Bird From Farm In The City

Farm in the City, somewhere in Seri Kembangan is a good place to shoot some animals up close. Birds have gotten used to human presence so if you want some easy targets to practice your skills, it is a good place to go.

 

As usual photos are copyrighted. Please enjoy them here only. 

Angry Bird?

What are you looking at? I'm building my home.
  Taken with 175mm x2 lens. Cropped and edited in LR

Nice weather, time for a dip?

Is it time for a dip? Perhaps but the sentinel keeps watch over any danger.

And Now For Some Durian Macaroons

So, I tried my hand a having a decent presentable food photo. Some of our FB friends will have their saliva flowing with food photos. I took a bit of effort to move outside since the sky is over cast and there wasn't decent lighting inside.With decent light, it is easier to get a nicer picture.

The above is homemade durian filled macaroon is taken in natural light at f/10, 1/50sec handheld, 50mm lens.

Gadgets Galore

Lots of great stuff a photographer would like in his dry cabinet

Lumix G5
Sigma 4/3 Lenses
EzFoto 2in1 Microfiber Cleaning Cloth

Standing Still In The Face Of A Storm

Do you need to stand in the face of opposition? All of us do eventually.
Remember, this too will pass

 
Taken with a 135mm manual lens at f/4, cross processed

Crossing the Big Blue Sky

Blues skies like the one in the picture are quite rare in Kuala Lumpur. I dropped what I was doing when I noticed the amazing sky and took a few shots of the orchid.

I was inspired with the 15mm DA Limited ultra wide earlier and took the following with the 18 55mm kit lens. The 15mm is still on my "should I get it or not" list.




With most lenses even average one, by f/8, everything start to look good. If you don't have money for expensive lenses, what you need is good light. So that you can shoot at apertures that mask weaknesses of your lenses.

Shy Dog

There are times when I feel shy. Shy to shoot people. Shy to get the type of "in your face photo". Shy to constantly hold the camera waiting for the right moment to shoot.

With dogs, it is different. As long as they don't run away or take a bite on your leg while you are busy with manual focus & exposure.

Taken with a 135 mm manual focus lens. Focus is a tiny bit off at 100% crop but on the small screen, its okay.

Time's Up

In life, there are moments that you cannot choose when to stop or when to start. It all happens. You are just a passenger, not the driver.

15mm DA Limited Test

After October, I didn't shoot much. Then Pentax offered a photowalk & I tried out the 15mm DA Limited lens. I read all sort of nice things about this lens online. How it has pixie dust and I had a bit of lens buying addition kick in. Only things that held me back was I wasn't about to spend so much on a lens.

It is a nice little lens. Small and light. Once mounted to my camera, I started holding my dslr with just my right hand. Although it is a gem of a lens, it is quite hard to use since I'm not used to such wide angles. And my composition is rather crappy. With the 15mm DAL, it became more apparent to me.

With software nowadays, you can correct almost everything except motion blur, mis-focussed and composition. You can do much with a badly composed photo. You get all sorts of things in the frame.

Anyway, here are 2 shots with this lens.
 

And old tree
 

With help from an experienced eye, I was guided to get this shot. I would have missed it totally.

A wide angle lens is an interesting lens. You really have to move around to get the proper angle, lighting and a host of other distractions out of your photo. One more thing. You have to be literally in someone's face to to get close enough.

Running In The Dark

Got up early to photograph Run For The Nation 2011, RunNat for short. The run starts at 5am.



I planned to shoot the runners against some interesting background. In the end, that did not really work out since I have to drive runners back after a segment in the run. Lost the other runners after that. Having a camera that don't focus well in such low light levels didn't really help either. This is one of those situation where a camera with better auto focus and clean high ISO is required. Anyone want to sponsor a Pentax K-5?

Got this shot using a 50mm f/1.4 lens at f/2.8 ISO 1,600. Not really a great shot in my opinion.

Thumbs Up for a Good Book

Took this photo when I needed an image of a bookmark for a website. I didn't use this one since you can read the short write up. Thinking back, perhaps I should. Words make the image more interesting. Maybe I'll change the image on my website. By the way, the bookmark is made of leather from Australia. It is a bit old and therefore a bit dark. May have to redo this photo to see the other eye.

Charles Swindoll book is great too.  The one you see above is a compilation of 3 books titled "The Quest for Character", "Improving Your serve" and "Strengthening Your Grip" You can get Charles Swindoll's material here.

Discussing The Future

The economy at the moment is full of uncertainty. Many are concern about the Eurozone debt and if it would affect Malaysians. Discussion at the mamak restaurant circles around the issues and what to do.



Candid shot taken at a coffee shop. Not enough separation.

You can't enter here

Tight security on the 10th anniversary of Sept 11. This photo was taken on Sept 11, 2011 at Bukit Bintang area, Kuala Lumpur. The first time I took part on a photo walkabout organized by members of PhotoMalaysia.com

The theme for the shoot is something to do with Sept 11. At first, the only thing I could think about it damaged building, plane crash etc. How does one find that in the heart of KL.

The next best thing I could come up with is security. So we walked around shooting security guards till I got this nice sign at the Pavillion. Managed to get this shot. Did you notice another palm behind the Security Check sign? It was just a coincidence.
 

Butterflies Flying At Night

Butterflies at night. No they don't really fly at night. Only fake ones do.



Painted with light.

Dry Flower In The Dark

I tried out the FA 50mm f 1.4 lens and was really impressed by its sharpness. Off course, I can only compare it to the 18 - 55mm zoom. If I see the photo below at 100% crop at the base of the vase, I'm truly impressed. This has really gotten me to look at prime lens more than a zoom.



This bunch of dried flowers sits on my coffee table. Lit with a LED torchlight that gives out white light, I had a bit of fun experimenting with lighting it from the top and the side.

Butterflies In The Dark

I've often wondered what butterflies do at night. Do they sleep? Or do they just find some flowers and wait there till morning? Or are they as busy as us? I found out that they like to be photographed. The fake ones anyway.

I took the vase into the bedroom and set it away from the wall. We have a lot of windows so the room wasn't totally dark and I worked quickly to the this photo.

ISO 200, f/7.1 Shutter 6 sec

Been Thinking Lately

 

I've been doing a bit of thinking lately. Since I don't have much time to shoot outdoors, I decided to shoot this fella. He's been created to think, this wooden sculpture. I didn't have a model so he's the next best choice.

Shot at ISO 200, f8, 6 sec, lit with a LED torchlight

Checking Your Shutter Count

Finally, wanted to find out how many shots I've taken with the K100d. I downloaded Exiftool. Exiftool is a command line tool. Unzip that file. I do not know whether the path Exiftool is specific in Windows. Since the tool is small & you do not need to install it, my suggestion is to just cut & paste Exiftool to a temporary directory. Copy & paste your photo to the same directory. Go to Start Menu, Programs, Accessories and click on Command Prompt. Change the directory to where your temporary directory is located. Then type "exiftool imagename.jpg" You have to type in the full filename including the .jpg or .pef etc.

Here's my shutter count

Besides the shutter count, you can also see things like circle of confusion, your hyper focal distance, view of view. Have a blast.

Then I check up on the photo before the K100d was handed to me & I realized the shutter count was around 3,600. Practically brand new. In a span of 7 month, I've shot closed to 6,300 shots. Off course I bracketed my shots for HDR & shot a bunch of photos to stitch a few panoramas.

By the way, the photo I took was really crappy so I'd rather not post it up here.

Caught a Porsche

Had my camera by my side wanting to shoot something today. Just about to reach home when I saw this dark Porsche. I hope it would slow down & it did. I grabbed my camera and just shot it. Adjusted exposure since the K100d likes to under expose, tone curve, split tone and added a vignette.