The Life

I spent 15 mins today shooting this series except for the last which I shot on sat, as I thought about life in Singapore. Here's what I shot, open to interpretation. I won't cloud what you feel by writing what I think here. Naturally, there's the titles, but I won't say more than that.

Open Door


Golden Path


Competition


Lost


At the end of the Day.

Anyone?

Would anyone like to buy over the anime series "Noir"? From what I heard it's pretty good but I'm unable to watch it because it uses the WMV3 codec, which is a native windows codec and completely, absolutely, i've spent 4 hours trying, doesn't run on a macintosh platform. I can only get the sound but no video. What I plan to do is to sell this off and purchase the DVD-player version so I can watch it on my mac. The current version I have only runs on a computer(does not run on a DVD player), only windows computers, mind you.

I'm selling it for $11, what I paid for it, I'll absorb the postage of $1 I paid for it. It comes on 2 DVD-Rs in Avi format. 26 episodes in high quality widescreen format. 240MB per episode, meaning, nice detailed picture without video artifacts. In other words, DVD quality.

There's a little review on [URL="http://animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=407"]"Noir"[/URL] here.

I'll be very grateful if someone can buy it, obviously because it'll off set the cost of purchasing the twice as expensive DVD player version. I can't play it anyway, so it seems like such a waste to hang on to it.

I think anyone reading this blog probably knows me, so just contact me directly regarding the anime. My hp is 98341467 in case you don't have it.

If you wish, I can also lend out other titles which I have. Currently I have,

- Bakuretsu Tenshi (Crazy Burst Angel)
- Gantz
- Trinity Blood
- Rozen Maiden
- Rozen Maiden Traumend
- Full Metal Panic!
- Full Metal Panic Fumoffu
- Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid
- Chrono Crusade
- Texhnolyze
- Hellsing

I'd be glad to lend you any if you can help me out with the Noir disc. This is by no means a prerequisite, if you wanna borrow one as I friend I'd be happy to lend you one too.

Cheers!

PIME 7 :The art behind photography

Ok I can't remember where I left off, but conceivably it's at No.7 for Photo Imaging made Easy. The problems I identified previously were problems that I see most commonly in what I term "snapshots", or the shots most people make today. Most of them aimed to deal with the techinical, so I've decided to deal with the art behind photography in this one. It's totally impossible to deal with it entirely in a blog posting, for I could probably write a thesis on that alone. What I think you would prefer to look at is a brief summary of the rough art behind photography, which is truly the essence of the photo. Making a great image, if you haven't realised by now, comes from within you, rather than from your camera or any insane amount of reading you've been doing with regards to the techinicals. Photography is about soul, the techinicals just make your vision happen. The following are some ways to improve your photography where it really matters, right at the heart of it.

1. Attempt to transcend reality. Face it, reality is boring. What you aim to capture in a photograph is something that no one else sees, and hence is not part of their reality. This is the reason why many great photographs make you go "gosh, I wonder how he did that." How you achieve a photograph should not be immediately apparent, which will therefore force you to shy away from a normal snapshot mentality. This is why photographers seek out the best light(which only lasts 30s twice a day!) and most interesting angles for their subjects. These are things that pass normal people by, but as a photographer, you have to train your eye to look out for these things. There is beauty in everything, but in photographing a subject whose beauty is not immediately apparent, it becomes harder to find that beauty, but assuredly enough, once you find that beauty, you can make a photo of an old woman with warts look as beautiful as a portrait of Ms Universe.

Great light only lasts 30s, which is why everyone misses it! Have you ever watched the sky turn dark? You'll realise that at one point the sky can be exceedingly beautiful. Try it. Furthermore, you will realise that what you see is hardly what you get in a photograph. The eye has a fixed "shutter speed", and it works by varying the aperture(pupil size). The camera can vary both so you can make a photograph better than what the eye sees. This should always be your aim. This is why photographers spend hundreds of dollars on filters and thousands of dollars on lighting. We modify the existing light to step reality up to a higher level, which is what we view it as.

This is why things, places, people, should ALWAYS look better in photographs.

2. The eye sees too much. If you notice, your eyes have an almost 180 deg field of view, including your peripheral vision. There are also lenses that give you a 180 deg field of view, but the key difference is in photography, your vision in concentrated in a little box. This obviously implies that you need critical focus in making your photographs. Photography is the art of exclusion, you need to extract what you want out of the tremendous amount your eye takes in. Leave in only what you want, leave out the rest. This is why people always miss out great moments. They gloss over it as they get distracted by all the other crap within their field of view. As you become more proficient in doing this, you'll be able to analyse parts of your vision as individual segments, and decide which carry merit and which don't.

That's all im gonna post for today, because I'm hungry and it's dinner time.

Come back soon for the next segment 3,4, which will be about
- How to find subjects of interest in boring locations
- Planning your shots

Ciao.

Missed out a photo!

I realised I didn't post my favourite image from the City Scape outing! Gosh! Anyway here it is, just dug it out of my hard drive. Would recommend that you click on the image to view it large. There are certain subtleties that won't be seen in the small version.

Edge of Life Pt 2

This time what I tried experimenting with(for the series) was really dumping the subjects into a very small corner in the "largeness" of their world. I did a few more today before I read this, as the return date for the UWA was today. Composition is still "messy", for this time I did not try to keep it very clean to isolate the subjects completely, which I'm not sure may be a good thing, but I've never tried doing it before.



















Some other images from arab st.

The Edge of life

A little street series that was an offshoot from my cityscape outing. enjoy.

When life passes you by...

CityScape

Went on a cityscape outing today with SJ, wasn't the greatest of outings due to the overcast skies, but we made the best of it. Here's the produce. Enjoy. Btw, have received some notes about PIME, so am looking to bring it back! BUT I need suggestions on what to write about. Please send all suggestions to stimphoto@yahoo.com.sg. Cheers.

I shot a mix of Black and White and Colour images(ok only 1 colour image). Will show case the BnW first.

Swirl


Business


Transit


Angular


Skyscrapers


Rails


Mesh


Slice


*Colour*
Curve

Arcs

Did a little feature on the arcs I located around and inside the esplanade today while waiting for Esther's performance thing to start. Enjoy. Used a rented 10-22, more to make full use of the rental period and my moolah.

Outdoor theatre


My favourite air well.




And Esther's thingamajig before it started. It never did quite start even after 1 and a half hours of waiting, so Deb and I left first to rush home for makan. Still working in architecture mode, as you can probably see.

Overdrive(Which hardly even got into first gear really)