Sunday, December 8, 2013

Street Photo -The Girl With The Tiger Bag

The Girl With The Tiger Bag
Nikon D70s on Tamron wide angle lens. Minor adjustments in post without cropping.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Street Photo - 'A' Happiness

'A' Happiness
Nikon D70s on 50mm prime lens. Adjustments on color tones brightness and contrast in post without cropping.



Sunday, November 17, 2013

Street Photo - Bare Foot Dining Very Good!

Bare Foot Dining Very Good
Nikon D70s on Tamron wide angle lens. Monochrome conversion in Photoshop using Silver Efex Pro 2 without cropping.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Street Photo - Swimming Through

Swimming Through
Made with Seagull 205 RF on Kodak Tri-X 400 and developed in 1+1 Kodak D76 for 480 seconds. Negative scanned on Epson V700 with tonal adjustment in post.

Saturday, November 2, 2013

My First Roll of Kodak Portra 400 + One More


In a recent blog, I mentioned about photographing with Kodak Portra 400 and I did my first roll, not on my rangefinder nor swing lens camera, but instead on a plastic toy camera, Vivitar PN2011. A compact point-and;-shoot camera with fixed focal length (aka focus free) of 28mm, wide angle plastic lens and fixed setting of aperture at f-stop 8.0 with fixed shutter speed of 1/125 second.

Make the jump to check out the color images.

Friday, November 1, 2013

Street Photo - Pre-Festive Shopping

Pre-Festive Shopping

Two hours to local Hindu's festival, Deepavali or Diwali, popularly known as the 'festival of light'. I took the above picture last year, with my Nikon D70s on a wide angle lens. Post in Photoshop.

Though it's not the typical colorful photo of the lighting decors along Serangoon Road, I prefer to show case this one with human subjects. Close to daily life activities; more organic

 I hereby wish all my Indian friends a Happy Deepavali Day.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Street Photo - Dodging Coconut

Dodging Coconut
Nikon FM10 with wide angle lens on Kodak Tri-X 400. Developed in 1+1 Kodak D76 for 540 seconds. Negative scanned on Epson V700 with cropping and tonal adjustment in post using Photoshop and Silver Efex Pro 2..

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Street Photo - Morning Reading

Morning Reading

This photo was taken yesterday morning while I was having my breakfast at McDonald's Shaw Plaza. This gentleman was sitting right opposite me and totally engrossed in his reading of the papers. The ambient light and the light of the overhead lamps are bright which is good as it creates this great soft light on the subject. I'm lovin' it!

Most of you might think this is just any other mundane and uninteresting photo. Well make the jump and let me explain the whole creative and thinking process behind this picture.

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Street Photo - Minion in the Neighborhood

Minion in the Neighborhood
Shot with my Samsung S3. Post and cropped in Snapseed and resized in Photoshop Touch for Instagram upload.

This is my first Instagram post here on my blog site. I've added my Instagram link here on the right hand side panel. If you like to find out more of my Instagram pictures and short video clips, do follow me in Instagram.

Kodak Portra 400


Most of you readers know that I shoot in black and white film exclusively and extensively for my street photography as well as night photography, with Kodak Tri-X 400 and TMAX 400 respectively. I have used them for almost 5 years and I do love these films, especially from Kodak.

Lately I came to know about Kodak's popular professional color negative film, Portra 400. I've read the product reviews and saw images taken by many photographers around the world, and I thought maybe it's time I should shoot color pictures. Well some of my color street photographs were taken digitally with my Nikon D70s. I had shot Agfa Vista 400 color negative film on my Horizon Perfekt panorama camera. Didn't like the colors and image quality.

The latest batch of Portra films are all new mixture of the formerly VC (Vivid Color) and NC (Natural Color) films. As a first time user, I can't say much and so I've yet to load up a roll of Portra 400 into either my Seagull 205 rangefinder camera or Horizon Perfekt. The sales person at Ruby Photo said this new Portra produces rich colours with lesser or no film grain. Yeah will find out for myself soon.

Until then, I will send a couple of rolls to the photo lab for film development and scanning. Will definitely post some good street photos here. So do subscribe to this blog site to get future updates.




All photos are taken with my Samsung S3. Post in Snapseed.

Monday, September 30, 2013

Cheers for Beer! (An Experimental Fun Shot)

Cheers for Beer
My mother went for a cooking event held in City Square Mall yesterday afternoon and in the goodie bag, there are these two mini cans of Asahi Japanese beer. Yes one cannot tell how mini they are from the above picture unless I placed a regular size beer in scale comparison. The mini can measures 3 inches (7.8 cm) height 2 inches (5 cm) diameter. The whole can is in silver tin color which makes it very glossy and reflective.

Well I just thought why not do a simple photo shoot so I did a quick set up with a lighting diagram after the jump.

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Street Photo - Daddy's Little Girl

Daddy's Little Girl
Made with Nikon D70s on Tamron wide angle lens. Monochrome conversion in Photoshop using Silver Efex Pro 2.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

The Alternative Resource


I posted this image on my Facebook page this late afternoon. I was asking viewers to guess what these items are. Have you guess it right?

Make the jump to find out the answer and what I can do with these items.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Street Photo - Red Dot on Top

Red Dot on Top

This street photo was taken in early March this year. I was walking around Anderson Bridge that links Fullerton Hotel and Asian Civilization Museum across the Singapore River. As I crossed the bridge towards ACM, I noticed this man was standing with his hands on his hips, reading the signboard. As I approached the subject closer to get a better composition, I saw two cyclists riding from my left on the background and right across behind my subject. I anticipated and took that precise moment where I wanted the two bikers to be positioned.

All elements in this photo came together perfectly at the right place and at the right time. Elements of different shapes and sizes consist of the red circular board on top, white rectangular white board, four triangular shapes formed by the subject's arms and the two biker's right legs (both in same pedaling position, forming a symmetrical pattern) and lastly the four circular wheels of the two bicycles. In fact, there are additional shapes formed by the tiles on the ground.

This photo is certainly one of my favorite street photos in color though I did a black and white conversion which looks good. But I believe the color version looks better.. Moreover what I also like about this photo is the red circular board that is in a slight off position, perhaps due to soldering error during construction time. Such minor detail that breaks away from the overall symmetrical patterns in this street photo, certainly works great for me.

Made with Nikon D70s on Tamron wide angle lens. Minor Levels adjustment in post without cropping. Make the jump if you want to view the black and white version.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Street Photo - Bloated

Bloated
Made with Seagull 205 RF on Ilford Pan 100 and developed in 1+1 Kodak D76 for 540 seconds. Negative scanned on Epson V700 with cropping and tonal adjustment in post.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Trade-in for 2 New Books

Well, this week we're going to take a little break from posting my 35mm film street photos which I have been doing so since February. More to come. But today I want to share with you readers on 2 new books which I traded with my old photography books at a local photography bookstore. The book authors and publishers are different but the main focus or subject is of the same person. That person was none other than Vivian Maier. I've followed Vivian's work since I got to know in 2009. Here are the 2 book covers.



I really love Vivian's work that's truly inspiring. A documentary film was made in memoirs of her, titled Finding Vivian Maier. Here's a trailer. I do hope this film will be showing here in Singapore during some film or photography festival.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Street Photo - Habitual Pattern

Habitual Pattern
Made with Seagull 205 RF on Ilford Pan 100 and developed in 1+1 Kodak D76 for 540 seconds. Negative scanned on Epson V700 with cropping and tonal adjustment in post.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Street Photo - Scalp Protection

Scalp Protection
Made with Seagull 205 RF on Kodak Tri-X 400 and developed 1+1 in Kodak D76 for 500 seconds. Negative scanned on Epson V700 and cropping in post.

Friday, May 17, 2013

Street Photo - Okinawan Ryuso

Okinawan Ryuso
Made with Seagull 205 RF on Kodak Tri-X 400 and developed in Kodak D76 1+1 for 500 seconds. Negative scanned on Epson V700 with minor crop and burn in post.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Street Photo - Indian Ladies

Indian Ladies

Made with Seagull 205 RF on Kodak Tri-X 400 and developed 1+1 in Kodak D76 for 500 secs. Negative scanned on Epson V700 with minor crop and burn in post.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Street Photo - Indian Boy and Four Chariot Horses

Indian Boy and Four Chariot Horses
Made with Seagull 205 RF on Kodak Tri-X 400 and developed 1+1 in Kodak D76 for 500 seconds. Negative scanned on Epson V700 with cropping, burning and contrast adjustments in post.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Street Photo - Shadow Mapping 3

Shadow Mapping 3
Made with Vivitar PN2011 on Kodak Tri-X 400 and developed 1+1 on Kodak D76 for 585 secs. Negative scanned on Epson V700 with minor crop and contrast adjustment in post.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Street Photo - Shadow Mapping 2

Shadow Mapping 2
Made with Vivitar PN2011 on Kodak Tri-X 400 and developed 1+1 in Kodak D76 for 585 secs. Negative scanned on Epson V700 with minor contrast adjustment in post.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Street Photo - Sense of Scale

Sense of Scale
Made with Vivitar PN2011 point-n-shoot plastic camera on Kodak Tri-X 400 and developed in 1+1 Kodak D76 for 585 secs. Negative is scanned on Epson V700 with minor crop.

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Street Photo - Happy Little Girl

Happy Little Girl
A sweet little girl happily chasing after a pigeon along the sidewalk outside Ngee Ann City as she indulged herself in her happy carefree world with her arms wide open, as if to say "I believe I can fly." Such innocence moment which I was able to capture at the right place at the right time, certainly made my day.

What I like about this shot is the captured momentum of the happy girl in running motion along with the pigeon's strolling motion. The girl seems to be standing on one leg as she changed her running direction towards the little bird and simultaneously the pigeon's left leg stretched out to move forward. Does this shot considered to be a "decisive moment"? It's opened for interpretation. Personally I consider this to be my best shot by far.

Made with Seagull 205 rangefinder camera on Kodak Tri-X 400 and developed in Kodak D76 for 500 seconds. Negative scanned on Epson V700. Dodge and burn and cropped in post.

NEW UPDATE!

As I posted this blog on my Facebook page, I noticed the square thumbnail preview image and it occurs to me that a square crop format is more defined and focused. So I cropped it and here it is.


Frankly speaking, I wouldn't be able to make this shot with a TLR camera unless I anticipated and set myself in a vantage spot, ready to press the shutter when the girl runs into the frame. Well, you see, street photography is a difficult genre as things change and unfold unpredictably before you in a blink of an eye. That's the challenging and fun part and it's a skill to be learnt and practiced.

I'm still keen in TLR street photography as well as panorama format. I will keep shooting and practicing and learning.