Christmas Present

Christmas came early this year (in spite of the looming recession).

One day I woke up and felt sorry for myself, so I decide to spend another two grand of my blood and sweat money before I die. On to my favorite camera shop I went.

Can you see the christmas present? It's a freaking UWA!!!!!!

What does it do? It can take wide angle pix. And that's all it can do.

Some lamer is bound to ask:
Boy: Mummy mummy, why you need a UWA? An ordinary lens can do the job just as well!
Mum: Yes its true, even your lame kitlens can do the job.
Boy: So why do we need UWA?
Mum: I don't know, probably because some ppl ran out of things to write into their "1000 things to own before I die" list.
Boy: Oh, I see.
Well, if this acknowledgement doesn't make you happy, nothing will. Go get a razor blade or something and run it thru your vein. Remember, along, not across!

What can UWA do? Well, among other things,
it can capture some chi kho pek watching an old auntie walk past.
With the camera pointed somewhere else.

With such a shallow depth, the lens have almost infinite depth of field.

Photos come out crisp and clear without you having to shoot into focus charts. Time to go shoot actual pictures instead of sitting in your sorry lab testing your second-hand lens. Probably the focus is out because that other guy dropped it on the floor. Opps, I didn't tell you that!

I'm sorry if you don't see any interesting pix. I assure you regular quality content will resume soon, and if you're one of the 5 regular readers who decide to ditch my blog after you read this post, please, I need you :'(

V-day Symphony

Photos I took during during the weekends. (last weekend, to be precise). Tomorrow is V-day, and wtf am I doing here....

I hurt myself again, today.

So I took a little walk, maybe it could clear up my head.
A little, perhaps.

Perhaps I should remind myself to never take the forbidden fruit.

Perhaps I should believe theres' a better world out there,
waiting.

Or a world where a thousand demons are waiting,
ready to make your day go really bad.

Perhaps I should invest in some faith.

Maybe I could be wrong, maybe the world is waiting indeed... :)

Where are you now? Please don't leave me :'(

CNY and all that shit.

While the world braces for a looming recession, we chinese bastards still have the mood to celebrate CNY. This year, it's all about massive fireworks. Bigger and grander than last year. Talk about moderation. Though I don't capture fireworks on CNY, (it's a lame thing to do in CNY) the other guys in the 'hood spares no dime in showcasing their wealth. Massive artillery fires up during the pre-CNY night. The scene in Gaza is pathetic compared to what we get here in Kuching.

What have I done during CNY? Well, this year I done things a little bit differently. I no longer go on massive visiting. I visited a few friends that really mattered to me, and spent more time there.

After disappearing from 'the scene' for so long, here are a few pix.

Suprisingly many ppl do not know this fish here in peninsular. Talk about us Sarawakians being 'sakai'.


My ~10 year old turtle.


I thought she came here to stay. They're all just visiting.


These were the kids that I'm forced to grow up with.
Look what happen to them now.
(if you're sharp enough you'd notice some of them spies aint' supposed to be there)


And how could you not love this guy?
(NO, NOT the d-bag in the background)
Some things just never change.

Worrying signs were appearing all over us now, what should we do? I don't know. I asked a few of my friends, neither were them. We were all too engrossed in our own little sandcastles to see the bigger picture. A small part of me realize I might lost my job some day, but the bigger part of me refused to acknowledge. And then I go back to my old ways, as always.

Simplicity

It was so simple.
i needed love,
She gave it to me,
So in return i gave her,
my everything.

Dim Sum mornings.

Kept these two pics for sometime now. I especially craved these simple mornings where someone will accompany me to a quiet morning walk in the park (botanical garden, duh!) then proceed to fill up in these dim sum place nearby. Been looking forward to these walks lately, because work has been rather bad. Kinda lost the motivation these few months. Working with a bunch of lazy germans is no joke.

Typical chinese eateries ambient:
noisy, packed, humid, laid-back, somewhat excellent service
(compared to lansi expensive franchise outlets or german restaurants).

Chopsticks and condiments.

Nowadays it seems like my life is kinda moving downward. Not much excitement, not meeting new interesting people, no new things to play with. Sigh. What a life.

Botanical Garden / Floral "Fest" II

Plan to went for an early morning hike up penang hill on saturday, but its drizzling so decided to went for dim sum and then go back again, in the rain, for the floral fest. Might go again next week because photo taking is extremely limited (imagine asking my company to hold the umbrella for me, and imagine photographing in the rain). If it wasn't bored enough for her to wait for me taking my sweet time composing my photos.

I like to go to the garden, it's always so refreshing and there is always something new to capture. And not to mention leaving the office far behind. Some of the plants are really nice. The blue coloured tarp is a real bummer though. Why don't they just put those plants on neutral / natural coloured elements instead. Stupid event planner.

But overall, the floral fest is a disappointment. Not much nice stuff to photograph. The event is badly organized. It is planned to start on saturday, but there were national guards guarding the entire place preventing people from going in on saturday. Reason? To give some room to the judges to judge the plants on display. I do saw many disappointed photogs hanging around the area. Though I'm not one of them. I'm cool. I manage to sneak in and take photos for around an hour before being detected and chased out.

Early morning shots. Somewhere in botanical garden.

Desert Rose(?), my mum can grow a better hybrid than this pot back home....

Fake Flowers on display, anyone care to give me a clue what is the name of this plant?

Bouquet of flowers.

Malnourished plants on display.

Some bonsai are without leaves, wonder how they grow.

Nothing special on this plant :)

Random shot.

Flowers Instead

Managed to get myself sick in the weekend, so did not turn up in the office and have some time to take photos instead :)

As usual, went to Botanical Garden but this time only managed to stay for around 1/2 hours because of impending rain. This time around I bought along my close up filter and flash (nicknamed cobra), and because I have such a powderful light source now I'm able to use small aperture and high magnification ratio for an almost macro-like photography.


There is still a lot to be learnt about flash photography. It is so difficult to get 'just the right amount' of light and using automatic metering is not an option for close ups because the lighting will either be very dull or wash out all the details in your subject.


I should probably spend more time if I have another chance because if you realized, I only photographed 2-3 types of flowers this time. If only work is less hectic and I have few more daylight hours after work, I'd probably grab my gears and go photograph some stuff instead of getting stuck in the rat race.


Quite a lot of my friends had been concerned when they saw my camera gears and the amount of sweat-and-blood cash I must've spent there. I must admit though, with F58 flash, various Cokin filter attachments, and a 'small' zoom lens attached the whole setup can be quite intimidating to someone who is not really into photography. For once, they really thought the setup is quite 'pro' level. If only the same could be said with the quality of my shots :)

Just an abstract photo with no apparent subject.

My boss even went to the extent of 'reminding' me that the money I spent here could've already been used as a downpayment for an apartment. I do pledge myself to not spend more on photography this year. But I still have an assortment of lens which I could make good use of, for my photography style :)
1) 50mm macro prime lens: This one is cheap; RM900 for Sigma or RM1.5k for a Minolta 2nd hand lens.
2) 10-24mm UWA: New from Tamron, UWA can be quite an exciting lens to own, but expect to pay up to RM2k for this lens :(
3) A900: Now, who DOESN'T need one of those? :D



At least I'm not as crazy as some other guy who go out and actually buy an A900 the day it was released. Anyway, I think it's time to pull the plug on photography, at least for now, and to plan for the future of my career. Things have changed drastically these few days and some events had really made me realize I might be unable to continue to work in my company soon.