Jaime the Brilliant.

We have taken up a new hobby and Jaime is brilliant at our new sport.

Mastering Light.

I realize if I am to make a living from photography in 2 years time, I will have to master light. Light is the raw ingredient of photography. The word photography comes from the Greek words “Photos” for light and “Graphien” draw. How do I draw with a good picture with light if I do not have a proper understanding of how lighting works and how best to exploit it?

The NAFA course has provided me with a good introduction to studio lighting. It is up to me now to take it further. This long weekend will be a good time for me to start.

I have started off with some theory:

The Nature Of Light

-energy that travels in waves

-photography makes use of visible light

-photons are the raw material of light; when atoms are excited or energized, photons are emitted.

-white light is made up of a mixture of colours

Light can be:

i) Reflected ~ light will always come off a flat reflective surface at the same angle at which the incoming wave of light struck the surface ( angle of incidence = angle of reflection)

ii) Scattered - reflection off a rough surface which diffuses the light

iii) Refraction - light slows and bends when it passes through certain materials

iv) Absorption - Absorption results in the production of heat and not light.

Light intensity
–Illumination from a light source declines considerably over distance ~ inverse square law holds i.e if you double the distance between the subject and the light, the illumination is reduced to a quarter of what it was originally.

Colour of light

- Coloured gels are important and very useful tools for anyone interested in flash photography. They are commonly used to get the light from your flashes to match the surrounding light.

Lucky Kids

Passing by the National Stadium last Saturday, we couldn't believe our eyes.




These are 9-10 year old kids. Valentino Rossis in the making?

My Aunt vs Miu Miu

My aunt is the only person in our household the little rascal fears .

Mexican Art.

On Gwen's recommendation, we went to the SAM on Friday night for some Mexican art.

This is my favorite piece, in the magical realities section. Some of my more troubling dreams resemble this.


This guy looks a bit like Gwen.

Jaime kept trying the "Curator, he's taking photos" trick on me, but I was hardly taken in.

憨人 in the staff room.

I have been listening to Mayday the whole morning and even though I must have heard it like a thousand times, 憨人 never fails to motivate and inspire me. This one's the concert version and before the song proper, Ah Shin talks about dreams and salted fish and how we must never stop dreaming. (I know Jaime, you don't see what i mean yet, but one day you will, one day you will come to understand why I like them so much, maybe you won't be crazy about them, but you will be moved, as I have) Seating here marking, I have a dream too, even if right now that dream may seem a little far off and I am not too sure how it's gonna happen.

Right here in this quiet corner of the staff-room, I tell myself, I must not be afraid to chase my dream of becoming a photojournalist.

憨人

Miu digs Torres.

Damn! My cat is a Liverpool fan! No doubt my brother has worked his malevolent influence.

School Excursion '93

Wet, rainy days are especially suited for nostalgia.

Simian and I forget his name.


Me fighting Indian Elephant .

Cai Qiming, the Phenom.

Tweety

Beetlebug boy.

When I was young I'd listened to the radio Waiting for my favorite songs When they played I'd sing along It made me smile Those were such happy times And not so long ago How I wondered where they'd gone But they're back again Just like a long lost friend All the songs I loved so well


Every sha-la-la-la Every wo-wo-wo Still shines Every shing-a-ling-a-ling That they're starting to sing So fine When they get to the part Where he's breaking her heart It can really make me cry Just like before It's yesterday once more

- The Carpenters

Re-stitched Predators

After a 4 month layoff to recover from my shoulder operation, I have gotten back into competitive soccer, turning out for Edwin's Ishkawa FC in the Espzen league. My fitness still leaves much to be desired but it's good to know I could still contribute, scoring the winning goal a fortnight ago and setting up the 3rd goal in a 4-0 win last week.

Jaime came to watch me play last week!

I look at these kids and remember those good old Fridays, after Mahjong. Another generation owns this court now and you can't help but think, 'We are getting old.'

Singapore 1941/2

While waiting for my kids to arrive for consultation, I savored another poem by Edwin Thumboo.

Singapore 1941/2

1 - They Return

(for Ban & Helen)

Images,

Whose tribe - born of stone and gossamer, commanding acts

Of birth, life, and death; high cowardice to mute bravery;

Saints to sinners - rise in twilight, return in quiescent days.

At times unexpectedly, usually when silence shakes its fist.

Riding deep, they are swift horsemen against whom memory

Can't lock its gates; nor brute will disband, or time delude.

Moments of myrrh and incense, epiphany and bleeding cross:

All these our senses take; all these our senses will return.

And others, less of spirit, more of sad, hostile worlds

Re-staged precisely: bursting shells; reprise burning city;

Bedraggled mid-Feb bungalow in Sarkis Road, its fridge

Smelly as multi-coloured mould fed on abandoned food.

You too, have histories,

Which grip and straddle memory; which unfurls at times.

Like mine today, half a century old, still echo and uncurl

Around our island's heart, as she lay lit and dreaming

Of the Magi that December night; the price of pork, mutton, rice;

Of Japanese stalking town and village in Kwangtung.

That peace in our time that failed. Europe-in-conflict,

Hitlerised, seemed far away. Gradually murmurs of war

Pushed precaution into doubtful strategy; supplications

To Our Father who art in Heaven. Papa still strolled with

Esther in his arms, enjoying fireflies in the Garden. As

Always, near Christmas, Mandai stars were out in numbers,

Some falling on shifting yam leaves, free radicals, mercurial

Dewdrops, waiting to warm their glitter in our rising sun.

Lion City, you had claws:

88,000 British, Indian, Australian and us local Asians;

15-inch guns facing out to sea; 60 million sterling sunk

Into your bowels; 15 years of labour. White man's burden;

Impregnable eastern bastion, fortified against blood-red

Afternoon; a hen crowed in Minto Road auguries.

Or so they thought, forgetting

Empires wax and wane,

Till torpedo-bomb-blast, till oil tanks died by fire,

Till night moulted in flames searing across the sky

Behind my favourite hill. Seventeen planes. Moths

Curving in from December's monsoon north,

As beaching troops at Tumpat fanned quickly inland.

I suppose you'll shove the little men off! Percival

Was told. Instead they came, they saw, they stayed.

I remember passing ruptured oil tanks, billow-black,

Before Bukit Panjang, when driving to Chinatown.

Along South Bridge Road, I counted gaps where houses

Collapsed abruptly, on one-room families of ten or twelve.

In Upper Nanking Street I felt no loss, no tragedy .

Papa shook his head; Mama wept, thinking of family close

To Kallang Gasworks. Then to Beach Road's famous

Indian Muslim lunch, soda-fountain sarsi, ice bandung,

Before heading for the Padang. We saw volunteers muster;

The tiffin crowd at Raffles; up-country cars unloading

White evacuees, with an amah here, a head boy there.

Imperial reminders: Supreme Court, Municipality, SCC,

The Cenotaph. Even more so with a broken Zero on display:

Fuselage, one wing, the tail assembly, engine, bent prop,

Bloody parachute and flying goggles. All far bigger than

Models cousin Vincent made. I touched the rising sun, cool

Brilliant red, approvingly. Got smacked, and shushed.

Day and night moved fast. Often away at the MAS, Papa

Surrendered his shot-gun, then got the air-raid shelter built.

The damp earth smelt of toads, clogging my nose. Stocked

Up food, including our favourite things, while windows got

Darkened. Petrol getting scarce, yet the good life went on.

But within weeks

They crossed the Straits, crossed farm and hill;

Their planes flew free as masters of our sky.

The powers that be had clearly lost their will:

They could not steady look us in the eye.

The fall of Singapore:

Facts and figures; imperial ambitions; much

Praise and blame; the suffering and loss to families;

How, blowing pipes, the brave retreat to fight again,

Forgetting that death has far less glory in defeat.

Agnus Dei, Qui Tollis Peccata Mundi, Miserere Nobis.

The diggers at Gemas, far from stubborn quarrelling

Commanders, while Tsuji-homework brought crack Jap

Soldiers down through jungle thought impossible. Chinese

Irregulars in final black, died loving their two countries;

And Lt Adnan, who kept faith with his warrior's blood.

These and more, we shall remember.

Knowing war is cruel we structure peace,

Forgiveness. They came one quiet December,

Unknowingly bringing Asia's freedom, and release.

II - Father – 4

They return, those walks before the sun grew hot
Along broken, morose roads skirting the Japanese Camp,
Passing rusty bren gun carriers retreating Brits forgot.
Day 3-9-5 into the war you counted as monsoon damp
Besieged your joints, playing havoc subverting bones.
You grimaced; I thought of molars left at dentist Fones.

We heard mutters, increasingly; a hatred of the times.
How you wrestled Nippon-go far into the night,
Moving up from guttural roots, nursery rhymes…
To teach to feed us. Precarious job. Kept despite
The hard, deep-gripping consonants that maimed
An English-crusted tongue unwilling to be tamed.

Much else disturbed the peace, brutalised your pride.
Yet you coped; self-redeemed. Only a fire in your eye
Revealed nerves sharply pinched during the daily ride
To school on uncle's dubious Raleigh. Eddie, never cry
You said, so softly that I feared some terrible thing,
Without shape or name, had left in you its bitter sting.

Know only that the unleavened lesson of your pain,
So carefully unspoken, now decodes, makes sense.
Surely, great is memory which yet renews again
That little light hidden in the darkness of offence.
In times like these, Ah Tiah, you quiet ways
Still the turbulence of odd, dyspeptic days.

Edwin Thumboo
Dec 26-7-8/2001

Andrzej Dragan

Been playing around with photoshop. Here's something inspired by Polish photographer Andrzej Dragan.

Love this one.

My digital darkroom lecturer KC Tan believes in the age of digital photography and photoshop, film is obselete and redundant. He may be right but I can't see how I can replicate this with a digital camera. Film just has that special 'feel'.

Jaime on Sunday.

Lessons learned from a dying professor

My buddy Uncle Ed has an insightful post out, on the corruption in the financial industry. I would like to share something more hopeful, something I got from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture( if you don't know him, I'd suggest you do a search on google).

This is a chapter from the book, entitled, Pouring Soda in the Backseat.

For a long time, a big part of my identity was "bachelor uncle." In my twenties and thirties I had no kids, and my sister's two children, Chris and Laura, became the objects of my affection. I reveled in being Uncle Randy, the guy who showed up in their lives every month or so to help them look at their world from strange new angles.It wasn't that I spoiled them. I just tried to impart my perspective on life. Sometimes that drove my sister crazy.

Once, about a dozen years ago, when Chris was seven years old and Laura was nine, I picked them up in my brand-new Volkswagen Cabrio convertible. "Be careful in Uncle Randy's new car," my sister told them. "Wipe your feet before you get in it. Don't mess anything up. Don't get it dirty."I listened to her, and thought, as only a bachelor uncle can: "That's just the sort of admonition that sets kids up for failure. Of course they'd eventually get my car dirty. Kids can't help it." So I made things easy. While my sister was outlining the rules, I slowly and deliberately opened a can of soda, turned it over, and poured it on the cloth seats in the back of the convertible.

My message: People are more important than things. A car, even a pristine gem like my new convertible, was just a thing.As I poured out that Coke, I watched Chris and Laura, mouths open, eyes widening. Here was crazy Uncle Randy completely rejecting adult rules.I ended up being so glad I'd spilled that soda. Because later in the weekend, little Chris got the flu and threw up all over the backseat. He didn't feel guilty. He was relieved; he had already watched me christen the car. He knew it would be OK.

Whenever the kids were with me, we had just two rules:1) No whining.2) Whatever we do together, don't tell Mom.Not telling Mom made everything we did into a pirate adventure. Even the mundane could feel magical.

On most weekends, Chris and Laura would hang out at my apartment and I'd take them to Chuck E Cheese, or we'd head out for a hike or visit a museum. On special weekends, we'd stay in a hotel with a pool.

The three of us liked making pancakes together. My father had always asked: "Why do pancakes need to be round?" I'd ask the same question. And so we were always making weirdly shaped animal pancakes. There's a sloppiness to that medium that I like, because every animal pancake you make is an unintential Rorschach test. Chris and Laura would say, "This isn't the shape of the animal I wanted." But that allowed us to look at the pancake as it was, and imagine what animal it might be.

I've watched Laura and Chris grow into terrific young adults. She's now 21 and he's 19. These days, I am more grateful than ever that I was a part of their childhoods, because (the next line left me with a lump in my throat \) I have come to realise something. It's unlikely that I will ever get to be a father to children over age six. So my time with Chris and Laura has become even more precious. They gave me a gift of being a presence in their lives through their pre-teen and teen years, and into adulthood.

Recently, I asked both Chris and Laura to do me a favor. After I die, I want them to take my kids for weekends here and there, and just do stuff. Anything fun they can think of. They don't have to be the exact things we did together. They can let my kids take the lead. Dylan likes dinosaurs. Maybe Chris and Laura can take him to the Natural History museum. Logan likes sports; maybe they can take him to see the Steelers. And Chloe loves to dance. They will figure something out.

I also want my niece and nephew to tell my kids a few things. First they can say simply: "Your dad asked us to spend this time with you, just like he spent time with us." I hope they'll also explain to my kids how hard I fought to stay alive. I signed up for the hardest treatments that could be thrown at me because I wanted to be around as long as possible to be there for my kids. That's the message I've asked Laura and Chris to deliver.

Oh, and one more thing. If my kids mess up their cars, I hope Chris and Laura will think of me and smile.

A Cat's Life.

As I am doing my work, preparing lecture notes, this morning, Miu Miu does his best to convince me that I'd be better off as a Cat.

JB last Sat

Traffic was slow on the causeway.

Nerine doing her readings.

A big sign welcomes us.

On the way to Holiday Plaza.

Dinner at Taman Sentosa.

Our raison d'etre.

Photos from JB last week, "Newsweek style"

Street Photography

This afternoon on the Mrt, from Marsiling to Toa Payoh.

Apart from the product/still life photography we are doing in the studio at NAFA, in the next 2 months, I would like to explore street photography.

What is street photography? A reflection of every day life – real, unaltered impressions ofpublic places, places that everybody visits every day, the street where you live, the parking lot of your favorite grocery store, the subway. Street photographers document the truth – Often likened to a mirror held up to society, street photography reflects reality. There is no set-up involved, no manipulation of the scene and little or no post-processing of the image.

This realism has provided an accurate and insightful record of street culture throughout the world. With images portraying everything from the ugly, gritty side of life to more humorous situations, they are moments that unless captured would otherwise go unnoticed.

At the heart of street photography is the 'decisive moment'. This is the split second when an image becomes complete in its composition - when each element of the image is in balance, in context and essential to the scene. This is when the shutter is released and the moment is captured forever.

If you, like me are interested in Street Photography too, here are some tips, from Canon's website,

10 QUICK STREET PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS

1. BE INVISIBLE. Dress and behave discretely. Don't affect what lies before you. Some of the best street photography are captured when the photographer and camera are unobserved by the scene and its subjects. 3. PRE-FRAME. PRE-FOCUS. Frame the scene, preset your focus and wait patiently for the right elements to fall into place, before you click. You’ll be surprised at the results of this simple technique. 5. SHOOT FROM THE HIP. Learn to frame your images without looking through the viewfinder or at the LCD. Shoot with the camera away from your face - from the hip or low at your chest work well. Low angle shooting also gives an interesting perspective. 7. BE PATIENT. Street photography is a test of patience. Either waiting for the scene to evolve or just capturing the right shot, a great photograph takes time to realize. Don't rush that special moment before clicking. 9. SHOOT. SHOOT. SHOOT. Practice makes perfect. The more you shoot, the better the photographer you'll become, and ultimately the better your photographs. There's much to get used to with your camera, so get out there and use it.

2. USE A COMPACT CAMERA. Compact cameras like the PowerShot S90 are small, quiet and appear less threatening to subjects. They also offer deeper depths of field allowing more spontaneous captures with sharp detail across the image. 4. SHOOT WITH A WIDE ANGLE. A wide angle lens allows you to get up close to your subjects. A preferred focal length for street photography is 28mm. A wide angle also allows you to capture more of the environment to add to composition and context. 6. OBSERVE. OBSERVE. OBSERVE. Keep your eyes open and be aware of your surroundings. Observe everyone and everything around you. You’ll be surprised at how much is going on in front of you, and how much you can anticipate - ready for that next perfect shot. 8. ALWAYS CARRY YOUR CAMERA. Great moments in photography can happen at any time. In fact it's often the ones that occur when you least expect them that make the best images. With this in mind make sure your camera's always close to hand ready to shoot at a moment's notice. 10. BE SELECTIVE. The more you shoot the more pictures you'll take but they won't all be worth keeping. Be selective and only keep those that make the grade. In this way you'll develop a sharper editorial eye, and your standards will rise in the process.