be getting a little addicted to Panoramas.































(Yes, this is also a merged image, although it's more of a square than a panorama.)

As my experimentations continued, I have found out how the merging can still fail miserably when you put the photos together, and realise that they don't fit due to blurring, difference in lighting, etc.

Well, to look on the positive side, it will mean that I'll have to practice more on taking the multiple shots that a panorama requires.

CPL

Just got my circular polarizing filter (CPL) for my camera today - Tokina, 72mm. Currently learning how to utilize it properly, and trying to see if I am able to stack both it and my UV filter together.

Mayhaps I will be able to post some shots soon.

Sunset at Seletar

As I haven't been shooting good sunsets for a relatively long period, I went to the Seletar dam last evening in an attempt to get a good one. The location itself isn't the most interesting of places, but the sunset itself wasn't too bad.














Apart from the above, most of my photos from the evening weren't all that nice; Maybe I'm just experiencing a temprorary lack of creativity in my shots...

One thing that I did manage to try out, however, was shooting panoramas. The above photo was made up of three combined shots.

The below one was an experiment - It doesn't look very impressive as a photo (I'm sure I can do better), but it was made of eight combined shots.









(Click to see the larger version)

Dinner with Friends

Yesterday was Hou Teng's birthday, so Herrick and I treated him to dinner, and I took the opportunity to do some food photography (Like I always do =D).

Here are my best of the evening:

#1 - Wazen






















I presume "Wazen" to be the direct translation of some Japanese term, but I don't know what it may be. SO I'll just assume that it means "hotplate" or something of a similar sort.



#2 - Tea at Waraku






















I like Waraku, and I like green tea.




#3 - Hot Chocolate






















I liked the pattern on top of the foam; Simple yet pretty.

To Ubin and Back (The People)

By "People", I don't really mean taking photos of how people on Ubin live their lives. Yes, I do have a few shots in that sort of direction, like this:






















(Okay, so he's one of the uncles who pilot the boats to and from Ubin, but I think it counts.)

A few shots of visitors to the island as well:






















But the majority are of the group of people whom I went to Ubin with - fellow photographers.










































There were a few candid "group shots" too:






















Looks as if they were waiting for some big celebrity to pass by...






















Trying to fit into the narrow area at the edge of the highest point to take good shots of the scenery (while being careful not to fall off).

It was a fun experience, going out with fellow photographers and making friends with them. I shall wait expectantly for the next outing.