Posts Tagged ‘nikon’

SINGAPORE.

February 13, 2009

Captains Log

Day 10: 22nd December 2008.

Still in Kuala Lumpur. Just arrived back from Cambo in one piece. This is where we split. Stephanie left to Kelantan, Pastor Yew Meng + family stayed in Kuala Lumpur for a while. Aaron came to the airport and we had the best 15 mins ever! Jason, Will, Patrick, Seng Yee and Andrea stayed in KL a couple days too. Ben, Edna, and myself continued onto Singapore. In the airport we met a lovely lady, Mrs Kate Cheah.

Credit Ben for taking the picture

We later found out that Mrs. Cheah was the owner of Polar Puffs and Cakes, Singapore. She also does missionaries to prisons in Thailand. She details this in her book Sweet Memories Sweet Success.

I sat across the aisle from her as she was flying back to Singapore after her attending her son’s wedding in Malaysia. We arrived in Singapore at night and Edna had plans to meet up with her friends for their annual new year party. Just a couple of them who are best friends. I only took one photo the whole night. This is it.

As you can probably tell it was a costume party. You can see Edna in the pink shirt...she didnt dress up coz we just got out of the plane and came straight.

No, this is NOT how they normally dress. They changed back into “normal” clothes almost right after the shot. I did enjoy myself though…particularly the bed…as we’d been sleeping on hard mattresses in Cambodia…and this particular place was a 5 star service apartment.

Day 11: 23rd December 2008

We spent the day roaming around Singapore, visiting the Merlion among other things.

I like the lines in this shot.

Me and the Merlion. Credit to Ben for taking the picture.

Got these ideas from Anderson

Ben loves Singapore.

this guy looked funny as he was trying to take a picture...I wonder how many of these there are of me?

Ok ok, heres a proper picture of the Merlion.

from the Merlion, you can see bunches of these spherical bouy-like things floating in the water...any idea what they are?

There were many cranes right opposite the lake/big pond thingie which faces the Merlion.

Eye of Singapore...? thats what they call it in every other city!

That night, we decided to go to the Singapore Night Safari. Its basically an extension of the Singapore Zoo thats only open at dusk til midnight. Its an amazing experience viewing all the nocturnal animals. By the way, it really pushes your camera (whatever you have) to the limits. I was shooting at HI 1.0 (ISO3200 equiv.) on my Nikon D80 wide open on my 50mm f/1.8.

The Night Safari, Singapore.

The otters demonstrate the importance of recycling garbage as these items can suffocate such animals and kill them.

Big snake

Tribal dance

They also breath fire...

Of course there were animals too...lions...

A babirusa. (direct translation means Pig Deer)

cant remember the name but its the largest rodents on earth.

Perhaps the coolest thing is in fact the toilets. At first glance its just a normal looking toilet...beautifully designed, elegant, and posh.

...but upon further inspection, you'll notice the outer wall is missing! Its actually really cool! without the flash you wouldn't notice the wall outside. This is the less packed one. At the main entrance theres a better one with fake perpetual rain that really enhances the ambience.

Even the table surfaces match the theme...

After roaming around the entire park we decided to relax by soaking our feet in fish infested waters. Its called Nibbles and basically you stick your feet into the water and the fishes eat away the dirt…perhaps the pictures will tell a better story…

Nibbles, Once bitten, Twice Shine.

Tickles!

Finally after an awesome but exhausting day we were waiting for the last bus...look at Bens black shoes...so gay right? who agrees?

Day 12: 24th December 2008

New Years Eve.

-and what am I doing? …travelling…travelling half way round the world to London to be exact.

Good news is I got to sit on the A380 and it is DEFINITELY WORTH THE HYPE!

Singapore Airlines SQ318 Airbus A380 Cabin.

This is my seat. I started off with a single pillow and blanket. There were so few people on the plane that by the time I arrived I had easily 12+ pillows. This is about half way through.

I love it that they actually decorate the cabin…you can see the chrismas deco hanging on the cabin walls.

BY THE WAY!!! I noticed my pictures in all the previous post were all soft and blurry…I thought it was because of my theme but I realised I was just resizing them too small and Wordpress had to stretch the pictures…heres an example:

Before.

After.

…and another example…

Before.

After.

If you look closely the difference is actually quite obvious…another thing, I realize a photographers blog is supposed to be where they upload their “GOOD” shots where as I’m using it to upload my “CRAP SHOTS” and happy snaps with flickr still being the main showcase on the internet…so after I finish this series of posts from my summer vacation I’ll change it around and use my blog onto for good pictures. I will probably change the theme as well to suit the motive…until then, please don’t judge my skills from this blog…cheers!

Tags: a380, airbus, airbus a380, B&W, babirusa, cranes, d80, durian, eye of singapore, Jiaren, Jiaren Lau, lion, merlion, nibbles, night safari, nikon, once bitten twice shy, singapore, singapore airlines, sq318
Posted in Friends, Fun, News | No Comments »

North Stradbroke Island – QLD

January 20, 2009

Ok, straight to the point.

Steph and I took a short getaway to the Gold Coast to celebrate a special occasion. I planned a cool day of enjoying the Gold Coast and a day trip to North Stradbroke Island, an Island just off the Brisbane Coast. We didn’t take many photos in the Gold Coast as that wasn’t the purpose but we did head up to Q1, the worlds tallest residential tower. As a matter of fact, its the tallest building in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere. I just found out like 10+ seconds ago that Q1 stands for Queensland Number 1. Below is the view from the Obsevation Deck creatively known as QDeck. It is on the 77 and 78th floor. You have to pay to get up there. It cost a fair bit and you get into an elevator that whisks you up to the 77th floor in 40 seconds flat.

This is the view from the Observation Deck.

: view from Q1, the tallest residential tower in the world

It was late by the time we got down so sorry for the crap shot but here it is from the bottom up:

Having been to the pinnacle of urban Australian, we headed to Stradbroke Island the very next day.

: It takes about 20 minutes to get from the mainland to Stradbroke Island by water taxi. The wide open view of nothingness is breathtaking!

It was weird because we left the mainland at about midday…3/4 way into the water taxi trip we went straight into a fog and by the time we arrived at the port it was raining cas and dogs. I was dissapointed because I thought thr whole day would be wasted but the other half of the Island was completely dry! We got off the bus and had some lunch before heading to the nearest short walking trails…This was the first thing we saw:

: how beautiful is that! wish I had more time to wait for some better lighting. In the meantime a Grad ND will have to do.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to stay around and wait for sunset because we had to take the bus back to the port, catch the water taxi to the mainland, and drive 2hrs back to Toowoomba…

Anyway, the short time we were there we were fortunate enough to encounter some beautiful scenery and wildlife. We weren’t even expecting most of it. We just stood there bathing in awe of God’s glorious creation when sting rays, turtles, and even dolphins just swam close enough to the shore to see!

I’ll stop blabbering now and let the pictures speak for themselves…

ok, maybe no THAT close…pictures are cropped even with my telephoto lens…The dolphins would’ve been beautiful except I had my wide angle lens on at the time and didn’t have time to change. The sting ray was close enough but was underwater and was difficult to make out.

We followed the trail which is called the North Gorge Walk which tracks around the edge of a cliff at the tip of the island. According to the sign its a 20-30 minute hike. It took us 20 minutes to walk around the cliff and we stopped all along the way to take pictures but we had to catch the next bus back to the port so we turned around and headed back where we came from which was another 20 minutes. Only when we got back did we realised that the trail was actually a CIRCUIT!!! If we walked another 100m we would have got back to the same place and save 20 minutes! In the end we didn’t even get to touch the sand on the beach!

At least we managed to get some good shots while out there:

: hehe, my tilt-shift miniature fake of a lifeguard on duty at the beach.

For those of you who don’t know – when swimming at a beach in Australia, lifeguards patrol the areas between the red and yellow flags.

: This is perhaps my favourite picture of the day. Click to go the the flickr page where I put a more fitting description.

Til next time, peace out!

…and by the way, this site is NOT dying. I’m just lazy.

Tags: beaches, brisbane, d80, gold coast, grad, island, Jiaren Lau, landscape, nd, neutral density, nikon, north, observation deck, ocean, q1, qdeck, sand, scenery, sea, sky, stradbroke
Posted in Photography Destinations | 11 Comments »

Queen Mary Falls – Killarney, SE QLD

January 8, 2009

Hey everyone, Merry Christmas and Happy NEW YEAR!!!

I’m late again (whats new eh?) and have decided to stop apologizing everytime it takes me so long to update…coz its only gonna make it worse, lol..

I’ve been busy and have been extremely enjoying this holiday…unfortunately, my brother went back to school today and my sister went back to Scotland so I’ve got plenty of time now…btw, this is going to be a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong post.

“why?”

“…well, because I have to update on everything that happened in December so I can hurry up and start on this new year…this post is playing catch up.”

The Queen Mary Falls will be the main thingie but I’ll also throw in some pictures of our pre-christmas party (long overdue) and whatever I find in my December folder.

Queen Mary Falls

Ok, so Queen Mary Falls is located in South East Queensland – very very close to the border between QLD and NSW. The story goes something like this:

Queen Mary of England herself rode a horse through the waterfalls and loved the place. This was long ago when she was still a child. Well…either it was her or Queen Elizabeth but its called Queen Mary Falls so I guess the former would be correct. I’m about 10% sure.

I actually went twice. The first was to scout the place out as all good photogs do. The second was to pinpoint the good spots. (By first I meant my friendship parent took me there and by second, I meant I told my friends about it ad ended up planning another trip there!

Didn’t take many pics the first time as there were just the three of us: Me, Steph, and Mark (friednship parent). The upside is that I can some good pictures with steph!

: look how long and gay my hair looks…!

: by the way, for those of you who don’t know this is my friendship parent: Meet Mark Evans!

Yes, I’ve cut my hair since then…

Oh, one thing cool about the first trip was that I got to test out my ND and ND grad filters…but me being me I forgot to bring my tripod AND filter holder that day!. Darn. For those of you who don’t know (which I’m guessing are most of you) an ND is a Neutral Density filter. Basically its like sunglasses for your camera so you can take slower shots in broad daylight. A graduated ND filter is the same thing but only the top half is darkened…anyway, you get this sort of effect:

: One of my first shots with an ND grad filter. I can’t remember if this was with the Tian Ya or the Hitech one.

: This is with both ND grads stacked so thats why it looks so crap.

You can see my finger holding the filter on the bottom right hand corner there! Anyway, the second time around the clouds weren’t as beautiful but I brought my tripod so got some nice shots.

: Steph and Mark. My fave pic of the day.

Now I’m gonna stop blabbering and throw a bunch of photos so I can get to the next topic. The following pictures were taken on the second trip:

: The bunch of us who were there.

: Queen Mary Falls (The main waterfall). Apologize for the vignetting…lens too wide. Taken with Hitech ND4 Grad hard edge.

: There are also parrots.

: Pretty parrots.

: Friendly parrots. btw, this is Koh Doh Ming. We call him Kodomo. See how happy he is?

: Credits to Steph for taking the picture

: Kodomo, Edna, Ben, Sabrina, and Wilson.

: This is now the backgroud wallpaper for my iPhone.

: Elsey, Andrea, Edna, Ben, Wilson, Sabrina at Daggs Falls.

Perhaps this is a good time to explain that the Queen Mary Falls National Park is a nature reserve that consists of three main waterfalls and small streams. The main one is of course Queen Mary Falls followed by Brown Falls and the smallest one being Daggs Falls.

: Behold Daggs Falls. Apologize for crap photo. Still learning how to use Ultra Wide Angles.

: By the way, the pictures that have my watermark and border link to my flickr page. I edit them for impact. The others are straight from camera.

The walk to Daggs falls is amazing. Stop and appreciate Gods work.

: Derrick and Steph…dont you love the backlit leaves!!!

: Group photo! Back row: Jiaren, Derrick, Patrick, Ben, Wilson, Kodomo. Front row: Steph, Andrea, Elsey, Edna, Sabrina.

: Fun shot!

: this is a bit scary…

: Sweet couple.

: …and my last shot of the day. (so cute, isnt she?) gosh I miss her…

…and its 1am…forget it, I’m done for the night…Will continue later…below is a gallery of the shots above and more. 91 pics altogether. Click for a 640×480 picture and feel free to request the pics u want forwarded to you. See ya soon!