The moment I see Deepavali decorations up in Little India, I know. It's time for the photomarathon again. It's been a yearly event since 2003 and every year it's in October. And somehow, we would always end up in Little India without fail.

Gu's right. Every time when we took part we would complain like crazy about the tasks, vowing never to sign up again. But when the time comes, we just couldn't resist it. Leon & I signed up already. It's the challenge, I guess.

Leon said this time, he's gonna hang around Suntec City area, no more island-wide chase. I agree. Too tiring to be rushing all over the place to get our shots.

Hopefully the photo themes are a bit more interesting this year. They ought to take hints from websites like http://www.usefilm.com/ or http://www.dpchallenge.com/. Very interesting weekly/monthly photo challenges.

I was at Alan Photo Trading yesterday. Bought the EF24-105 f/4 L IS lens to replace my broken EF25-70mm f/2.8L. The focusing ring on the old lens was damaged during last year's holiday trip. Canon service centre told me they no longer have the parts for this discontinued lens.

I decided to get the EF24-105 because of the the longer zoom, the IS and the lighter weight (even though I'm a sucker for f2.8s). Bought a grey set so it's cheaper.

I need to do a rigorous lens test over the next few days since I'm only given the shop's 7-day exchange warranty. Planning to wake up early this Sunday morning & head down to Changi Beach for some dawn photo-shoot. I've been neglecting my photography for a while. Time to pull the dusty o' tripod from the store-room and get down to some serious shooting. Yeah!

Went Verona to visit the hometown of Romeo & Juilet. These are fictional characters. But that doesn't stop Juilet from having her own house complete with a balcony. What a tourist crap trap! If it wasn't for the interesting streets, I would have kicked Lawrence (tour-guide) for making us pay extra for this side trip to Verona.

Don't know about you, but I find this star structure near the Arena rather intriguing.

A lovely charming town with plenty of photo opps. Got most of my souvenir here... mainly Swiss Army knifes and watches. Tried the Swiss Fondue.. but found too rich for my liking. Bryan & Rachel, both cheese-lovers, were crazy over it.




It was very windy & cold up at the top of Jungfraujoch. We were 11,333ft above sea level. And I was surprised to see birds and wondering what were they doing so high up. I suppose the birds were wondering the same about us humans.

The view up there was awesome. Too bad the clouds came in soon after we arrived.


It was snowing as we drove through the mountain pass from Luzern towards Verona. Very nice indeed! The coach-driver stopped for us to stretch a bit and Rachel was ecstatic. She was stomping around, trying to catch the falling snow and making snowballs. I had no idea she loved snow so much. Thought she would be complaining about the cold and dampness. You should have seen her cheeks.. very rosy.

Took these at Venice. I didn't bring tripod (too heavy) and forgot to pack my flash (too forgetful) for the trip. So most handheld low-light photos were done at higher ISO settings and as wide aperture as possible. 

For these, i rest the camera on top of a trash-can.  Have used the timer to trigger instead of depressing the shutter.  Lesser accidental camera shake this way.  Composition was restricted cos I couldn't move the huge trash can.  It's times like these when I wished I had brought along my tripod & remote trigger.

Canon EOS 5D,EF 50mm f/1.4 lens with settings at f/9, 30", ISO100.

Mention Venice and romantic gondolas come to mind.   Don't know about you but I was rather disappointed when I saw the waterways.   Canals were dirty and stinky, not quite what I had in mind.   Buildings looked like they've settled a bit cos the doorways were very close to the water surface (sorry.. engineers tend to notice stuff like these).  Or perhaps the water level has risen? 

Anyway at night, the canals looked alright.  For this shot I balanced the camera on the railing, strap around my neck.  Couldn't risk the camera falling into the water.

Thought I've accidentally erased this photomontage. Luckily I found a backup. Academy of Rock organized their first rock concert in DBS Auditorium last November. All performances by students and instructors of the school.

Since it was Bryan's debut performance, I asked my mom, sis, brother & sis-in-law to come gave him our support. My brother came thinking it would be some kiddy performance and was amazed by the standard of the concert. 

It was totally awesome! Bryan did a great job! I enjoyed it tremendously and I'm looking forward to the next one.

I managed to take a picture of the bird. I think it's a yellow-vented bulbul.

Haven't been able to take picture of the chick. It's been raining the last 2 days. Hopefully the birds are ok. I left some sunflower seeds for them just in case.

FYI those green little balls are tiny rambutans.

The 4th Canon Photomarathon was held on 14 Oct 2006. And without fail I was there with Gu. Ghost was there too. Leon couldn't make it this time. And as a recognition of a long-time survivor of 4 years of photomarathons, I received a 1:5 miniature Canon EOS 1Ds MarkII.... sigh.... my dream camera.

There were some changes this year... this year 4 themes were given over the 12-hour period instead of the usual 3. And instead of photo-vests, we were given black polo-Ts. I didn't mind the T-shirt since I've already got 3 photo-vests. The venue was at Suntec City instead of ACS. Initially we thought it was a bad choice. Parking in Suntec City on Saturday afternoons is a nightmare. But it so happened that Vivo City was opened and all the shoppers were at Vivo City. Suntec City was unusually quite and we had no problem getting carpark space throughout the day.

Some of the photos I took for the 3 themes are here. We mised the last theme because we had to attend Anthony's baby girl's birthday party.





We didn't go too far away to get our shots.. Little Inida, Kuan-Inn Temple at Bencoolen Road, Registry of Marriage, Red-Dot Building at Maxwell Road, Amoy Street and Mountbatten Road. This time round we decided not to be too creative but to keep to the themes. And even though we had lesser time per shot this year, we actually managed to return to the venue early to submit our photos.

Too bad we couldn't finish the last theme.... Darkness. I love low light photography and I have just the idea for it. This is the shot I would have submitted.



Oh well. Next year then.

It's been a while since I last went on a photo shoot. My last trip was October last year for the Canon photomarathon. So my 21 month old EOS20D was very under-utilised. The shutter count was probably less than 5K, unlike the 60D I owned before the 20D.

Somehow I didn't quite like the 20D. Guess I was sort of disappointed when I realised it couldn't manage a decent IR photo. Now that I have a bit of spare time and I want to start shooting again, I decided to get the EOS 5D. The full-frame CMOS and 12.8 million effective pixel specs were more than enough reasons to convince me to upgrade. My first set of photos were infrareds, taken from my roof terrace. The results were a lot better than 20D's but it still require long shutter, about 10 to 15secs. Handheld IR photography is totally impossible.

I tried to sell my 20D at some of the photography forums. But prices offered were way too low. Really doesn't make sense to sell it at all. So I decided to modify it into a IR-dedicated DSLR instead. Read that someone modify his camera DIY here. In theory it's quite simple. Just take apart the camera and remove that IR-filter that's blocking the IR to reduce photo noise. I've checked online and found 2 companies in USA and 1 in Australia that do modifications. I might do it myself. Still waiting for the Australian's quote before deciding.

Can't wait till weekend. Look out world! We photographers are a dangerous lot. We'll frame you, shoot you and then hang you up! heehee

Gu, aka klang, complained that I didn't give him credit. Ok... let's go back in time a little..

Gu and I have known each other since 1996. (We met through internet chat rooms. Weird.. but online friendships do exist! But I'll talk about this in a separate blog.)

Both of us are very interested in photography. In 2003, I learnt about the Canon Digital Photomarathon and signed up for it. Gu didn't. But on the actual day 18 Oct 03, he was free and decided to join me. He offered to be my chauffeur-porter-companion-advisor-moral-supporter and actually stayed with me for the entire day. We had lots of fun that day and till now we still talked the experience. The combined effort paid off. I won the grand prize for my entry and I thought it was only fair that I shared my prizes with him. (Which was why some of the organizers remembered me. They were probably shocked that I was willing to give away the EOS300D DSLR! *LOL*)

This sort of started the collaboration between us. Last October Gu signed up for the competition too. But we worked as a team with the understanding that we would share the prizes if either of us win. This year it's the same.

Here comes the credit part.....

Because I had to run off for the concert, Gu completed the last leg of the event by himself. He submitted my shot on my behalf. He also stayed back to see the selected shortlisted winning shots. He was alone since Edwin & Leon left soon after submitting theirs. Not too sure when the entire thing ended but probably around 10.30pm. So while I was enjoying myself at the concert, the poor guy was back at the hall, analysing all the shortlisted photographs, studying the wow factors of the selected shots. And I knew he felt lonely because he kept sending me messages via sms. The next day, we actually discussed some of the shots and how we could improve. Now, that's what I call dedication!

This year we thought we would disregard the 1st thoughts that come to our minds upon receiving the assignments. Why? Because those ideas would probably occur to the rest of the competitors.

So strategy for next year.. shoot whatever ideas that come immediately to mind. Cos those would be disregarded by the rest! *LOL* Boy! I really love this event! Hopefully the rest had fun too!

Well.. we survived the 12-hour photomarathon session held last Saturday. I had a bit of headache next day though. Probably didn't drink enough water. Leon, Edwin, Gu and I were there. Jamieson had to go back office (poor thing) and Anthony couldn't get away from his newborn baby.

Registration started at 7.45am and there was already a long queue when I got there. We each collected a free photo-vest embroidered with Canon EOS logo. This is my 3rd photo-vest since this the 3rd photomarathon I've taken part in. According to the organizers, 720 people signed up online but i think in the end only 550 people turned up which was still a lot. Spoke briefly to Helen, the Assistant News Editor of The Straits Times and was pleasantly surprised that she remembered me. She even asked her colleague to interview me. Too bad I couldn't stay back. Had to rush off to complete the assignment.

Last year there were 3 of us and we had to rush to 3 places for every theme so that we wouldn't submit similar entries. But we ended up driving around the whole country, Amazing-Race-style. I was so tired that I didn't really enjoy the event at all. This year I wasn't keen to repeat that. So, Gu and I went in one car whereas Leon & Edwin joined forces. That way we could cover more 'areas'.

Here's what I've submitted... drum roll please!

The themes were World in Motion, Child's Play and Fashion in Action. Gu and I were trying to 'think out of the box', i guess we might have overdone that 'out-of-the-box' part. It would take a genius to figure out the relevance of our shots to the themes assigned. *LOL*

My entry for the last theme was quite lame. I wasn't thinking much about the theme. Kept checking my watch to make sure I had enough time to rush home for a quick shower and then to Eric Johnson's live concert. I left Gu at about 6.30pm and poor guy had to proceed without me.

Other than the photographs I submitted there were quite a number of shots taken during the marathon that I liked.

(note.. the blurry figure in white next to the slippers was actually Gu walking in slow motion for me. In fact I made him walked back and forth in many of my shots!)

Little India is really full of photo opportunities. If you ever come to Singapore, you really must visit Little India. Better yet, call me and I'll bring you to try some of the interesting Indian food. ok I'm digressing.

I kind of like the one with the glasses framing a mirror. That is me in the mirror, of course. Too bad I didn't win anything, not even a merit. Still I enjoyed myself. So I'll still be going for next year's photomarathon and collect my 4th vest!

Will talk about Eric Johnson's concert tomorrow. Too sleepy now. Cheerio!

I'm still very proud of this picture here. Photomarathon 2003 was my year man! I had plenty of free pubilicity. Till now when my boss and I went for meetings, dinners etc., I still get comments on my entry in photomarathon 2003. My boss actually commented that the clients know me more as a photographer than an engineer. Oops!

Photomarathon 2004 was a disaster for me. Total mental block. No fresh idea at all for the themes given. Anyway I've signed up for this year's competition. Hopefully I'll be able to do better this time.

I haven't gone on a photo-shoot for a long time. The most recent shots taken were of the Mid Autumn Fest in Chinatown. But that didn't really count as I was at my aunt's place more for the company and food rather than shooting. And those taken in US trip weren't that fantastic because I was with my family and I couldn't stay in any one place long enough for me to explore for good angles. Everytime I stopped the kids would be calling for me to hurry up.

Sometimes I wish I could just drop everything and go on a long vacation somewhere without my hubs and kids.... just me and my camera. That, of course, is impossible now. I actually feel guilty when I leave my kids at my mom's place while my hubs and I go out for movies and dinners etc. Perhaps I will be able to do that when the kids are all grown up and they do not need me to be around anymore. *gasp* No, wait! I change my mind. I hope that day will never come! I need my kids to need me!

Lights up at Eu Tong Seng Street, Chinatown

Latterns released into the sky

Skyline as seen from my aunt's condo

Fireworks Display

Here are some of the photos taken during our trip to USA.

First stop - Orlando, FL
Stayed at I-Drive Inn for 4 nights.
Day 1 (30 May) - Magic Kingdom
Day 2 (31 May) - Epcot Centre
Day 3 (01 Jun) - Universal Studio
Day 4 (02 Jun) - Swimming & relax at hotel + stroll around International Drive area
Day 5 (03 Jun) - Flew to Buffalo



Second Stop - Niagara Falls & Toronto
Day 5 (03 June)
We flew to Buffalo on Day 5 where we met a Canadian friend, Mark. Mark has offered to drive us to Niagara Falls from Buffalo. He used to work as a tour guide and has given us some real interesting backgrd info of Niagara Falls. He even made arrangements for us to stay on the 26th fl of Sheraton Hotel. The view of the falls from our room was awesome!



I took 4 pan shots and stitched into a panaromic shot. This was the view from our room!

Didn't bring a tripod so had to make use of the self-timer to capture the night scene of Niagara Falls. We were there on a Friday night and there was a fireworks display. But the mist spray and smoke sort of covered the sky above the falls. Could hear the fireworks but couldn't see much of anything else.






That's me and my family.


Day 6 & 7 (04 - 05 Jun ) : Toronto

Visited relatives staying in Toronto.

They treated us to a dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. Where else?

That's me. The one wearing white with the long hair.









Third stop - New York City
Day 8 to 10 (06 - 09 Jun)

Mark picked us up in Toronto and drove us back to Buffalo again. He was so thoughtful. He knew we wouldn't have enough time for lunch and he actually packed lunch for us. And it came in real handy because our flight to NY was delayed by almost an hour.

Mark is really a great guy. Can't wait for him to visit Singapore so that we could return his hospitality. A friendly US security officer took this photo of us while in Buffalo airport. That's Mark wearing the tropical blue shirt my brother-in-law got for him. And that's my bro-in-law standing beside him.

It was own-time-own-target. We bought 1-Day Metro passes and went around NYC over the last 3 days of our holidays. Our first stop was the WTC 911 site. The entire area was fenced up and there wasn't really much to see. But I just wanted to be there.

We walked around Times Square, Wall Street, Theatre district, SOHO etc. Visited the American Museum of Natural History, Grand Central Terminal. Went to look at Brooklyn Bridge, took the ferry past Statute of Liberty. We even went for a nice leisurely boat ride at the Central Park. There was a lot of walking and the kids complained so much they almost drove me crazy.

On our last night in NYC, we watched the muscial broadway - Avenue Q. It was really enjoyable. The kids loved it. Though I had a bit of problem trying to explain some of the scenes (had full puppet-nudity!).

Visited Virgin Records which had a fantastic range of DVDs. I bought a few DVD TV box sets and had totally forgotten about the censorship thing we have back in Singapore until after I paid for them. Luckily I went through our customs without any problem.

I enjoyed the trip to US. We might go to the west coast next year. Perhaps San Francisco and stop by Hawaii.

Ha! Just got back from vacation and already I'm planning for the next holiday.

Since Feburary I've seen buses and cabs on the roads, painted to look like cows in shades of pink, blue, green or yellow. Some even had tails attached to the back of the vehicles. The tagline said "Moove is more". And every time I see it, I would go "More what?" My hubby figured it's probably advertisement for a new brand of milk.

Soon after that, cardboard cows dotted some of the empty fields along the roads and expressways. It was quite amusing and actually did brighten up the otherwise dull, vacant areas.


Still we didn't know what the advertisers were trying to sell.

I finally found out today, after 4 months, that it's an advertisement for public transport. That is after they added a 2nd tagline. "Bus, taxi, rail..... ComfortDelgro".

Moove as in MOoVE.

.. sheesh.....

erm... more what?

Here are some photos of Singapore's Cityscape. I was at The Equinox of Swissotel The Stamford with some friends for tea. I had my camera with me and took a couple of pictures.

The view from up there is awesome.

Here is a shot of the Esplanade Theatre. No matter which way I turn, it still looks like a housefly with those round compound eyes.

Night scene in Singapore is pretty nice. This was taken from Sheares Bridge. I used a 200mm to zoom into the portion of the Fullerton Hotel with the Merlion sitting proudly in the foreground. Couldn't go any nearer. Should have brought along the 400mm lens.

We won the Tiger Cup!! I was at the National Stadium. I was there and saw the two goals made by our players! Yahay!!

A couple of days back, Fang told me he got 2 Grandstand tickets to the Tiger Cup match between Singapore and Indonesia. I'm not a soccer fan. I don't know any of the players. In fact I wasn't exactly keen to go the next day being a school day. I even considered giving away the tickets. But finally I decided to go. Why? Because it was a match whereby Singapore already has a 3 goals aggregate lead. Because tickets were totally sold out and I would probably get stoned if someone finds out I give away mine. Because this was probably the last major event at the National Stadium as it'll be demolished soon.

Well, it's the 1st time for me. Never been to any soccer match before. And there was only 1 word to describe the mood... Electrifying! I was getting all excited as we walked towards the stadium. The seas of reds was enough to get my adrenaline going. The sight of the stadium covered with people in reds was awesome! You have to be there to feel it!



It was real exciting watching the game at such close range. I was totally caught up in the soccer-fever, singing the Ole song, doing the waves, cursing at the referees, cheering and screaming. The whole stadium was alive! And everyone was having a real good time! I did feel pity for the visiting Indonesians. Must be pretty intimidating for them.

The Singapore goalkeeper did a great job! And I'm not surprised he's the Player of the Match. The performance of the Indonesian team was kinda lackluster. In fact I didn't see any worthwhile attacks from their end during the 1st half. The game got a bit rougher in the 2nd half. Luckily the Singapore team still managed to keep a tight leash on defense.

I totally enjoyed the game. Very glad I decided to go. So am I a soccer fan now? Probably not :) Too rough a sport for a l'tle old lady like me. heehee.

I'm blue all right. Yesterday was the photo-marathon. The themes were "My World", "Island Life" and "Singapore Idol" given out at 4-hourly intervals. My performance was a total dismal. I was unable to come up with any good ideas for the themes. Should have slept earlier the night before.

Leon, Gu and I joined forces. We went in Gu's car from Ang Mo Kio to Jurong to Orchard to Sentosa to Little India to Geylang and Hougang over the 12 hour span. A real island-wide chase. This was as close to Amazing Race as you can get! On hindside, perhaps we should not have spent so much time on the road.

Some of the photos submitted by the participants were interesting. Although the winning entries were generally well-taken, I couldn't see the relevance of some of them to the themes. In fact I thought some of the "Merit" shots were actually better than the categories' "Winner" shots. Oh well, photography is really very subjective and I'm not the judge.

This year's judge(s) seemed to have preference for shots with people in it. And I really suck at Street Photography. I believe this is the first time I actually approached so many strangers to ask to shoot them. It was quite an experience for me.

These were what I submitted. Pretty lame, especially the 2nd and 3rd themes' entries.



I took these during the competition and I kind of like them. We were only allowed to submit 1 photo per theme.


Will have a go at the competition again next year!

I joined in last night's observation (2nd Oct 04). It was a mad rush for me 'cos my equipment is still rather foreign to me and I haven't sorted out the logistic part. Weixing, the organiser of the regular observation sessions at Tampines, was interested to see my LXD55 setup. So I had to transport more than 20kg of equipment + accessories to the site. But I'm glad I did because the guys were a great help! At least now I know how to go about using the LXD55 autostar in my next obs.

The session lasted till 3.45am this morning. The sky was ok with the clouds coming and going. We spent the 1st few hours trying to figure out how to use the GOTO mount and Autostar. Finally we had to call up another friend Richard for help. He came after 12midnight.

Even though we managed to carry out the 2-Star alignment procedure, there seemed to be some problems still. I tried to slew to Orion Nebula (M42), but it's a bit off. When I tried to slew to Saturn, it was way off. Perhaps we didn't do the polar north alignment part properly because we didn't have a compass. (Must go buy one soon!)

I took a few shots through the Skywatcher 127MCT with the EOS20D + T-ring. Settings of ISO800 to 3200 were used with various shutter speeds between 6" to 20". The ISO800+20" shot is shown here.


The 4 stars in the trapezium are nicely resolved. At least I know the mount is tracking well cos there was no star trails though exposure was 20". I took some shots thru Weixing's 6" Newtonian without the tracking. Star trails could be seen for shutter speed of 25".

The moon was really very bright, adding to the overall light-pollution.

There were 6 of us there - Weixing, Elton, Richard, Clemens & Carloqambino. Here are the photos taken by Richard of us playing with our toys. Overall it's been a very a fun session for me. I went to bed at 5am this morning, tired but very happy!

The universe awaits..........

I was sorting through my photographs and I realized something. I took most of the photographs and hence I wasn’t inside many of the photographs. I also did most of the wedding video shoots of my closer friends. And as I looked through the video clips, I felt kind of left out of their celebrations because I was always behind the camera.

Ok. I’m in the posed group shots. But I’ve never been captured in any of the candid shots. And I’m definitely not in the video clips. I've missed out on most of the fun. I especially missed being in the bride's Ah Yees' team. The bride’s Ah Yees (or "sisters") would be at the main entrance blocking the groom from entry until red-packets were given or until the girls were done with the teasing. But I couldn’t be part of that girls’ team at all. I couldn’t even talk because my voice would come out very loud in the video.

I wonder if 10 years later when my friends watch their wedding video, would they even remember I was there. Maybe I should insert a self portrait at the end of the video.

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I have a photographic memory. Its just that I forgot to load the film....
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