SnapIt! (iLight Marina Bay 2014)

Again, Marina Bay Singapore has changed. This time, it has changed to a light art festival. Yearly festival which was started in 2010 features 28 creative and unique light installations along the Marina Bay. The installations were divided into 2 routes, A and B.

We explored the route A yesterday, it was quite fun especially for family and kids to play. Photography in such low light condition and many people around is never easy. Moreover, I am using a non-IS lens and not able to perform well in low light. Noise performance of 700D is not as good as Canon high end camera such as 5DIII. Hence, I was taking most photos using my iPhone. But when I came across beautiful lights on the water, I thought of making it as my foreground. But what will be the background? The lights from the office buildings could make a great background. But some of the towers are too high. Although I am using ultra wide angle 10-22mm lense, some of those buildings are still cropped out. The main object I wanted in the shot is the lights on the water. Hence, I scarified some of the buildings and go for the foreground light. This time I broke the rule of 1/3, and the image still looks decent. Post-processing was done in Camera Raw to bring up shadows, correction of lens distortion, chromatic aberration, contrast adjustments, and proper cropping. Here's the result. Enjoy!

iSwarm

Moving further down to the end of route A, we noticed the symbolic ArtScience Museum is featuring artistic light painting which is unique. I found a good spot where I was able to view the light painting as a whole with the museum front door and a bit of lotus pond in the foreground. Here's the result. Enjoy!!

The ArtScience Museum

After this shot, we move to other locations to have a different point of view feel. I noticed a couple sitting next to the lotus pond with the ArtScience Museum in the background. The view gives the feel of love. Although, I doubt they were looking at the art piece. Yes, I still like the shot. :) So, I will still post it here. I have to waited for 10 minutes for a few guys sitting to their left to leave before I could frame this shot. So, enjoy!!

Love

That is all for the updates.

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SnapIt!! (Marina Bay & Chinatown)

I was busy and tired last weekend, so there was no post.

So, to compensate for that, I will update the photos taken last weekend today.

Last weekend, we were exploring again Marina Bay area. The amount of light near the Marina Bay is always the main reason for us to go back there. But this time round, we managed to catch the sunset too. We called the shot "City Sunset". The photo is taken at the Singapore F1 track near the Singapore Flyer with Marina Bay Sands hotel and CBD in the shot.

City Sunset

As the sun was setting down and blue hour approaching, we decided to move towards the Marina Bay Float area. Just 2 months back, this area was formed to a floating platform for Chinese New Year celebration, this time they were preparing for iLight Marina Bay event. This is another reason we always like to come back here. This place will never be the same through out the entire year.

Right after passing by the Helix bridge, I saw this beautiful panoramic view of the entire Marina Bay area. The entire area was lit by the light from the setting set with neon lights from the surrounding buildings. The sun has set but the dusk has not come. The remaining reddish orange light from the sun casting on the blue sky which result in magenta colour in the sky. The one thing comes to my mind, panorama stitched photo. But I had to be quick. During this time, the change of the amount of light can be quite fast. I quickly looked for a place to set up my tripod. As I am taking panoramic shots, if my tripod was standing behind the railings, firstly I may not get all the reflected light on the water. Second, the railing may be in the shot with a large amount of distortion like the fish eye lens. So, I have to set it up on top of the railings. I ended up setting up my tripod this way.

Taking panoramic shot of setting sun where the amount of light on the sky changing quickly is a challenge. The amount of light is low, and it forced me to go for long exposure of 2-4 seconds. I also wants the water to be smooth, so I need at least 2 seconds exposure to get that. As I need to take 5-8 photos, I may end up having photos with different exposure level if I spent too much time for each shot.

To avoid the amount of distortion in the panoramic shot, I usually take 5-8 shots in vertical format. But at that time, it would be to long as the sun light fading very quickly. So I decided to take 3 shots in horizontal format. I first post-processed the photos in Camera Raw for camera distortion correction, white balance, removing chromatic aberration, sharpening and a little noise reduction. The photos were then stitched in Photoshop. The result has a little distortion looks similar to the fish eye lens effect. But it was kind of nice. Enjoy!!

Blue Hour Marina Bay

After this shot, we called it a day and went home.

From another day last weekend, we went to Chinatown for dinner. As usual, I would bring my gear with me.
At Chinatown, I always curious about the view from the top of the surrounding area. There are mixtures of low raise and tall buildings which could make a unique shot. But first, we need to find a high raise building where we can have a clear view of the surrounding. So, we were exploring the HDB area and found a good spot. The HDB is 24-storey high, but we decided to stop at 10th storey. The reason was that the surrounding low raise building was really low. If we were to go high and wide, we may not get the details of the building which is one of the reasons for this shot. So, we thought 10th storey is perfect. We took a couple of shots at different angles and views. As usual, shooting directly to the sun is always a real challenge without any filters due to the high exposure range of the dark and white area. But I managed to find the sweet spot where it is still editable during the post-processing. Here's the result. Enjoy!

Chinatown Sunset

After taking couple of shots, we left. When we were moving toward the central of the Chinatown, we have a closer view of the colourful buildings line up in a row. We stopped by the road side and looking for a good place to shot. Here's the shot. Enjoy!! I included vehicle moving in the scene to add elements to the foreground instead just empty road. Because of the colourful building line up in a row that made us took this photo, we call it "In A Row".

In A Row

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