So a little while ago I lent Brandon my macro lens. I didn’t need it so I said he could return it whenever he wanted. However, last week he made some last minute plans to go back to Malaysia. I figured I might need to lens for the wedding I’m shooting next week so we dropped it off at my place before he left. Yesterday, we got bored at home so we wanted to look for a park to visit…my housemate, Warren, recommended we head to Newtown Park. I’ve never been there before so I thought why not.
In the true spirit of “Macro Madness” there won’t be any pictures of the park itself…not because I don’t want to…but because I only brought the macro lens that day…and not a measly 55mm macro but a 180mm one…which is pretty much a dedicated macro lens and nothing else. Now I can also go back to take some macros of the sunflower field! 
Of course the Brow needed to stretch her lil leggies so she came along for an impromptu portrait session.
By the way those are her legs…shes so furry her hands (as in front legs) tuck into it and dissapear when she sits like that. Her hands looks like this:
If you leave her on the ground long enough she’ll start planning her escape route…
…so we put her somewhere where she can’t run
Just kidding, haha…shes awesome…doesn’t run away unless shes at home where shes familiar with the floor…ask Linzhi, every few minutes we give a a good tickle under the chin…
Oh, right…Macro Madness Day!
Sorry…
Sorry…
I tend to digress when I ramble…
In all honesty the park was pretty down in the dumps. It wasn’t dirty or anything it just wasn’t maintained very well. However, the flowers were absolutely perfect and down at a macro level its easy to ignore the rest of the place.
Isn’t that just beautiful rose? Hows this next one for a good contrast?
Same flower, different colour…but it just says something different…the red one has that classy, elegant feel where as this one sort of brings words like “natural” and “pure” to mind…or am I crazy?
Don’t know what flower this is…any tips? I reckon I should’ve shot this closer though.
I didn’t really care for this one…but its a little weird. It looks like they are four smaller flowers inside the large outside petals…theres actually a picture that I shot dead on center which shows it in focus but composition wise this one looks better so deal with it.
Need to go shower now. Have to sleep early, tomorrows my driving test! *Eek!* Wish me luck!
I took over a hundred shots but I’ve weeded them to these few to keep from boring you, my dearest readers. After 20 minutes of positioning the lights, posing everybody, and getting the shot right without people blinking, we got some really good shots before moving onto the big red door. I like this door.By the way, have you guessed which one is Jun yet?
See the smartie pants that didn’t conform to the dress code? *Ahem* *ahem* Will and Jun (Not the Jun thats leaving, we have two Juns in our group). Let me introduce you to the group.
I like the above shot except for the cross shadows which make the girls look flashed straight on and defeats the purpose of strobing. (Phototip: The lights are meant to “look” natural and inconspicuous).
Now with two flashguns shooting camera left at full zoom we can bring the background down to exposure without loosing the foreground. Remember shadows are our friends and almost this entire series was shot with the flash on full power or close to it.
This next one is the “PHeeewWWWIIiTTtTTT, Hubba hubba, it’s gorgeous Jun!!!”:
This next one is just…well…I like the composition.
So have you guessed which one is Jun yet? Now we come to our hero, “Neo, the ladies man”:
…or would you prefer, “Neo, you disgust me!” look?:
Okay, enough of that…lets move on to more group shots ya?! Moving not more than 30 meters away is the Zen garden. The little pebbles on the ground were beautifully carved when we got there. It looked like crap when we were done, haha!
In retrospect these pics remind me of the Friends series opening sequence…
Don’t you love how it looks in black and white…when everybody conforms to the dress code? Will and Jun had already left by this time because they had other stuff to do.
Every good Japanese garden has a red bridge so it wouldn’t feel complete if we didn’t take a shot there:
Theres actually four bridges at our Japanese garden. This is one of the smaller ones. In the middle of the garden is a small island which I’ve found to be a great spot for photographs! By now we were quickly loosing light and were about to wrap up so we quickly had to get it over with. Once the lights were set up I was ready to go. Check out the reflections!
Sort of has a “The Bold and the Beautiful” theme going on, hey? Heres another:
You can see the flash in the picture which I felt would pass as a lamp post or something. I tried to clone it out but preferred it like this. At this point we were exhausted and ready to pack up. Jun had other plans. She wanted one last shot with Ben, Edna, and Neo so with plenty of people around I used them as assistants to finally get some use out of the umbrellas which I’d been lugging around all day without using for fear of them being blown by the wind. Its happened once and broke the flash that way. I had just got it too!
Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom! If you enjoyed what you saw please leave me a comment! Send me feedback, what I should or should not be doing! critic! We all learn from our mistakes. Let me leave by saying I appreciate criticism a lot more than flattery so don’t hesitate if there was something bothering you that you thought would look better only if…(I’ll leave the rest to you)