SnapIt!! (10 May 2014 - Tg Rhu Riverside & Chinatown)

Same as before, my weekends are shooting time. Last week, we visited Tanjung Rhu riverside for sunrise and hopefully great panorama shot. The place was very far, and we need to change train a few times. Leaving us much lesser time to shoot before the sun is out. This weekend, we tried again. Yes, still no luck. We will be back there some other time when sunrise is around 7.15am.

Anyway, we reached the location about 6:35am. Get to the location and set up my gear, we were ready to shoot about 6:45am. There was still time before the sun is out, but the sky was quite bright. Technically we could not move to other location once we were there. Yes, I could not get what I wanted to shoot. :((

After sun was up, we move around to explore other good spots. As I was walking, I kept looking back at the sun. Then I stopped at this particular location and enjoyed the view of the sun. It was so uplifting. It brought energy to this exhausted body from work. I set my tripod to frame the scene perfectly as I wanted it to be. This type of shot can be easily taken handheld. Here's the shot. Enjoy!!

Uplifting

We found different good spots and will be back some other times.

In the afternoon, we decided to head to Chinatown to shoot the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. I always wanted to shoot this temple long time ago. I was waiting for the right time. As Vesak day will be coming in 2 more days, we decided to check it out if there would be anything special there. And yes, we made the right decision. The weather was right, the timing was right. We reached the location at about 6:15pm. We have plenty of time exploring the area and preparing for the shot.

We initially planned to shoot the temple from the HDB house next to it. We went to the 10th floor and realised that it was too high. So we decided to move to level 9. We shot a series of photo and experimenting with different angle. I have chosen the following one for 2 reasons. Less distracting elements and dramatic view. I have not upload this to my Flickr account. So, Enjoy!! 

Buddha Tooth Relic (Blue Hour)

As the sky getting dark, we decided to leave. When we exited the first floor lift, I had a clear view of the temple and the pavement's curve leading my view towards the temple. I saw a big patch of white cloud in the sky. It was lit by the moon light. I set up my tripod, adjusting my position and camera setting. The next thing I saw from my camera's LCD screen was WOW!! I was excited and we took few shots before too many people came to the area. Here's the shot. Enjoy!!

Buddha Tooth Relic

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

Thank you for visiting my blog. Visit my Flickr Photostream to view all my work here.

SnapIt!! (Chinatown 24 Jan 2014)

Chinese New Year is around the corner. Year 2014 is the year of horse. Chinatown Singapore is lighted up with horse lanterns and 1000 of giant ancient coin lantern. The theme for this year's CNY festival is "Galloping to Prosperity". We have been strolling around the Chinatown area and found a few good spots for night photos. Here's the results. Enjoy!!

Galloping to Prosperity

Giant Ancient Coin Lanterns

 Lesson Learnt:
1) Explore the area to find different spot
2) Take time to compose
3) Try different perspective
4) Light trails not necessary a plus point for night scene
5) Take note of horizon during post processing