Category: Art and photography

As a kid, I enjoyed making model of things. I remember persuading my grandmother to buy the little plastic set of toys that I could assemble myself. I remember that new sets would come every friday fortnight and I’d bug her to get them for me. I made miniature furniture like tables and pastry carts, wardrobes and at the end of the day, I’d be lost in my world of imagination, with the house that I built.

To a lesser extent, I don’t see much toy shops selling these type of toys any more. (Legos don’t count because they are above 3 dollars) Most toys nowadays are already pre-made – all you got to do was to take it out of its plastic cover. Personally for me, I don’t think there’s much fun in that as there wasn’t any sense of challenge and achievement.

I guess that was why I enjoyed doing the little experiment with the pictures of the scenes from work place. I stumbled across an article on tomorrow.sg about tilt shift lens effect. This effect gives the illusion of miniatures and I was extremely amazed at how it turned out.

Doesn’t these look just like miniature toys? It’s so charmingly cute and toy-like. I know I WOULD play with these toys for hours!

Click on the pictures to see a bigger version

Originals

I left the house screaming at about 7.45 am this morning. I was supposed to be at the Canon DMH Building in Bugis by 8.30 and it took about an hour train journey from home to there. I quickly took one gulp of ovaltine and one bite on the fried egg sandwich and quickly fled out of the house.

I was hurrying to attend the “Nature’s little gems” workshop which was organized by PhotovideoI. I’ve been a member for this group for quite a while and have been to one of their activity last year.

I reached the destination at about 8.40 and thankfully, I wasn’t so late. In fact, there were a number people who were still queueing up to register for the workshop. I quickly made friends with the man in front of me. Ram was his name and he tells me that he was interested in photography for about a year and enjoyed nature photography the best. He showed me some of his magnificent pictures of different animals and I was impressed by the hummingbird picture that he took. It takes a lot of patience to snap a picture like that.

Soon-after, the editor of photoi, John Cosgrove announced that we were about to departure and are welcome to borrow the cameras and lenses. Ram quickly borrowed the Canon 5D camera.

The Canon EOS 5D camera was way superior to my Canon EOS 350D. At the super high res of 12.8 mega-pixel and a super fast multi-burst image capability, which means that you can take many shots back to back in just a click, it was superb. I especially liked that fact that the body now has an adjustable dial that changes the ISO and aperture immediately. Something that I didn’t like about my camera. I had to fiddle with alot of buttons to change it. Not good when you want to take shots in an instant.

And then Ram took out his super sweet Canon lens. I think its the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM Lens and attached it to the 5D and quickly handed it to me.

Ram: Take that picture of those sparrows there.

Me: Where?

Ram: There! (points to the fence about 5 meters away)

I quickly aimed and shot a picture of the sparrows. And oh my gosh. The image quality was breathtaking. It’s amazing what the right equipment can do to your pictures.  wish I had the picture, Ram deleted it at the end of the workshop to save space on his CF card 😛

Me : Oh my gosh. I love your lens. I won’t be able to sleep tonight. I’ll just think about the lens, all the time. How much is it?

Ram : I paid $2,600 for this.

Me : Ah? *Gulps* That’s like two months pay for me

Ram : Its a good investment for beautiful pictures.

Me : Yes, but I don’t have an engineer’s pay 😛

Ram : I guess you just have to starve yourself then

Me : I guess I do 😛

We reached Alexandra Hospital Nature Trail a few minutes later and we began our shot. I was close to being intimidated! There were so many professional equipment all around that even with my robust camera, I felt so small. Many had their own telephoto lens and were happily snapping far shots of moving butterflies and other creatures.

I couldn’t do a macro shot with my lens without going to the subject really closely. Forget about the butterflies. Do really you think they would want to pose willingly and sit quietly when I ask it to?

So I shot the to the best of my abilities, mostly of things that didn’t move too much.

What do you think of them? I got lucky with the butterfly shot as it landed quite close to me. I stood still and waited and moved slowly to snap a picture without scaring it away. Very cool. My first butterfly shot!

We also found some interesting creatures like this HUGE caterpillar and HUGE spider which I wouldn’t have noticed if I just walked there on my own. These animals really blended well with the environment.

I had the good chance to try out a telephoto 100 lens that allowed wonderful macro shots. Unfortunately it weighed about 2 kilograms. I wasn’t able to hold it for a very long time without my arm straining. After a few seconds, focusing on the caterpillar, the lens drooped little by little.

“That’s why we carry tripods”, chuckled a man beside me, looking at my antics.

We wrapped up the photo-shoot at about 11 and printed our best work and we compared our photo with the others. There were so many beautiful shots from different angles. I really enjoyed looking at them.

John took a look at the picture that I printed out and said that it was good. (shocking) He also said that different people have a different story to tell and if a picture makes you stop to look at it then, its a battle won.

So, does my pictures make you stop? 😉

*Next month’s photo-shoot would be “Food Shots” – Come and join me! I’d love to go for the next one 🙂

May I present you : The first Nimmo and friends comic strip
(I just hope it wont be the last one … O I’m such a lazy procrastinator)

ARRRRRR!!!

Friday was a total total stressful night for me on my stint on a photography shoot. I had a call from Haney in the morning, asking me if I was free to do a photoshoot for a company event. And I thought to myself, why not? This would be a great experience for me to add up to. Thus I said yes.

But the event started at 6 and I knock off work at 5 and even though she picked me up, we couldnt reach there in time.

It was the time when there is a lot of traffic from people knocking off work
We were going to town
And it was friday

Poor Haney looked stressed out. Moreover, there were plentiful of people calling her up, “where are you? where are you?” making her even more nervous.

When we reached there, there were alot of people queing up already for their glamour shot. I didnt expected so many people. And I fumbled with the equiptment. Even then, Haney forgotten to bring the clips to hang the backdrop and I didnt have a flash trigger. And after the pictures session, people kept pestering, “where are our pictures? Is it ready? I want my pictures!”

I smiled and said, just a minute, we’re still printing.

It was such a mess. And I’m not happy with the quality of the pictures

But we managed to do the best we can because it wasnt professional to be angry and nervous. And I asked Haney, “How on earth are you able to stay so cool after all these”

My heart went 300km/h after the whole ordeal.

But I take it as a learning experience and I think of what are the different things I should do to enbetter the next time.

O well.

Anyways, got to get ready to go to Hema’s ROM now. And I still dont know what to wear. lol!

I’ll update later 🙂

Well, neither do I

—

I dont know who screamed louder. The mouse or me. It was a dark night. We’ve just completed our night class and I was just walking back to the train station with Brandon, my classmate, and I felt something soft underneath my shoes. I quickly glanced down and to my horror, saw a mouse! And I screamed! And the mouse screamed!And Brandon looked stunned, at all the screaming.

I just jumped up! And at the release of the pressure of my foot, the mouse ran away … I saw the mouse scurrying in a zig zag pattern … probably terrified out of its wits.

Man, I wouldnt ever have that kind of experience. Poor mouse. And my poor shoes.
—

Anyway, there were beautiful sunflowers in bloom at my workplace yesterday. I loved looking at the bright yellow colours of the petals. Sooo pretty. It just brightens every ones day.

Dont you feel a little tranquil now? 🙂
—

I just collected the pictures that Juli has chosen for her portfolio. But I wasnt too happy with the quality of the prints. Firstly the pictures looked too dark. (Why do digital prints usually darker than the same image being viewed from the monitor?) But apart from that, there were a few things that I didnt notice while seeing them from the screen.

In one of the pictures, there were some blemishes on them which I swear wasnt there when viewed on the monitor. And on the same picture, she had a moustache! I was so annoyed that I told the lady at the printing counter.

“Eh? Why the picture like this?”

“Bah!”

I think I’ll go search around for a better printer. Its no excuse to say that its because its digital, it will be darker. They can lighten it by just a push of a button. Its not difficult really.

Bah. Whatever. (Goes back to looking at the sunflowers)

After months of preparation, honing our skills, we are now all up and ready for our venture. I think what spurred it up was the fact that Diyanna, one of the girls who modelled for my photo-shoot recommended me to one of her friends.

I quickly thought about it. Juli and I already made our pact to do a makeover venture for a long while now. Initially, we were both apprehensive because both of us were more of a hobbyist rather than a professional. But now that Juli’s already a certified Makeup Artist by Cosmoprof and I’ve completed my photography course from Coverlooks. So there shouldn’t be anything stopping us. We should start our dream as soonest we can.

Actually, how the idea for a makeover venture started casually over dinner after Hema, Juli and I purchased our tickets for our Thailand trip vacation. I don’t remember what was said, but we all decided that we wanted to do something together.

I don’t want to do something that’s always related to school!

Lets do something we like to do.

Well I like photography, and you do great make-up.

Hahaha .. Maybe we could do makeovers for people.

Yeah and we’ll call our business “HeJuMa Makeovers”

Ewwww!!!

I first noticed how good Juli was with makeup when she did a makeover for a mutual friend. One fine day, she offered to do a makeover for me while we were going out for a day in town. She dabbed a little here, and there. Put a little colour here and there and when she was done, I looked in the mirror and I really liked what I saw. Every stroke she did complemented my face. And it looked so natural and nice. There are some people who slap on their makeup too thickly and some people whose make-up just didn’t look right. Juli’s style is perfect.

The beautiful Juli on the phone

The fact that she has an impeccable taste in style and fashion makes it all the more sense that she’d be a perfect makeup artist.

On a whim, I thought of Geri to be our PR. I noticed how she interacts with people, as well as her experiences in the sector. She was very good at promoting something that she is really confident in.

I remember how confident she was while showing me some courses for Mindworks: A design school that she was working with for some while. All her promises about the institution was true. Nothing hidden and I thought that was a great quality.

I have full confidence of our combined abilities. I know we’ll do great.

So now we’re open for business! Come on and contact us, you know you want to 😉