Archive for the ‘Photography & Cameras’ Category

It’s coming to the end of the year again. Towards the end of each year, I’d sit back and reflect on some of the key events and decisions made in the past year or so. It’s a pretty interesting exercise as you’ll see the decisions that turned out right, and those that turned out all wrong; all with the benefit of a mite bit of hindsight at the end of the year now.

So, running off my head and in no particuar order:

Going to Phuket first in June then Bali later in September (WIN). Because right smack on the week we were in Bali in September, thousands of travelers in Singapore had to postpone their Phuket trip because the airport had shut down! Too funny for words. Bali posts tagged here, with Phuket ones here.

Having a baby (IN PROGRESS). Well, not saying too much away here, but the decision wasn’t an easy one. There were concerns about health and well-being for example. Funnily, we faced little of the ‘traditional’ sort of pressures. Oh, Ling’s mum asked about it now and then, but there was absolutely no (even polite) queries or pressure exerted on my side of the family. Nor did the announced incentives in August factor into our decisions. First announced here.

Going with a Nissan Latio (WIN). Well, on the upside, the car hasn’t broken down. Moreover, our Latio survived pretty much unscathed compared to the Honda Civic I bumped into nearly a year ago. On the down side, Ling’s been remarking that the car makes funny squeaky noises occasionally, and doesn’t give her the vibes that the Latio is better built than the old Civic we were driving. And we haven’t been getting the 14 km/litre fuel consumption milleage some drivers claimed. But a 12.5 to 12.8 km/litre isn’t too bad. First blogged here, then here.

Red and silver.

Publishing a book (WIN). This, funnily, was the hardest decision I’ve made this year. My work and research has been published in several places prior to this of course, but publishing in academia is quite different from producing a commercial publication. There’s all the legalese in the author’s contract with the publisher, all my liabilities since there’re now new issues of distribution, ownership and copyright. And to top if all off, it’s not as though my book is gonna be selling a million copies allowing me to enter early retirement. The summative royalties I expect are essentially, for lack of a better word, non-existent. First blogged here.

Deciding between a PS3 or an XBox 360 (WIN). No kidding! I had long chats with Matt about the virtues of one console over the other. Moreover, the decision wasn’t as simple as which had the games I was interested in or studying. The decision to go with one of them was made when the high definition standards war was raging, and investment in the PS3 wasn’t a sure decision. It could had turned into a white elephant! First blogged here then here.

Of course I could have bought both, like Matt…

Ling having a go with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.

Investing in a new camera system (IN PROGRESS). And what a huge investment it turned into. I was determined to get it right this time by doing proper research, and proper accounting to what I was acquiring. So far, so good. Ok, so the photos are still a long way off to progressing from ‘crappy’ to ‘mediocre’, but I’m working on it! First blogged here.

Trying to fatten Matt up (LOST). As soon as Matt firmed up arrangements to visit and stay with us for a month in June this year, Ling and I drew up a strategy to make sure that this time, he’d leave Singapore weighing heavier than he arrived. And boy, did we try hard! We enlisted everyone’s help. Even my mum, and Doreen. Even our small group was involved. But Matt easily showed that he could beat us all without trying, and he left Singapore weighing less than when he arrived. So we failed miserably again.

He conquered durians even.

But as soon as he’s firmed up plans for a third visit, this time, it’s WAR. If we have to bury him with Banquet pratas or drown him with teh tariks this time, we will!! Ling’s tribute to The Champion here.

There you go. If I can think of any more significant milestones, I’ll append them here later.

The natural sights in Bali was really what I was keen on visiting. There were several new filters I’d acquired in the months before the trip that I was eager to try them out on landscapes, and specifically the graduated neutral density and neutral density filters.

The scenic highlight on Day 2 was Mt. Batur. The drive up the mountain was pleasant and on what seemed to be a major road, unlike the Day 3 drive to Taman Tirtagangga that saw us through winding and narrow roads. Apparently it’s possible for non-climbers to scale up Mt. Batur and there are day tours for that even. Dewa Marco remarked that he had a couple of customers request before for a drive up the mountain to see the sunrise, and he had to wake up at 4 a.m. just to get to them there in time.

Though it’s a little hard to tell from the pictures, the several panoramic shots of Mt. Batur were taken at three different spots. Two spots were by the road side, and the third was at Lakeview restaurant that overlooks Lake Batur, and where we also had buffet lunch (yummy tuna satay there). The sky wasn’t cooperative at all though, and there was the usual ugly gray cloud layer that obstructed a clear view of the mountain top. The base of the mountain was a patch of black too which Ling thinks is from clearing through burning.

The mountain is an active volcano too, with the last eruption in 1917 which killed more than 1,000 people. Dewa related a fun story of a Indonesian fellow who went up a mountain at an impending eruption to do some offerings and religious rites. Everyone else thought he was crazy, but the volcanic rumblings stopped shortly thereafter. This fellow was hailed a local hero and apparently is now featured in several TV advertisments and the like LOL.:)

The evening on Day 2 was spent taking the Tanah Lot cliff and sunset shots. The carpark where Dewa dropped us at was a 10 minute walk from the temple itself, and the pathway took us through a plaza that comprised hundreds of eateries, artisan and souvenir shops.

The place was pretty crowded too, and any picture of Tanah Lot itself would have seen people crawling all over like ants in it. The tide had receded substantially which made walking to the temple compound itself possible.

We made our way around to the cliffs overlooking the shore and coast line, and setup shop around the cliff edges. Yep, I was again the only weirdo using a tripod and remote trigger. I did see two or three fellows carrying tripods. But no Ann, they weren’t carrying Gitzos. Or even Benros for that matter.:)

Bits of the photo-taking experience was scary though, since I was standing fairly close to the cliff’s edge. All it would have taken was a push in the wrong direction from the crowds moving about and it would had been a 50 meter fall down.

Several of the photos taken at the Tanah Lot cliffs were long exposures using a circular polarizer + neutral density filter stack + graduated neutral density to further darken the sky. Talk about overkill LOL. The shuttle curtain opened between 15 to 30 seconds each time. That’s how the “milky” water effect was achieved (similar to the waterfall shots later and below), a popular sort of effect for many photographers shooting moving water. We checked out of the area after nearly 2 hours, and the journey from Tanah Lot back to Tepi Sawah took us just over an hour.

I’d initially planned for the visit to the Jati Luwih rice terraces on Day 3 (Day 2 with Dewa), but the motion sickness caused by the ascent to Tirtagangga on Day 3 required me to postpone the visit to the next day. The drive up north to the rice terraces on Day 4 took about 110 minutes. In a word, Jati Luwih was magnificent. Several of the panoramic shots turned out very well and can only hint of the size of the area. We were the only visitors to the area for most of the hour we were there, so the only persons in the photos are the farmers themselves.

On the down size, there was the ugly gray cloud layer and overcast that reduced the amount of green and yellow contrast that would had been possible in these shots. And would you believe it: there was again a fellow guarding the major road leading to this spot, and he was administering the entrance fee. Talk about commercialization right up the gazook. Heck, the only places which didn’t want our money, ironically, were the toilets at Bali airport. And they had signs at each toilet door proudly stating “No Charge For Toilet Use” even.

We checked out Pura Luhur Uluwatu the same evening, the other very famous and popular coastal temple in Bali. There’s a lovely three tier pagoda perched at the far end of the cliff as one can see from the picture above.

It’s probably impossible to tell from the photos here but I spotted a couple of fellows walking on the shore below us. Ling thought they were locals looking for shells. I initially was wondering how on earth did the fellows get all the way down since the shore in the photo here is pretty much enclosed completely by steep cliffs. Maybe they had an elevator somewhere haha. Dewa later showed us a little path way near the temple’s entrance that leads all the way down to the shore. Ah. That’s how they do it.

Like the Tanah Lot shots, for a couple of the pictures here I situated myself pretty close to the cliff’s edge to get as much of the coast as possible in the frame. There was a bit of a wind blowing, and the drop is an even more precarious 150 meter to the shore if the journey down doesn’t kill you from a heart attack first haha. During the fireworks festival shoot last week, Ann was telling us that joke where Grace, our small group friend, and her camera was about to hit the ground and hubbie Roger instinctively reaching for the camera instead of her. I was remembering that very joke, and wondering if I was lost my balance would Ling reach for me or the camera tripod LOL.:)

The DK book on Bali & Lombok noted that many visitors to Bali go to Bali Hyatt not just to stay, but also to visit the Australian-designed gardens in the hotel. During the several months prior to departure while I was planning the trip and before I actually decided on staying in Ubud, the Bali Hyatt at Sanur Beach was one of the places I tried booking on Asiarooms. The rooms for some reason could not be booked via the web site though. The hotel’s web site was stating much higher rates for booking too so I dropped the idea.

It was probably fortunate that we didn’t stay at Bali Hyatt after all. We visited the Gardens on Day 5 (our last day with Dewa), and well… maybe we were looking at the wrong gardens, but they didn’t look all that special. Oh, they were as usual lovingly landscaped in the Balinese style, but possibly because we were so jaded already by the other incredible sights by this time, neither of us were all that impressed.

We next checked out Sanur beach just further down the area, and boy did we see loads and loads of Caucasians in their bikinis and skimy swim wear, all chilling out in the sun. Surprisingly, we didn’t see many Asian tourists. Maybe we as Asians get way too much sun already and we’d sooner rather go to places with winter. Like Japan or South Korea in December.

The sky at Sanur beach was a glorious blue and further exaggerated by the circular polarizer doing its work in some of the pictures I took. There were a few persons doing water spots, paragliding in the distance, and a couple of local boys were flying a kite on the shore too. But Sanur beach itself was a little underwhelming. Specifically, there was a lot of debris about, and nothing like the spotless beach and crystal clear water at Rawa. We’d usually do our writing on the sand photo like what we did at Rawa island and Phuket, but this time at Bali we didn’t.

The last photo in this entry here comes from Tegenungan waterfall, which was our last stop for Day 5. The place was a 40 minute drive from Sanur beach. Again, there was an entrance fee to see the waterfall itself.

The waterfall itself is at least several hundred meters from the viewing platform, though surprisingly the separation distance worked to my advantage: the shot on the right was taken with the 55-200mm VR lens zoomed to 145mm which flattened the view perspective of the picture.

The zoomed shot also led to a pretty different composing look between the Tegenungan and Gitgit waterfalls shots from 2 days earlier. Ling I think likes the Tegenungan shots better too as the shot here is framed with flora, whereas the Gitgit waterfall shots were done using the Sigma 10-20mm ultra wide-angle which led to a less tight perspective.

It also wasn’t necessary to deploy the neutral density filter for this shot too. The waters was moving fast enough, so with a slightly less than 1 second exposure time the shot achieved the same milky effect as the Gitgit waterfall shots too.

A quick word on the filters too. I found the GND filters more useful compared to the circular polarizers even though the resulting effect on each picture itself is very roughly in the same bracket— i.e. bluer and contrasy skies. The GND was capable of giving the blue tint every time but the colorization occasionally seems unnatural at times. The effect one gets from the polarizer depends on the sun positioning relative to the camera, so can be iffy especially if you want a specific composition. But the effect one gets is typically also a lot more natural looking.

So in all again, a quick summary of the places we visited and a suggested visitation time with links to our Flickr photo collection for each place.

Mt. and Lake Batur. Worth visiting, with suggested visitation length of about 20 minutes. The place is expansive though, so there’s going to be a bit of a driving time to get to and fro. The view from Lakeview Restaurant is pretty good.

Tanah Lot. Worth visiting. If you’re doing late afternoon to sunset shots though you could be spending between 1.5 to 2 hours there.

Uluwatu. Worth visiting. Same length of time recommendation to Tanah Lot.

Jati Luwih rice terraces. Very worth visiting. About an hour suggested visitation length.

Bali Hyatt Gardens & Sanur Beach. So-so but you’re not missing anything too much if you skip it. About an hour suggested visitation time.

Gitgit waterfall. Worth visiting. It’s an about 600 metre walk from the carpark to the waterfall itself. There’s a well-built stairway too, and lined with dozens of small artisan and souvenier shops along the way.

Tegenungan waterfall. Worth visiting with two caveats. Don’t bother visiting if you like your waterfalls up close and personal, and forget about taking photographs unless you’ve got a zoom lens of at least 120mm. The carpark is a short 10 meter from the viewing platform.

So there we go. The next entry I’ll be posting up is either going to be on the flora & fauna i.e. monkeys (!) of Bali or on food and dining, which I’m sure Matt would be looking especially forward to.:)

There must be thousands of temples and shrines on Bali of varying sizes and importance, but each one is still beautifully decorated with status, carvings, and many also in Balinese-styled architecture and landscaping. That said, the sheer number of temples can easily overwhelm a person, to the effect that by the time you’ve got to the fourth or fifth one, they could all start looking alike.

In the preparation for the trip, I consulted the usual Wikitravel, Lonely Planet and DK guides of the island, and they all suggested that the nine most important temples on Bali are each well worth a visit. Still, I was really more interested in the natural sights. I narrowed the list down to six, as from the colorful floor map layouts on the DK guides each temple just didn’t look too dissimilar from one to the next.

Some but not all of the temples were free admission, and for those that didn’t charge an entrance fee, a small donation of about 5000-6000 rupiah was nonetheless still expected. Actually on the issue of admission prices, I felt the island has been fiercely commercialized. Every place we went to required an admission / donation fee from a low asking of 3000 rupiah to a huge whopping 150,000 rupiah (i.e. the Bird Park). Even the waterfalls required an entrance fee. The one exception was Mt. Batur, which made sense: how do you possibly put a barrier around a freakin’ huge mountain LOL. :)

Visitations to the temples also required respect for their customs, and there were signs advising visitors that they had to be decently dressed. So, sarongs had to be worn, with an additional sash that I still haven’t quite figured out the religious significance for, if any. On Day 2 and our first day with Dewa Marco, our first stop was Goa Gajah (above picture). The sarongs we took were a terrific blue that stuck out like a photographic blemish in the photos. As soon as we could at Tirta Empul, we bought much nicer sarongs, though Ling didn’t bargain nearly hard enough. We paid 140,000 rupiah for the two sarongs—very expensive and I think we were overcharged.

One thing too about the sarongs. I have new-found respect for Indonesian and Malay men after this Bali trip—the way they wore their sarongs without tripping is just astonishing! The first time I wore the sarong at Goa Gajah the damn thing slipped off. So there I was, taking photographs with a heavy D300 with one hand and the other hand trying to keep my sarong up. Moreover, every other step I took I nearly stepped on my hem of my own sarong and fell.

At least my sarong-wrestling gave Ling some giggles. Fortunately, no pictorial evidence of my clutching the sarong with one hand to keep it up exists. Oh heck; maybe she sneakily shot some video footage of it! I’ll have to make sure I edit all those Funniest Home Video moments out when I work on them later this month.:)

A couple of the temples were packed with vendors and touts too, and they were selling all sorts of wares, including sarongs, fruits and drinks. They didn’t bother me very much at all, me being the expert when it comes to brushing off the ubiquitous salespersons in Singapore. I simply told each person a polite and firm “No thanks”, or simply ignored them. Ling on the other hand was a little distressed, and by the time we got to Ulun Danu Batur on Day 2, Ling had her fill of temples. That required some changes in our day itineraries where I removed all but the most important religious places, and Dewa was fortunately very accommodating on my requested changes.

A few more notes on the temples we visited. The Gunung Kawi Royal Monument (above picture) was accessible by a long flight of stairs that Dewa estimated to be a couple hundred. Each direction to and fro the temple and carpark had stairs going both up and down. Talk about our legs getting a thorough workout. Ling fared far better than I did for certain since she’s Mt. Everest and Mt. Kinabula-trained. Moreover, we were carting around heavy photographic equipment. I told Matt that the next time we go to these places, I’m hiring a porter. If not, I’m gonna rent a donkey! Matt had a good laugh and said he’d pay the rental fee alone to see me do it LOL.:)

Tirta Empul has beautiful bathing pools that I was really hoping to get some good pictures of. Unfortunately, the day we visited (Day 2) was teeming with crowds as it was still a religious holiday period. Ulun Danu Batur is situated around Mt. Batur and didn’t look too special. Moreover, Ling was reeling from the vendor / tout effect. There’s a photo I took of her there and it sure was hard getting her to smile for the picture.

Pura Kehen was a much smaller temple. It was pretty deserted when we were there, so we had the tripod out for those couple shots. Funnily, the wireless trigger for the D300 didn’t work so well as I placed the camera some distance from us to get the composition I wanted. So, it was back to using the self-timer mode and running to and fro to reset the timer each time.

We visited Taman Gili above on Day 3 (Day 2 with Dewa). This place was beautiful. The palace is set in a moat, and we got several nice couple shots in too, including some panoramic shots of the stone path crossing the moat, and also the length of the palace itself. The place was initially deserted in the early morning we were there, but it wasn’t long before several groups of Caucasian tourists arrived. There’s a way to Photoshop them out in the panoramic shots by taking multiple and timed shots with exactly the same composing and blending them together, but that was too much of a bother.

The Taman Tirtagangga water gardens in the picture above was even more stunning, but the 2 hour journey to get from Taman Gili to there was via small, terrifically winding and bumpy roads. That was when motion sickness kicked in for me. I struggled through the journey, including having to lie flat down on Ling’s lap to minimize the sensation of movement. By the time we got there, I was about to bowl over—any distance longer I would have had to make use of the SIA baff bags.

Either way, I was feeling too sick and hands too shaky to take good pictures. So it was a bit of a waste. The Tirtagangga photos didn’t turn out so well even though the place was visually amazing.

The picture above is from the last temple we properly visited on Day 4 (Day 3 with Dewa): Pura Ulun Danu Bratan, or the temple in the lake. This place was situated on the hilly part of the island so there was a mist layer in addition to the cloudy skies. The entrance gardens had these huge and tall trees that reached right up into the sky (there are a couple of photos of these trees). Ling will have to help me identify what trees they are. There were quite a few visitors the day and time we were there too.

Oh yeah; story here. Wherever we went, as soon as I got the Manfrotto ‘pod extended out, there would be visitors stopping to ‘beo’ our photographic equipment. It must had been something to do with the fact that I was the only weirdo carrying a fully extended tripod moving from spot to spot in several places. I don’t speak French, German or Italian of course, but I can understand selected words and phrases. Comes from all those decades of listening to soprano divas sing opera in those languages. The Caucasians all looked on in admiration, and from what I understood from the words and phrases I recognized, they assumed I was a pro taking photographs for some publication. If they only knew how crappy some of those pictures turned out LOL.:)

And here’s the funny thing. Apparently, at any given place, only the Caucasians seemed impressed. None of the Asians ‘beo-ed’, because a few of them were also carting around Nikons and Canons DSLRs. Heck, on our flight back to Singapore on the last day, I saw a Japanese guy hand-carrying into the flight gate area a Nikon D300 mounted with what looked like a Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 lens. That’s a 8.5 inch long lens that weighs 5 pounds. And he even had the lens hood mounted on which extended the lens length by a couple more inches. Wow. One would have thought the lens should be safely tucked in its holder in a bag. I wonder what he was intending to shoot during the flight with that kind of equipment.

So, that’s the story here for the temples, palaces and monuments. Quick summary and recommendations to visitors:

Goa Gajah (Photo #1 in this entry). Worth visiting. Visitation length about 20 minutes.

Gunung Kawi Royal Monuments (Photo #2). Worth visiting. Visitation length about 30 minutes (most of it climbing up and down).

Tirta Empul. Worth visiting. Visitation length about 30 minutes.

Pura Ulun Danu Batur. Wasn’t impressed. Can skip if no time or at most a quick stopover.

Pura Kehen. So-so. Visitation time about 20 minutes. Can skip if no time or at most a quick stopover.

Taman Gili (Photo #3). Worth visiting. Visitation length about 30 minutes.

Taman Tirtagangga (Photo #4). Worth visiting. Visitation length about 30 minutes.

Pura Ulun Danu Bratan (Photo #5). Worth visiting. Visitation length about 45 minutes.

There are a couple of other important temples we visited, especially Tanah Lot and Uluwatu. We didn’t enter into the temple compounds themselves, so I’ve put them into the next Bali: Places blog entry I’ll be writing shortly.

In the mean time, here’s the link to a selection of the photos for Temples, Palaces and Monuments.

We’re safely back at home now, and amidst waiting for the laundry machine to clean up the first basket of laundry, I can finally do some photographic accounting.

Over the 6 days, we took a total of 2,486 shots, of which 2,261 pictures were on the Nikon D300, and the remaining 225 on the Panasonic DMC-LZ7. The actual number of exposures triggered is actually even higher than this as that’d include the pictures that are deleted on the camera body itself.

Of this lot of photos, about 440 have been posted into the Flickr photo collection for the trip. But as the days go by I’ll be rechecking through each image and most likely will remove a couple of the redundant ones.

If there was any one issue with the photographic equipment I’d been agonizing last week on what to bring to our Bali trip, it was the weight. The places we visited were varied within each day, so to be safe, I usually stuffed whatever lenses the Tamrac Adventure 7 bag could hold. Ling helped loads by helping to carry the tripod when my hands needed to be free, while at the same time also juggling her video camera and LZ7 too.:)

Of the four lenses that came along for the ride, not surprisingly the Nikon 18-55mm VR lens got the most use. I’ve got a colleague who scoffs at this lens because of its plastic-y build and mount. But unless one is in the habit of dropping them onto hard ground or similar abuse, the lens works just fine and is fully capable of amazing pictures. The Nikon 55-200mm VR I used for just two places: to take the 321 pictures at the Bali Bird Park, and about a dozen more for the Tegenungan Waterfall. This lens is amazingly sharp, as you can see from this photo here and here with minimal sharpening required in post-processing.

The two specialized lenses saw slightly less utility comparatively, but were nonetheless used for some of the macro, landscape and weather shots. Most of the 234 flower pictures taken at the Bali Botanic Gardens were on the Sigma 150mm f2.8, with Ling taking a few on her own using her Panasonic LZ8. It was a pity that the Bali Botanic Gardens was a little underwhelming in size and variety of flower species, and that was made even the less pleasing given the hefty admission fee to enter the park too. Ling noted that several of the flowers didn’t look really healthy either.

The Sigma 10-20mm lens on the other hand was used to create the Tanah Lot and Uluwatu “milky” sea pictures, similar effects for the Gitgit Waterfall series, and also for several panoramic shots of the Jati Luwih rice terraces and Gunung Kawi Royal Monument. For the interested, the pictures were taken at the lowest ISO, smallest f-stop, with a circular polarizer + three stop neutral density + graduated neutral density (occasionally) stack, with a bit of exposure compensation for a few of the shots. The D300 was mounted on the 190CXPRO3 tripod, and the shot triggered by remote with mirror-up.

As instrumental as was Ling’s help in carrying and deploying the tripod up and down as we moved from subject to subject, at several points in times I half-wished we could also have a porter, or maybe even a donkey, to help carry our equipment. Ling had a waterbottle, the Bali & Lombok guidebook and a ton of other things in her small backpack to carry too.

Still, we were blessed with passable weather for most of the spots we visited, in that apart there was just  a few very light drizzles in the day and one downpour one night. What was less pleasing was that of the 6 days we were in Bali, we enjoyed only absolutely clear skies for 1 day, with the rest of the days lost in cloudy skies and even a mist in the low level clouds. Just take a look at the gray skies for the Jati Luwih and Pura Ulun Danu Bratan (I’m the little red / white dot on the left LOL) pictures here in this blog entry. *sigh*

The one clear day was Day 5 of our stay, and that was the day I needed clear skies the least: when I did the Botanic Gardens, Bird Park, and Bali Hyatt Gardens & Sanur Beach shots. Come to think of it, only the Bird Park shots were satisfactory. The Botanic Gardens as aforementioned really didn’t have very good flower subjects, and by the time we got to the Bali Hyatt Gardens in the late afternoon, we were both spaced out and just wanted to lie down somewhere and stone.

A selection of Ling’s “Behind the Scenes” photos are here too.:)

I’ll ramble on but the both of us need to get some early sleep as it’s back to work for me tomorrow morning. I’ll write another entry tomorrow about some of the other places we visited.:)

Our fifth day in Bali was mostly spent in photography subject-specific places; we started off in the early morning at the Botanic Gardens in Ubud for macro flower photography, then continued onto the Bird Park for animal photography, then the Bali Hyatt Gardens and Sanur Beach, before finishing the day at Tegenungan Waterfall.

The highlight by far of the day though was easily Bali Bird Park. This park was opened in 1995, and has 1500 birds of 250 specifies from Bali, Lombok, Indonesia, Africa, Australia and the Americas.

This place had been on and off our “To Visit List” largely because there were still a lot of things we could do, including spending the last full day just stoning at the villa, or wandering and visiting the hundreds of artisan shops in Ubud town, or checking out Kota. Moreover, it was hard for me to imagine any bird park in the world being as magnificent as the Jurong Bird Park.

And boy, were we so wrong about that. In a word, the Bali Bird Park is amazing. In terms of sheer size and variety of bird specifies, I’ll haphazard a guess that the Jurong Bird Park is perhaps at least 6-7 times larger than the Bali one. Heck, the aviary in the former alone is possibly the size of the Bali Bird Park already.

What’s amazing, however, about the one we spent several hours at yesterday were three aspects.

Firstly, its compact design. The exhibits are placed fairly close together with little waste of space. Jurong BP while huge in its land area has exhibits that are spaced pretty far apart. We were at the Bali BP for just over 2.5 hours and never felt rushed for time as we moved from exhibit to exhibit.

Secondly, the bird keepers were wonderfully friendly, and even enthusiastic about encouraging visitors to interact with the birds. It seemed as though every couple of metres or so there would be keepers cheerfully nudging for us to take pictures with birds perched on us.

Even more thrilling was while we were having lunch at the park’s restaurant, we had a short 15 minute show right in the restaurant itself. The picture of Ling and myself here’s taken during the show while we were having Pizza & Tomyam.:)

Oh yeah; notice the green and yellow parrot lying on Ling’s palm? He’s plays dead when you say “Abacadabra” to him.:)

The most impressive aspect of the park however was how close we could get to the birds. Many of the birds are free roaming in the park, including dozens of peacocks, pelicans, doves, pigeons, parrots, macaws, hornbills etc. There was a peacock strutting around right at the entrance, and so wowed visitors just getting into the park that there was a bit of a congestion right at the entrance there.:)

The two lovely fellows in the first picture were too in a couple pose, and actually looked amused as I stood half a metre from them to take this picture! The two of them looked so romantic as they necked each other, and shared a bite of a biscuit. It was possible to even stroke them gently.:)

The other picture of Ling here with five birds perched on her was taken inside an aviary. The keeper got her to hold the small metal bowl of a honey mix, and it didn’t take long for several birds to hop whatever free space they could on her.:)

The one downer of the place though is its ticket price. At USD17 per adult, it’s a major *ouch*! The Jurong BP admission ticket is USD13 in comparison. That said, the Bali BP admission gave a 20% discount for visitors who’d flew Singapore Airlines in Bali, so that helped a bit. Moreover, the price of the ticket included admission into the nearby smaller but as impressive reptile garden. We were however running short of time so we didn’t spend too much time at the garden.

So, in all, it was quite a memorable visit that’s easily worth the high price of admission, and we really recommend visitors to Bali to bite the expensive bullet and give the park a try. We took about 350 pictures, many of them turned out well. A small selection are right here in our Flickr album.:)

The funny thing is that I’m far more likely to remember the tropical rain from yesterday than all the pyrotechnics that followed thereafter during yesterday’s shoot at the Singapore Fireworks Festival.:)

Ann’s students recced the area over the several days leading up to the event to see if there were better spots to take the pictures for the night. They got to what seemed like a pretty secluded spot in Tanjong Rhu after walking through open fields, crossing longkangs (drains) and the like.

The Tanjong Rhu spot is pretty nice and it offers a more interesting perspective of the fireworks than the usual Suntec City + Esplanade backdrop that everyone usually guns for in these things. You just have to accept that the Benjamin Sheares bridge will be in it.

In any case, I was OK with either this spot or the NTUC open field for a repeat shoot again—two weeks ago I shot the National Day Fireworks from the same spot. Ann chose the latter, and I looked around for places to park in the Central Business District so that we wouldn’t have to choke on too much ERP and parking fees again.

The festival spanned two days, and the second day on Saturday was expected to experience huge crowds. We settled on Friday, but I still wasn’t ready to leave anything to chance. One thing I learned from the NDP shoot was this; there’s no such thing as “too early” when it comes to Singaporeans. You want a good spot for anything, you just have to be even more kiasu than the next fellow. So, I took a half day leave from work and with Ling got to our spot at 4 pm five hours before the shoot.

And would you have guessed; there were already photographers camped out there at 4 pm!! Fortunately, it was just about half a dozen photographers already there, so Ling stopped by One Marina Boulevard and I unloaded around 8 kilograms of equipment: the tripod, the camera bag with the D300 + lenses + filters, beach mat and two chairs; all for me to set up camp.

Ann was still at home by the time I’d started the camp; she’d overslept with her power nap.:) A few SMSes later though and she was on her way.

Then it started raining! And there was wind to top it off. Ling was still looking around for parking space, and I’d forgotten about the umbrellas. So there I was huddling under a beach mat desperately clutching onto camera equipment and the tripod to stop it from blowing into the bay haha.:)

It was still raining by the time Ling got to where I’d camped, with Ann arriving shortly thereafter at around 5 pm. The three of us huddled close together for mutual rain protection, and also to avoid the oft chance we’d get struck by lightning. A newspaper headline that reads “Two Photographers and a Tripod Girl Died For Their Hobby” wouldn’t look so good.:)

The rain subsided into a very slight drizzle at about 7 pm. The field was seeing more photographers arriving, though by the time the fireworks started itself, the field still wasn’t nearly as crowded as it was during the NDP shoot.

What were the things we did to occupy ourselves? Well we’d neglected to bring playing cards. One group on our right did. Another group on our left brought along their notebooks even. And Ann went about the stretch peering at what other people were using for their tripods.:)

The fireworks started at 9:20 pm and ran for 20 minutes. Longer than the NDP, somewhat more impressive, and I think we got a good number of nice shots. A selection have been uploaded into our Flickr album right here.

Oh yeah; there was the usual smoke diffusing the visual spectacle of those fireworks. Ann cheerfully suggested aloud that we all blow as vigorously as we could… from 300 metres across the floating platform. That got the photographers around us laughing.:)

So, was it all worth it? The math of it is boggling. Five hours for the about 180 exposures, two thirds of which turned out pretty OK.

Well, at least one thing’s for sure. I’d like to move onto other spots next year. The thing about fireworks photography is that the shoots aren’t really all that different unless you change your spot to get a different perspective.

That said, it’s really a social occasion. These shoots just aren’t just any fun if you’re going on it alone. Ann provided a good number of jokes. And that’s what we’ll remember from this evening—the rain, the laughs, and the fireworks (maybe)! :)

Oh yeah; Ann’s must-read account of the shoot is right here.:)

We braved the rainy weather and all for the 2008 Fireworks Festival this afternoon, this time with Ann from our church group too. And boy, do we have stories to tell. Ling is completely spaced out though and can barely keep awake, and can’t wait to turn in. Me, I’ve just finished sorting and selecting through the photos. Here’s a sampler.:)

I’d stay up and contine writing a longer entry since I can still stay awake, but Ling is already passed out on the sofa and needs to turn in. So it’s tomorrow then, with the rest of the pictures at our album here.:)

Here’s one of the most amazing panoramic shots I’ve seen… like ever! Someone created a 360 degree view of the Beijing Olympics stadium just before the 100m finals:

Link right here.:)

Use the SHIFT, CTRL, and hold-mouse to zoom in / out and pan the camera. You can also look upwards too.

Absolutely breathtaking, and check out the photographer poses.:)

One of the things that Ling was a little sad about during our Singapore Botanic Gardens flowers shoot a few Sundays ago was that she didn’t have her own camera to take pictures with. We’ve had several compact digicams now of course, but they all haven’t fared so well.

So over the last week or so I went about doing my usual research to buy her a new compact camera. Ling had just a few requirements: a) It can fit into her handbag; b) It can take nice macro shots.

Those are pretty general requirements so I tacked on a few more: c) It includes optical (not digital or image) stabilization; d) Something that Ling can learn photography with, i.e. support for PASM modes. e) Costs under $300. The latter came about largely due to our experience with our last compact: the Casio Exilim Z700 cost more than $500 but lasted just 18 months and about 4500 shots taken before its sensor gave up its ghost.

Personally if I had no requirements and no budgetary limit, I would have gone for something like the Fuji FinePix S100FS, the Panasonic FZ18, or maybe even the Canon G9 to complement the D300. But none of those cameras are quite so compact at all. All three also are loads more expensive than $300, and the utility I’d be getting would be more novelty than actual usage. And I’d sooner start saving that money for a lens like this one (just joking, dear! :) )

But seriously, after studying the options with my usual spreadsheets, I identified two possibilities which met all the requirements; the Canon A590, or Panasonic Lumix LZ8, and just for fun, emailed Ling the two choices in a sort of ‘blind’ test. You know, like the Coke vs Pepsi test. The Coke has better optics but is bulkier, while the Pepsi has marginally poorer glass but is somewhat sleekier but still fatter than the old Casio. Funnily, she chose Coke first, then changed her mind to Pepsi. Women! :)

In any case, I ordered Ling’s choice on Friday from the American online retailer B & H Photo Video, took a day to finish the credit card verification process, shipped on Saturday, and on Monday evening the unit arrived by UPS Worldwide Express while we were watching the American women basketball team royally pwn the Chinese team at the Olympics. Even with the extravagant shipping option, the camera cost well under $300 and is still cheaper than if I’d bought it in Singapore.

The LZ8 sure has a laundry list of features: wide + standard aspect images, optical stabilization, facial detection, PASM (!!!), and good-enough macro. It looks, works and feels pretty OK for its sale price though yeah the tiny sensor these compact cameras can never match what a full or even cropped sensor DSLR can produce. But still, Ling seems happy with her new toy and second birthday prezzie, so that leaves me with just one more present for next month till her birthday.:)

As enjoyable as the fireworks shoot yesterday was, the overall event itself was at moments exasperating, and at all times sweaty.

I started looking through good sites for the NDP fireworks shoot a fortnight ago. The open field at Raffles Quay was of course the favorite among enthusiasts. The spot is possibly the best place to shoot fireworks with the Suntec City and Esplanade area in the backdrop. Ironically, this field wasn’t my first choice initially, since every other photographer would be zeroing in one that area. There were other spots including the Merlion Park, Tanjong Rhu, and Marina East.

Eventually, I decided on the Raffles Quay field just beside NTUC centre. Our small group friend Ann was going to do the same event too and I was hopeful we’d be able to do the shoot together. This sort of thing is a social thing and best done in groups. She chose the Merlion Park though, which was about perhaps 500metres away on my left of where we were. Her experience of the shoot turned out quite different which you can read about here. Still, it was a comical sort of scene as we were SMSing each other during the setup and parade and comparing notes.:)

Either way, I figured we’ll have to get to the field early to get a good spot and thought that 4 pm would be early enough. As it turned out, at 3:45 pm all the best spots had been taken. Part of the field had already been cordoned off which left perhaps an approximately 30 metre stretch that would allow perhaps two dozen photographers an unobstructed view of the bay. I had to settle for a second row, and it was about then that I wished the 190CXPRO3 tripod could extend a little taller so it could overlook people’s heads.

The fireworks event was drawing photographer enthusiasts from every range and ability, from persons with handphone cameras, to compact cameras, to prouser digicams, to professional-class DSLRs. DSLR users were largely from the Canon, Sony and Nikon families, though as far as I could tell there was only one other person using a D300 besides myself. Also, Benro is clearly a very popular tripod brand because there were more Benro tripod users than the Manfrottos and Gitzo users added together.

By 5 pm the place was packed with standing room only, and strangely not just by photography enthusiasts and Singaporean families, but a lot of foreign national construction workers. As our friend Ann also remarked in her blog entry, it started to feel as though we were indeed in a foreign country!

Then it started drizzling. We were prepared enough for that thankfully, with plastic bags to cover the tripod ball head, umbrellas, sheets to cover the camera and tripod bags etc. The tripod, all our barang barang, Ling and I shared and huddled under our umbrella. She thought the whole experience was very ‘lomantik‘. :)

The fireworks started promptly at 8 pm and that was when the shutters started firing. The persons who’d done their homework were all using remote triggers while others were using timer modes.

A technical note here; most fireworks sites advise keeping the shuttle open for 6 to 10 seconds but I found the best results coming from 3-4 second shuttles. I didn’t employ the double exposure method to capture two fireworks bursts either. The bursts were running in such quick succession it would have made such an exposure method pointless.

In any case, the fireworks were all done at 8:15 pm, which was at about the time I remarked to Ling about all this 4 hour trauma for just about 90 frames of pictures. Thankfully the photos turned out pretty Ok. Certainly could be better, and I have a good idea what to improve upon next time. The spot was perfect, just that it was too small to contain the crowd.

That that said, a colleague at work swears by the apartment buildings at Bras Basah for fireworks shooting and was quite dismissive of the other areas. But having seen the fireworks pictures taken yesterday with the Suntec City and NDP grandstand backdrop, it’s hard to imagine if there’re better places. Still, I think I’d go for variety next year and scout for another location. After all, who’d want fireworks pictures to look the same every year.:)