Sengkang Skyscapes

Old post alert!

Walked around Sengkang several times a few weeks ago, and took some skyscapes.

Not my best efforts by far, I'll have to say.

#1 - Purple Sunset









(A pano shot)

#2 - Shades of Sunset




















(Colours are natural)

#3 - Cloudscape over Sengkang












May update with more clouds if I can...

APAD and other matters

My APAD thread (Here) recently surpassed the 10000 view mark. It's an accomplishment, I guess, and a good one.

Maintaining a constant flow of daily photographs for the thread, whether taken or edited on the day, is no easy task. Well, I found it okay most of the time, especially after I had left NS and had more free time to concentrate on my photography.

Now, however, I seem to have come to a bit of a block. My recent photographs aren't of my usual standards; Blurred shots, photos with no proper composition, etc. In addition, I'm a little short of ideas as well.

Maybe the fact that I'm starting University soon (In a foreign country too...) is causing me more worry than I really know (I'm feeling anxious/nervous/excited/confused?).

I really do hope to improve and take better photos, not just so that I can maintain my APAD, but so that I can show people (and myself) that photography is something that I can be good at.

Fireworks!

Having seen many beautiful photos of fireworks, I have always wanted to shoot fireworks myself. Before I had my DSLR, I have tried once or twice, but never really achieving much.

On Saturday, together with fellow CSers, I went to shoot the closing event for the Singapore Arts Festival 09, Crackers!.

It was my first proper attempt at shooting fireworks, so I was suitably anxious. I didn't have a remote, but a friend lent me hers (It was a spare). In the end the remote didn't work well, so I used the timer instead.

Here are my photos from that evening (In no specific order of appearance) :

#1 - Burst of Light














#2 - Extravaganza













#3 - Blues and Greens I






















#4 - Celebrations






















#5 - Two Sides











#6 - Blues and Greens II






















#7 - Feathers













#8 - Rainbow Lights













#9 - Rings of Fire












#10 - Pyrotechnic Arcs












#11 - Red Sprinkles













#12 - Final Bursts













Overall, it was a great expierence. Although I do wish I could have shot better, I am satisfied with most of the results I got (It's just my first time after all).

Many thanks to Xhui and Ryan for their help and teaching, without which I might not have managed as well as I did :)

Can't wait to shoot more fireworks!

Bedok Reservoir

Went to Bedok Reservoir last Thursday in an attempt to get the sunset there. Unfortunately, by the time I reached the place, the skies had become cloudy (What luck).

The clouds looked rather nice, however, so I attempted a Panorama (Yes, again). I didn't take the shots too well, so the final product wasn't that good :









(As usual with Panos here, click for a larger image)

The sunset itself was completely blocked by the bank of clouds seen above, so I didn't manage to get anything.

Fortunately, the sky in the opposite direction had clouds which did manage to reflect some of the colours of the sunset...






















Not much, but better than absolutely nothing, I suppose.

I hope to return there another day to catch the sunset (Or maybe even sunrise).

A Five Hour Walk Around Town

Last Tuesday, I was a little bored. So I decided to head down to Orchard to look for a book at Borders and Kino, and to walk around a little. So I did that.

But after that, instead of heading home, I decided to walk around and maybe take some photos, since I had my camera with me (Which is almost always, actually).

I ended up walking around town for a total of 5 hours (+/- a few minutes), with a few photos to go along (not a lot though)...

Stage 1 - Orchard MRT - Somerset MRT - Dhoby Ghaut MRT

Instead of taking the MRT down to town, I decided to walk there. Ion Orchard looks almost ready, and Orchard Central is already partly open. And they both look really massive...

No pictures from this stage, as I didn't feel like attempting street photography (Which I'm totally lousy at, anyway).

Stage 2 - Raffles City, War Memorial Park, Esplanade Park

From Dhoby Ghaut, I walked to Raffles City,






















(A dark and gloomy edit...)

then to the War Memorial Park.






















(Couldn't decide which version looked nicer...)

From there, I went past Suntec, to Esplanade Park.






















(A random "Self-portrait" while walking there - I'm not good at this...)

Then to the Singapore River.

Stage 3 - Along the Singapore River

Walked along the Singapore River opposite Boat Quay,






















(Skyscrapers by the River)














(Panorama attempt... Not well done.)

...and ended up at Central.















Stage 4 - Fort Canning Hill

I headed up Fort Canning Hill via the entrance to the right of MICA, reaching the top not far from the old Lighthouse :






















From there, I crossed most of the hill, finally passing by the Fort Gate,






















...before heading down the other end of the hill and back to Douby Ghaut MRT, from where I headed home.

Abandoned Railway and a stop at HPV

Overdue post again. Enough said.

Basically, it was another outing with the 450D friends. On a hot Saturday afternoon, we met up at Clementi, and went to a nearby stretch of abandoned railway. It was right next to a HDB estate, and I never even knew that it existed (Okay, maybe it's because I live quite far from Clementi).

#1 - Abandoned and Overgrown






















#2 - End of the Road






















The bridge was pretty high, but I made it across. Quite a nice view, actually.

#3 - Bridge Views






















#4 - Railway Bridge






















After we were done at the railway, we headed to Haw Par Villa (HPV), which wasn't too far away. I hadn't been there for at least 10 plus years. Unfortunately, most of the photos I took there didn't turn out nice; The ones inside the "Ten Courts of Hell" place were the worst, due to the difficult lighting.

Here's a shot from HPV (Plain ans simple):






















He's supposed to be the God of Earth or something, if I didn't remember wrongly.

So much more to improve on!

Stating the Obvious

I'd rather not have to say this, but sometimes, the obvious also needs to be stated.

Please be reminded of the following :

All images in this blog are not allowed to be distributed, re-used, re-produced and published in any forms without prior permission granted by its owner (That's me).

Have a nice day, and keep reading blogs :)

Full Moon

Noticed that the moon was full, and because I was running out of photos for my APAD thread on CS, I decided to try and photograph the moon (It's my second time doing moon shots for APAD, but the first one was a crescent moon).

Turned out quite nicely, although I had to do major cropping and some sharpening.













Fun :)

Lower Pierce Reservoir

Another overdue post...

Actual Date : 01 Jun 09 (Last Monday)

Yes, I know that this over a week late. But at least it's only a week late; I'm forcing myself to write this entry so that I won't have too much of a backlog.

Well, on the evening of the 1st of June, I went with my parents to Lower Pierce Reservoir. I was there to get the sunset; They wanted to catch some prawns to keep in glass containers at home.

This was actually my second time to the reservoir in recent times; The last time I was there, it was overcast, so there was no sunset. This time however, the reservoir was rather calm, and the sky was mostly clear, so I got a good one.

Photos from that evening :

Part 1 - Pre-sunset / Sunset

#1 - Mirror of Water






















#2 - Sunset by the Bridge






















#3 - Red Sun






















Part 2 - Post-sunset / Twilight

#4 - By the Lakeside












#5 - Tranquil Waters






















#6 - Afterglow












Went home after it got dark (Couldn't think of anything to shoot in the dark).

Kranji Randoms

Once more, I'm typing out overdue posts again...

This 'trip' took place on 31 May 09, after Jurong Hill (See previous post).

My dad brought my mum and I to Kranji, since it wasn't too far away. The title of this posts tells you what we did - Stop by several random places in Kranji, just too look around.

Stop 1 - A "Farm Resort" sort of place. It didn't look very interesting, and there weren't many people around either, so we only stopped for awhile.

Took a photo of some flowers that I spotted there...






















Stop 2 - At the carpark of the Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve(which I had just gone to the day before), we noticed a trail that started from a small side gate, so we went for a walk there instead of entering SBWR.

It was a nice trail, following along the Kranji coastline, through the mangrove swamp.






















We turned back after the trail turned inland (The trail would end somewhere near the Kranji dam).

Stop 3 - SBWR's visitor centre, where I spotted this:















I think it was trying to hide. We didn't go into the Reserve, as it was almost closing time.

Stop 4 - Kranji Dam, where I tried to get the sunset, but failed, due to overcast skies. I met a rather friendly cat though... (It posed for me a little).






















After the dam, we went on home, as it was getting dark.

Views from the Hilltop

Had a little short trip to the top of Jurong Hill yesterday afternoon, somewhere that I've not been to before. Although you could see a great distance from the top of the tower on the hilltop, there wasn't really that much to see as the surrounding region was mostly industrial.

What I did do, was to try out another panorama. This one's a "seaward" view of the area.










(Click for a larger image)