Noooo where's the snow. The temperature is definitely low enough but no snow. Only freezing rain.



Anyway, I watched James Bond the Quantam of Solace the day after it opened in Toronto. And Daniel Craig was here to promote it, but I didn't get to see him because I was too busy studying >.<

And movie tickets here are waaaay ex. Singapore's about 3 times cheaper.

Won't spoil the movie for those who want to watch it but haven't. So just go watch and be happy.

There was a Santa Claus Parade outside my window on Sunday, which woke me up from my beauty sleep. The thing about living downtown is that everything happens right outside your window. On Remembrance Day a while back, they almost fired the canons into my window, or at least I think it felt that way. Apparently the Santa Claus Parade has been held annually since 1905 (!). It was snowing during the parade, but it was wet slushy snow, only good for getting people soaked and cold and not much else. It was really heavy though. And the rest of Ontario has been having snowstorms, but Toronto got left out.

After the snow stopped, I slipped outside to see the parade and shoot some pictures of it, and it took me about 30 seconds to get from my room to the edge of the parade. That felt good. And I think it's an ang moh kid thing - but ang moh kids are just inherently cute, and the proportion cute kids is higher.



This boy was on the Sound of Music float, and from the way he carried himself and how comfortable he was with it, I have a nagging suspicion that he is actually a cast member of the musical that's now in Toronto. But I can't confirm that, because there are simply no pictures online.

And yes, that's snow on his hat.

Back to my quest for the perfect GPA. It's exam period, sucks.

I wasn't really feeling emo, but I felt an immense need to churn out an emo picture.

Taken at Choa Chu Kang cemetery.

Ok, I did an edit of my photos gathered from visits to several of Siem Reap's markets. As a tourist, of course I visited lots of tourist markets, obviously created for the perceived fulfillment of tourists like me, and containing 50 stalls selling exactly the same thing at Cambodia's favourite price of US$1.

These photos aren't from the tourist markets. Those places are too clean, too sanitised and way boring. These are little slices of the 'real' thing, all taken in and around the markets meant for locals, where they buy everything from food to clothing to cooking pots. They're basically  really big wet markets, and the stalls simply spill out onto the streets. I'm almost entirely certain that the concept of 'rent' doesn't exist.

The above was taken yesterday outside Kallang MRT, and it's from my first shoot of sorts with my new AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8D. It cost me $520, and I'm beginning to think the optional metal hood is annoying.



In other news, my housing at Toronto's confirmed, meaning that they guarantee that they will give me a place to sleep no matter what. But they didn't say where. Hopefully I get the nice pre-war building that's modeled on Oxford/Cambridge! It's really pretty and right next to the park.

On Labour Day, M and I decided to do some exploring and things, first to Choa Chu Kang cemetery, and then to the abandoned KTM Railway tracks.

This time I went to the Protestant section of the cemetery, the last time it was the Catholic one. It was a lot more subdued, and well, here's a photo.



And then it was lunch and the railway tracks.

The railway is really interesting, although we did spend a lot of time wondering if any snakes were going to jump out at us. And I spent even more time trying to balance on the rails.




Illuminosa - KTM bridge

Now the black and white image... I liked it enough to put it on flickr (you won't find the other 2 images there, not anytime in the near future anyway), but I didn't expect the rest of the flickr community to love it. So it got really good response.

There's another extremely similar photo with a silhouette of M walking on the bridge, but well, I decided that it wasn't as nice because it wasn't symmetrical. Maybe more photos later.

I finally made my selection for the Singapore Young Photographer Award 2008, and here they are:



In the end, I decided to go for an all monochrome set. A slightly unusual choice in a competition of colours, but we'll see.

Also, a completely and truly Singaporean set with all photos taken in Singapore, the oldest being only a year old.

Top row, from left:
Loyalty (Still Life), Destructive Potential (Night Scene)

Second row, from left:
Practice (Still Life), The Mitre (Architecture)

Third row, from left:
Mortal (Abstract), Come Around (Architecture)

I went to Choa Chu Kang cemetery today to have a look around, and I must say, it's a pretty nice place. I wouldn't mind being buried there when I die, provided the government doesn't exhume my grave within 5 years of my death or something.

But it really made me think - the cemetery, is it for the dead or more for the living? I'm inclined to think the latter.

Anyway, here's a photo from today:



For all who need comfort, for all those who mourn
All those whom we cherished will be reborn
All those whom we love but see no more
They are not perished, but gone before
May they rest in peace, and rise in glory.

-Rest in Peace by Libera

Meet my newest acquisition.

Christoph is a 1957 Rolleicord Va Type I. I took it apart just now, and there are now 4 identical pieces which I can't fit back. But the camera's working perfectly fine, so I guess I won't try too hard.

It was flower, a sunflower to be exact. Lit by two Ikea halogen lamps.

I think this particular Macbeth quote suits it very well:

Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

                                     - William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act V Scene III

Went to the zoo yesterday. It is really a lot nicer than it was when I was in primary school. I remember getting extremely annoyed when I had to go to the zoo again for the nth time because my primary school had no imagination when it came to outings, and the concept of ponning had not taken root in my brain yet.


On the prowl at the Singapore Zoo.

Random shot. Kinda like the tones.

I wonder if I'm subconsciously creating all these things and opportunities in Singapore as reason for me to stay, or if they're there as a sort of consolation to myself in case I don't get to go overseas. Or perhaps they're there to remind me of what I'm going to leave behind.

...

I went to the NUS open house yesterday. I could really see myself there in August, and maybe it will be better than I think it will be. Then again, I would really be annoyed at the fact that the opportunities overseas are already there, just waiting for me to click on the 'accept' button. 

And here is a random photo taken on Saturday.

I'm sure all of my contemporaries have received a letter from NTU School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. I think NTU should really check up on people's educational backgrounds before wasting money sending such things out. 

But anyway, they "hope (I) will choose to study the physical, chemical or mathematical sciences with (them)". I somewhat think they will change their minds when they realise what sort of science student I am. 

Oh well.

They also congratulated me on my A Level results, which is a bit on the early side. Speaking of results, meet up with yx and Zhao today at Chinatown, and talked about doomsday. 

So on the way back, I saw this construction monster by the roadside, and thought of the destructive potential of our most wonderful results, and took a photo.

It was a 30 second exposure, so I just stood there and avoided passers-by's weird looks.

 

Would you have stopped when the road in front looked so sinister?


...But of course! It was the wrong way anyway.

Both taken at Fox Glacier, New Zealand.

 

I got another camera. 

Well, actually that isn't entirely correct, because I got another three cameras today. But I haven't cleaned one and am too lazy to give the other a proper photo session, so they will have to wait.

Here's my favourite camera from today, Alex.

Alex is short for Alexander, and he's a FED 1 made in the Soviet Union in 1952. The FED 1 was actually a copy of the Leica II. 

He has a collapsible 50mm f/3.5 Leica Thread Mount lens, and two viewfinders (one for viewing, the other for focusing). He also came with his original metal lens cap and leather case, but unfortunately the leather case is really badly beat up. 

The camera itself is working fine mechanically, save for perhaps being a little stiff here and there. Cosmetically, close to perfect, well, as close as you can get to being perfect when you're more than half a century old.

So here's a photo of Alex. He's quite a pretty camera. Enjoy.

Lexus (the car brand)'s slogan goes something like, "The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection". 

While I am no car enthusiast, I would venture to say that the same happens everyday for a lot of things. But in particular I'm talking about photographs for this instance.

I would really like to quote this guy, called Paul Indigo, who writes a blog here.

"The great images that have technical flaws are still great images because they are powerful and capture something special. There is nothing worse than a technically bad image which has nothing to say."

Although the above statement is slightly at risk of seeming to choose technical perfection over aesthetic quality, I think you'd get what it actually is trying to say. 

In any case, if your image wasn't at least slightly aesthetically pleasing, it'll just be passed over like the millions of other images we see everyday. Really, in this absolutely media saturated world, we probably see thousands, if not millions of different images everyday. In advertisments, mostly. Those darned things are everywhere. And if you want to consider the moving images we see as well, it definately goes past the million mark. 

But, for all that, how much do we remember or even recall seeing? At most a couple, a single-digit number of them are actually vaguely remembered. We have somehow subconsiously trained ourselves to ignore the whole deluge.

Generally speaking, aesthetics come first, technical perfection comes later. But if someone notices an aesthetically pleasing image, they'll look at the technical side too. But if your great image is so technically flawed that it skews the image itself, then that image is rendered pointless. Aesthetics and technicalities, they come hand in hand, and as much as you might want to, neither can be entirely ignored.

The main reason for this posting is to express my irritation when someone (it could be anyone, not necessarily me) presents their photograph for critique. Inadvertently, someone will say, 

"x object/ person/ line/ shadow/ speck of dust is distracting".

Now what does "distracting" mean? Often you won't actually notice that "distracting" element until after it has been pointed out, which is some serious case for irony. 

But irony aside, most of the time the offending element is minute, insignificant, and usually does not affect the photograph as a whole. 

Then why do people still say it? I don't know. Perhaps they think it sounds cool or something.

I will just end this off with a photograph of mine that pretty much has a lot of "wrong" things about it. I know about them because people have said them about it. You are welcome to add to the list too. 



The List:
1. It's too dark.
2. It's not sharp enough.
3. I shouldn't have directly flashed the flash straight at the mirror.
4. It should be a tighter crop.
5. There is no depth of field in this picture.
6. The thing on the right is distracting.

Then again, this photograph was taken before I knew what the f number stood for (i.e. my technical knowledge was still in its infancy).

Ah, ignorance is bliss.

 

Feeling a bit emo at the moment. So here's a bicycle photo, in monochrome because it I think that it reflects the mood the way I want it and the way I feel it.

 Waiting in Line outside Christchurch College, Oxford University.

Yx, I'm serious, let's go UK again. I really want to.

Okay. Any misgivings I had about shooting 72 frames at one shot were flung out of the window the minute I realised how cool panoramas were. So, I shot all 72 frames in about 24 hours. Had I not wasted film in the beginning, it'd be closer to 80. 

Anyway here's the result.



Half frame cameras rock for this. You can shoot loads of nonsense and not feel guilty at all.

The panorama of the Amphitheatre at school is made up of 10 vertical shots, shot at 1/125 and f4. They were all taken really fast, I completed all the shots in 30 seconds or so. 

After that I took the film to J8 and waited for the people to process it. Had to warn them it was half frame though. Still. I'd consider this a good use of 72 frames. 

I 'scanned' this via a very makeshift method. White paper and my study light and my compact. Relatively happy with the result.

More to come another time.

P.S. I didn't waste that much time on this, ok!