Journey to the Old and Ultra Modern Shanghai

Coming back home from Brisbane, Australia for the summer holidays, my parents gave me the option of whether to follow them to Shanghai, China the next month for a holiday. Opportunities like this does not come very often and one does not turn down such offers. My experience from traveling overseas when I was younger was a lot different from now as I see things very differently after discovering my passion for photography.

I couldn't really remember much about Shanghai when I traveled with my dad there about 7-8 years ago. Didn't even own a camera back then and yes, I was your regular layman. Only remembered that we stayed at Nanjing road and didn't really visit many places.

We stayed at Nanjing road again because it's right at the heart of Shanghai and the entire road is a pedestrian street, filled with shopping complexes, tons of eateries, hotels, cultural sites.

  

Brand New Year

Happy New Year 2013 to all my blog readers =)

This time round, I'm determined to try taking pictures of fireworks celebrations. Didn't quite bother doing so for the previous years partly because I wasn't well equipped. Didn't have a tripod. Also, wasn't really into landscapes/nightscapes and all, but I was still amazed at all those shots you see online.

Met up a few friends (who are lowyat forumers) to shoot the fireworks display together. We decided that it was best to shoot at less popular places as it will be really packed with people (KLCC). Not to mention the enourmous jam you have to endure on your way back home. You might also run into some party goers, some of them equipped with spray cans!

So, it was decided to be at 1Utama, just a stone's throw away from the Curve. The fireworks would be fired just above The Curve building according to past events. We were at the 1Utama car park, 5th level, a great spot, to capture the entire scene.

From left: Myself, Legend, Melvin and Kien Seng. Small group, partly because it was a last minute meet up.

  

As this would be my first time shooting fireworks, I wasn't really familiar with the timing. I knew that your camera had to be set to bulb mode, Aperture around f/8 to f/11 (just make sure that your overall exposure for the entire image has to be more than 4-5 seconds), ISO set to ISO100. Use remote trigger, for the record, I'm using an Aperture Flash trigger that comes with a wireless remote as well.

Thanks to the guys for giving me some tips regarding the shoot. What I know is, you have to keep on firing your shots with about 1-2 seconds interval from the next shot. If you want to see the trajectory of the firework firing up to the air, make sure you open the shutter when you see it shooting up. When to close the shutter? When it explodes and starts to subside, immediately close the shutter. You can have varying effects while playing with shutter speed. I myself used a 1-2 seconds Shutter Speed for each firework. I did have a tendency of prolonging the shutter open because there were continous fireworks exploding at the same time, but the result wasn't really pleasing. It was mostly overexposed and the formation of fireworks wasn't nice. It was mostly blurry. What you want to achieve is tact sharp fireworks.

Short trip to Singapore

Had some time over the weekends, so my family and I went over to Singapore for a short visit. We flew straight from LCCT to Changi airport as the air tickets weren't too expensive.

The last time I visited Singapore was actually just over 3-4 weeks ago, having to attend my brother's ROM over there. Never expected to go back so quickly until my mother suggested that we fly over for the weekend to spend more time in Singapore.

We stayed over at my brother's place for a few nights. It was quite a relief as the accommodation in Singapore can be pretty expensive.

Didn't do much for the first day after touching down at Changi airport, just did some walking around and having dinner. The area around my brother's Condo where we are staying the night at, is pretty nice. There are nearby public transportations (MRT,bus,taxi stands), places to buy groceries and a lot of eateries.

For the 2nd day, we went over to Universal Studios in Sentosa Island. Spent the entire day there going for rides after rides. At one point, I was quite shaken after taking the Cyclone roller coaster. The twists and drops were unbelievably scary. Not to mention that I wasn't wearing my spectacles, so I couldn't really see (I have bad eye sight lol).

And thank God, I didn't bring my camera equipment, if not, I would be dead tired by the end of the day. In this sort of situations, it would be great to have a small, portable camera with you. Something like a mirrorless camera from Sony, example is the NEX F3 which goes for about RM2.3k only for a set with twin lenses! And it has a APS-C sensor!

Photo credits to google lolz

Or an even more compact camera like the Sony RX100 which has a 1 inch sensor, though much smaller than the NEX F3. Comes with a bright 28mm f/2 lens and its size is only slightly larger than a Canon Powershot S110! Brilliant!

 Photo credits to google lolz

A little bit tempted to get such small form factor cameras to be honest for the convenience of course.

Back to landscapes again!

Didn't update my blog in like ages already because I'm damn blardy lazy to write a lot and not too good at writting either hahaha

But anyway, about a month ago or so, I organized a landscape outing to Kuala Lukut with several of my friends, most of them being lowyat.net forum members. Had always wanted to come to this place after seeing some pretty breathtaking landscape pictures from landscape photographer, Melvin Tong who's work I admire a lot.

We had great fun during the trip, got my legs messy as the shooting spot was super muddy, got some cuts on my legs and my t shirt and pants dirty. What a day! But at least I got back with a keeper.

LOL yes, landscape outings ain't like portraiture shoots where you can get like 20+ keepers in just a 2 hour shoot. You're lucky if you can get like 3-4 shots for one session of landscape outing. That's why landscape photography is a field of photography that requires a lot of patience and timing. Many well known photographers like Mr Liew Wk make many trips to landscape locations just to get that one great shot, with the perfect weather condition and the correct tide (seascape) and just the right, dramatic clouds. So yeah, landscape photography isn't something that you can get it right the first time you attempt on it. So, there's no need to be really feel down if you don't get keepers on your first try! :)

As you can see, it was very low tide! High tide was probably around 8-9pm so yeah we got it wrong. Perhaps towards the end of the year, we can expect higher tide at around 5-6pm or so.

And for the picture above, I have to apologize because I didn't quite apply hyperfocal rule especially when you need to have the foreground and background to be in focus. I was quite blur that day as I totally forgot about the rule.

A shot of my friend as he was shooting the sunset towards the right. I personally like this shot a lot, maybe I'll try to do such shots more in the future :P

And that's probably it hahaha. Few weeks later, my friend and I went to KLCC to capture the Twin Towers. It's mostly to teach my friend (in the picture above) about the basics of operating a DSLR and the functions of each element, as he's still pretty new to the DSLR world.

I brought along everything but when we reached there I noticed I forgot my tripod head. FML

So, I had to rush back to my house (about 15 minutes away), endure the traffic jam on the way and take back the tripod head. FML

We were lucky that the lights of Suria KLCC were still on when we were there around 11.30pm. It's reported to off the lights at around 12am. So we started shooting.

And that's all for that day.

And just the last weekend, I attended a Landscape workshop by Mr Liew. He started off by showing a slideshow, teaching about the basics of photography which were aperture, shutter speed, hyperfocal length, basic compositions&ideas, and many more. And after that, we all proceeded to Pantai Jeram for a sunset shoot. It was originally planned for the shoot to be held at Sekinchan but the place had to undergo replantation and thus, the venue had to be changed. Another muddy trip! Unfortunately no, as there's really no need to go into the mud, though I would love to if it is well worth it!

Took quite a few shots, mostly just to play around with the composition. Bracketed most of my shots, but in the end didn't use them at all. Here's what I got:

So yeah, I'm pretty satisfied with what I got here. Using a Ultra Wide Angle lens, I'm able to exaggerate perspective by making the bridge as if it were really big and long. But in reality, it's a bloody tiny bridge! hahahaha!

Landscape Newbie Level

I've always enjoyed looking at landscape pictures over the internet, drool over them you might say. And the 'breaking point' was during the New Year celebrations where tons of beautiful firework pictures were posted all over the internet...but one picture really caught my eye.

That's when I knew I had to get a tripod and start looking into landscape photography. So I went over to gstrapinuse's shop in Millenium Square and bought myself a Beike Pro 471 tripod. The initial intention was just to grab the tripod and go home but "unfortunately" he had a 60x60 softbox in stock and also gave me a good price I got both together. So, I thought ahhhhhhh might as well get both and be done with it (I was also eyeing a softbox for quite some time now).

Here's the link to the tripod sales page: http://www.gstrapinuse.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=34_7&products_id=498&zenid=f0ecf1765a3709e4b6cc7879a0762b0b

It's a good sturdy tripod. The legs are by no means skinny, they are pretty big, strong and well built. Could be mistaken for a really pro tripod actually.

The ballhead on the other hand isn't that great actually, having some minor hiccups here and there. First thing, the metal plate doesn't quite secure well to the camera. Second, the tripod knobs aren't that comfy to tighten and loosen. There isn't much grip and the size of the knob being small doesn't really help much either. After a while of constant operation, my hands got sore and painful.

Anyway, just right after I got my tripod I went with my friend to Ampang Look Out point because I hear the view here of the city is pretty good. And the reviews were right! The view is magnificent!

We were actually fortunate to get that somewhere around 6 something as we went the wrong way!

So here's the shot. Took 3 exposures and merged in Photomatix Pro.

There were several good spots but the one I find best is in the Panorama restaurant. It's the highest point in Ampang Lookout Point which provides good composition. The other places I find a bit flat and there were some distractions from the trees/plants.

I decided to go HDR all out for the sunset shots since the sky was still bright and had good details. HDR is to get as much dynamic range of the foreground and background without having the sky being overexposed if one is metering the foreground for example.

Faced several challenges through out the shoot. Some of them were

1) Distractions of the trees(notice the picture above) which obviously could not be avoided at all. If I were to opt for a different composition, I would not have been able to get the same composition

2) Tripod ball head not steady (highlighted above already)

3) Misty/Hazy conditions <---- Can't be helped! Yes, the misty/hazy conditions didn't help at all. Lots of details were lost in the middle of the frame and in the background. Colours were a bit fuzzy as well.

Too bad I went at the wrong time. Better luck next time I guess?

Anyway, it was a good learning experience. It's not possible to obtain good results overnight so I'll try to learn a lot more about landscape shooting and try to attend talks/workshops whenever I can.