Will I see snow soon?

Definitely! Cos it’s snowing now in my blog!

Thanks to the livejournal team for enabling this option. It’s under appearance -> extra in the dashboard by the way. Enjoy and have fun!

3 weeks ago a friend of mine rang me up, asking me whether I could take a few pictures of her quartet. I wasn’t too sure about my capability to carry out the shoot, but anyway if I am gonna screw something up one day, I’d better let it happens asap. That’s something at the back of my mind when I nodded ‘ok’ to her. Thanks for the wonderful opportunity, when I think of it now.

The shoot started out from Victoria Concert Hall. I had certainly been to that place more than twice or thrice, but somehow when she mentioned about it, I just couldn’t position it anywhere in my mind. I have a short memory on a selection of things. This is one of them, I guess. The time was just perfect when I reached VCH. The sun had just went down, leaving the sky a rich blue. It wasn’t the usual flaming red as usual, but I like the rich blue which blend very well with the yellow light pouring on VCH. Being at the spot earlier than usual is important to get an idea which part of the building is suitable for good night shots. I spotted one corner with the indoor lights streaming out through the metal rail windows. I love the shadows which were printed on the concrete surface. I visualized the image that I wanted to capture in my mind.

All of them were well dressed up. To get everything started, I have no idea how to get it started in the first place, I suggested to take a couple of shot right in front of VCH to get an idea of the exposure settings for the night. Generally, with a D70, I set the ISO to at least 800, aperture 2.8, and SB600 set to TTL BL mode. As usual, at the beginning of every shoot, I always have a personal lag time to adjust myself to the right mood to take decent shots. The first few came out crappy when I view them later on on my laptop. Misfocusing, flash was too strong, motion blur and camera shake. Fortunately, 70% of the photos are still usable. Viewing photos on the tiny 1.8″ LCD screen was really a challenge. It is ALWAYS a challenge, to me at least.

The metal rail window that I spotted earlier on wasn’t really a good choice. Somehow when people stand next to it, it didn’t quite show the image visualized in my head. That’s a bad choice, but a good idea. Maybe the time is just not right. I must really thanked them for their patience and cooperation. I tried out the first 10-20 shots on them by asking them to play a short songs so that I can go around them taking individual picture of them playing. Oh by the way, three of them are playing violins and one playing cello (if I’m not wrong..). This was the time most non-useful pictures came out from. And this was the time I thought I really need to pump up the ISO to 800. It’s better to have grainy pictures than blurry pictures. I had a bad experience having all sort of motion blur on people so without thinking much, I was using 800 to 1000 all the way throughout the night.

The clouds were moving exceptionally fast that night. It would be spectacular to capture the clouds moving over Singapore river.. but I wasn’t there to do such shots..

Capturing ambient light, together with a pulse of flash revealing the subject, did make a decent picture. Lock the exposure at the brightly lit building at the back then lock the focus on the subject, recompose, and press the shutter all the way down. And a shot is done. It wasn’t too complicated with one and only flash unit in my hand. I am sure I need to consider tons of things more if I have a few flashes in hand. I really appreciate that Nikon has such a good flash system.

Half way through the shoot, I changed my Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 to Nikon 105mm f2.5. I still need to practise more on this manual lens. Misfocusing is my biggest issue now with this lens, esspecially in low light condition like this. Previously I was using it in a friend’s wedding and almost all the shots ended up with the subject out-of-focus. Probably the AF 85mm f1.8 will help me solve my problem. But that’s a skill to master.. so I shall stick to my 105mm lens..

Learnt many things in this quartet shoot, most important I enjoyed the whole process. That’s enough to keep me going, shooting.

]]> http://wwoopy.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/a-short-note-on-my-first-quartet-shoot/feed/ 0 wwoopy quartet shoot-89 http://wwoopy.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/some-time-later/ http://wwoopy.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/some-time-later/#comments Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:04:46 +0000 wwoopy http://wwoopy.wordpress.com/?p=420 ]]>

Fine weather on a fine Saturday morning.

听着静茹的《情歌》, 摸索着 LA和b4Gal-T1的相互作用，蛮精彩的我想说！

(to be continued…)

夜深了，听着伊藤由奈（yuna ito）的《precious》。有时候还是蛮羡慕会多种语言的朋友，譬如说啊，现在听着这首歌，就好想会日语哦，只可惜…. 还是别想那么多，回归LA和b4Gal-T1的相互作用。

It has nothing to do with the picture. I post it just for my love for photography. Cheers~

It doesn’t take too long for me to realize the excitement in doing scientific experiment. I am lucky to have myself in more than one situation in which I have the privilege to experience the joy of discovering something and the chance to feel the excitement. I think feeling the excitement is much more important than the excitement itself. Excitement doesn’t last for too long. Feeling can last a lifetime. I knew I have made the right choice, as minor as choosing which module to take in a semester. That was a turning point. I knew it when the right feeling hit me right on at thatf magic moment. It has carried me this far and I am going to let it carry me till the time I make a mark for myself.

The feeling of excitement is special, very special. It is a kind of feeling which even a lot of money would not have achieved. A psychology study says that the personality of people is very unlikely to change after the age of 21. I couldn’t be more agreeable to that. I am still the same, tough guy. And I’m using my toughness to achieve what I think I’m supposed to achieve. My dream, or rather the ways to achieve my dream have changed a lot. It is good, when I see it now. At least I know something for certain. The path along the way is going to be filled with excitement and only sky is the limit right now.

The critical meet-up for what I would be doing in the next four years is soon to come – next week. Thinking of it excites me; while the uncertainties can make me a bit uneased sometimes. Still, I am very looking forward to it. Something is going to change for sure, I know. The wonderful people whom I am going to meet, the wonderful experiments which I would get my hands on, the wonderful feeling which accompanies new findings, I think I will be overwhelmed soon. Argh.. I am such an optimistic person. Sometimes I couldn’t stand my optimism.

[to be continued..]

]]> http://wwoopy.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/excite/feed/ 0 wwoopy DSC_0045-2 http://wwoopy.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/an-old-cinema/ http://wwoopy.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/an-old-cinema/#comments Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:48:24 +0000 wwoopy http://wwoopy.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/an-old-cinema/ ]]>

An old cinema, originally uploaded by wwoop.

This is a very old cinema in Kluang and has turned into a snooker centre long time ago when I was still a kid. The row of old shophouses on its left was still there; some still open for business though it is becoming tougher and tougher for them. 3 relatively big shopping malls have now occupied the city center and are really a new breeding ground for the new generation of youngsters. I have never been to the new snooker centre. If it was still an old cinema I guess it would have been more attractive to me. On the right of it is a river cutting through the Bat City. It leads to my former secondary school. Oh.. ya. I passed by my wonderful school some time ago and they have built a new bus stop, rather huge and well-sheltered, for the students. It looks nice.

We still have strings of moons and stars dangling on the beam poles throughout the city. Somebody has forgotten to take them down.

It is the first time I posted something in the morning!

I had a long dream last night and I woke up late for work. Well it is not exactly late.. it is just later than the time  I usually go to work. I just make myself a cup of coffee and the threw the horrible dream at the back of my mind. It is not good to have a bad dream takes up the very limited memory space in my brain. Like how I read the horoscope whenever I come across one? I read only the good ‘prediction’ and leave out the bad ones. That is probably why my horoscope is always to my favour. Selective reading huh is the way to go!

My coffee is still boiling hot…

For the past three days I have been constantly posting a photo a day to my Flickr. I guess that is a pretty good way to train myself to be disciplined and follow some routines. Oh did I mention in the write-up for the latest photo I hate routine?.. Contradiction.. but anyway I kind of love the way when I post one photo and write something short beneath it. So yea.. Let’s see how long will it go. It was photo FOUR yesterday. Photo FIVE is coming soon. Stay tune!

今早去上班，看见了一些无比寻常的景色，一位老人，拿着扫把，在两条繁忙的马路中间的分界梯上工作，是早上大约9点没错。寻常。以前就在学校碰见清洗厕所，上了年纪的安迪。世界其实不应该是这样的吧。也许是无奈。他们，有些人应该会借此机会教导孩子，少壮不努力之类的话。其实想一想那样也没什么不好，也没有人对或错，只是观念上来说并不符合我的生活标准。

试验还是能激起我的兴趣的。太好了！兴趣归兴趣，还是要好好生活达到我的标准的，努力吧！

我把Wii卖了！

没做什么的今天，费了！希望明天又有所成就！

客户也许不是永远都是对的…

最近步伐又走得很快，忽略了路旁的花花草草，从明天开始要睁大眼睛看看世界真美丽。

看来要推翻一个系统的规律还真不容易的，不过不到最后就是不罢休！

突然觉得念博士牺牲好像还蛮大的。

完了，该去洗澡然后细心研究一下下该要我研究的东西了。

加多一句，从此以后就把每一篇部落格都长话短说。嗯！

幸运地拿到了一台免费的Wii，叹，也表示ipod touch离我而去了。目前的Wii还是不能播放DVD或CD耶，摆在那边真像一只大白象。现在已经对游戏机失去兴趣了，就算有也没那么多的时间。看看谁要吧，把它卖了！

今天碰见一位大学第一天就认识的朋友，不过后来就没什么来往了，朋友圈子不一样了嘛。不过聊着聊着又好像回到以往那样了，还蛮爽的。他明天要去面试，祝你好运哦朋友！

最近还有谁要结婚吗？