Panning is a technique used to shoot a subject moving parallel to you. It is used to create a sense of movement by moving the camera to follow the subject. It will blur the background / surrounding objects while keeping the main subject in focus.

The choice of shutter speed is important in panning photography. For the subjects in the images below, the shutter speed I used was between 1/15 to 1/30 sec. It can’t be too slow as it will blur the subject itself and it can’t be too fast as it may freeze the subject (and the background/surrounding objects) too quickly. I always use Manual metering when shooting panning, as I need to be able to control all three components manually (shutter speed, aperture and ISO).

All images shot in India (Lucknow and New Delhi) with Leica M9 and Voigtlander Color Skopar 35mm f/2.5 during my trip there in October last year. They were shot in various lighting conditions, from bright to dark at night.

Creating a very wide image, known as panoramic photograph, will cost you a bomb if you are using a specialized panoramic camera, like the Fuji GX617, Linhof 617SIII and Hasselblad XPan. But thanks to modern image processing technology, you can now create a panoramic photograph using any camera and stitch multiple images together using panoramic photography software like AutoPano Pro, PanoramaPlus, PTGui, EasyPano, Panorama Factory and many others in the market. And if you own a Canon digital camera, you will have a free software from Canon that will allow you to stitch images to create a panoramic photograph. Some of these software are pretty advanced and can really create a high quality panoramic photograph.

But, thanks to technology again, both on software and hardware, many of you can now create a panoramic photograph on the go. You can shoot multiple images and let the software stitch them all together for you. And while it’s stitching the images, you can still receive a phone call from your loved ones on the same device, checking where you are. So, guys, if you own an iPhone running iOS 4 or later (mine is the iPhone 4s running iOS 5), buy this app called AutoStitch that only cost  you US$ 1.99 and you have a little panoramic machine in your pocket.

These two panoramic images of the Singapore Marina Bay were shot using the iPhone 4s and stitched using AutoStitch app. The second one below was taken 23 minutes after the first one above (7.03pm and 7.26pm). The light changing fast after sunset and the “twilight zone” caused the sky to become more bluish. The iPhone seemed to increase the ISO automatically and hence you can see the one below is a little more grainy than the above. But, I guarantee if you print it, you won’t really notice those grains.

Pretty impressive huh? So, go out have fun and create panoramic images using your iPhone. Don’t just play Angry Birds. 

I was invited to join the phototrail organized by National Geographic Channel and CapitaLand on Saturday, 6th August 2011. Led by National Geographic photographer, Catherine Karnow, the phototrail was one of the prizes for the winners of the 2011 National Geographic Channel / CapitaLand Photography Competition. I was one of the two bloggers invited to join the phototrail for the afternoon session. You can see all the winning photos here.

Catherine generously shared her photography knowledge while leading the participants shooting at the various CapitaLand buildings in Singapore. I joined the second half of the phototrail which was at Clarke Quay and Raffles City Tower. By the way, if you have not been to Clarke Quay lately, you should. CapitaLand has done a great job changing the place to become a more vibrant dining and entertainment complex along the Singapore river while continue to maintain its old architectural charm.

“Create a photograph that reflects what the location is about”, she said, when I asked her what she was looking for when shooting in one location. The photograph below, taken with Olympus PEN E-P3 and 12mm lens, was meant to show the spirit of Clarke Quay which is a colorful, vibrant, happening and happy place. Except cropping, nothing else was done to the JPEG file from the camera for the image below.

Catherine’s way of shooting was a great delight to watch. She said we should always be prepared and be quick to shoot as a “story” or “action” unfolded in the scene. I shot the photo below after listening to Catherine sharing the tips and tricks to the winners. She saw the big question mark sign, a group of people shooting and some passersby who may be thinking “What is going on here?”.

She is also very good at handling strangers. She met some people while walking around the Clarke Quay who willingly did what she asked them to do.

Once the shoot was done, she asked if she could send them the photos. She had a notepad and a pen ready in her bag which her subjects used to write down their email addresses. One handy trick I learned from her that day was to shoot the subject again while holding the notepad with their email address written on it. You would never forget who is who.

Other tips and tricks I learned from Catherine that day were:

• look for the spot with nice lighting when you are on location
• watch your background. Avoid cluttered background
• always create a photograph that will tell a story, rather than just shooting the scene

“Photography business is hard now. I may suddenly not have a job at all.”, she said, when I asked her about how to become a full time professional photographer like her. I know that she told me that not to discourage me, but to really share the reality. I kinda know that already, but I am still in denial, but hey .. I will keep trying. 

Last but not least, I would like to thank:

• National Geographic Channel and CapitaLand for inviting me to join the phototrail.
• Catherine Karnow for being so generous to share her knowledge.
• Carole and Solonia at Burson-Marsteller for having me to be part of this event.

Hope to see you all again soon.

I love this photo for a simple reason that it has strong highlight and shadow. It also tells a story of two men engaged in a serious conversation. Look at the hand gesture of the man on the right. The man on the left was listening while seriously looking at his notebook.

I saw these two men on the second floor of the Shivaji Nagar Market. The man on the left seemed to be the vegetables agent and the one the left seemed to be the customer, which could be a retail seller. When I first saw this scene, I was immediately attracted to it because of the sunlight coming in from the two windows and the shadow on the floor and on part of the men.

It’s important to take the exposure metering from the right spot in this kind of photo. If you take the exposure reading off the shadow, such as the floor or the face of the men, you will see the faces of the two men clearly, but you will kill the mood of the photo as you will lose the shadow and the entire image will be too bright. See below. I simulated in Adobe Lightroom as if the exposure reading was taken off the shadow.

And if you take the exposure reading off the highlight in the window, the image will turn out too dark.

So, what I did was I took the exposure reading off the wall just below the window on the right hand side. I got the photo I wanted, shot with Leica M9 and Leica Summarit f/2.5 lens at ISO 400.

This is also the kind of photo that you do not want to use flash. I almost never use flash anyway, but if you do, try not to over use it by ‘killing’ all the shadows. Let the shadow and highlight be there to create depth and mood.

Keep shooting, everyone.

I saw this painted wall when walking around the Shivaji Nagar market in Bangalore, India. It attracted my attention, but I need a foreground subject. So, I stood on the road side for few minutes waiting for someone to walk. I didn’t want to have too many people in the picture, so I waited for the moment I wanted. This woman came into the picture and I clicked. 

Notice that I placed her on the left hand side of the image while she was walking to the right? That’s to give the sense of the movement and direction and to apply the rule of third.

It was shot with Leica M9 and Zeiss Planar 50mm f/2.

Now .. time to vote again. It’s the last week for voting. Have you voted today? If you are new here, this blog has been nominated as one of the 10 Finalists for Singapore Best Photography Blog 2011. Voting is open until July 3. Anyone can vote, including those outside of Singapore. Just register and vote here. Thank you so much for your time.

I am getting in love more and more with street photography. There are still lots of things I need to learn and practice about street photography. While there are some basic technical aspects to be aware of, street photography is probably more a way of shooting rather than a genre in photography. You know, shooting landscape and macro photography will require two different techniques and most of the time, two different lenses. But shooting street photography is different. The technique could be perfect, but the outcome may not be interesting. To me, a good street photography need to have the followings:

• it tells you something, a story or a message either for you or for others who look at the photograph.
• it may combines elements on the street, be it the people, the buildings, the signs, the colors, etc., and they mix well to create that story. You have to find those elements, anticipate and put them all together when you click the shutter button.

Hence, street photography may not always sharp. It’s forgivable in my opinion, since the main focus is to create a story and to create it fast. Often, it only happens in a split second. Bill Pierce, one of the famous photojournalists, once said “Never ever confuse sharp with good, or you will end up shaving with an ice cream cone and licking a razor blade”.

I don’t claim to be a good street photographer. I am not one. But I do want to practice more to be better. It’s fun to shoot on the street anyway. A lot of my so called street photography are probably more documentary photography rather than street photography.

Confused thinking what type of photography you are doing? Street? Documentary? Don’t bother, just have fun and shoot. Maybe, as you shoot more, you will learn more and will have trained eyes to see a story on the street and quickly capture it. It will evolve. So, just shoot more and have fun!

The above photo was shot with Leica M9 and Zeiss Planar 50mm f/2.

Now .. time to vote again. Have you voted today? If you are new here, this blog has been nominated as one of the 10 Finalists for Singapore Best Photography Blog 2011. Voting is open until July 3. Anyone can vote, including those outside of Singapore. Just register and vote here. Thank you so much for your time.

One the first few things I learned when I started photography as a hobby almost ten years ago was to explore different angles when shooting (even only) one subject. These photos of the tomato man at Shivaji Nagar market in Bangalore were taken with Leica M9 and Leica 35mm Summarit f/2.5 lens. I first saw the man from the street level and took the first shot above. I wanted to take another shot from in front of the man and from a spot higher than where I stood when I shot the photo above. But … the wall was too high. So, I went up the stairs and went to the second floor of the building market behind the man. I was just above the man and shot the two photos below. Which one do you like the most?

So, next time you are out shooting, don’t forget to explore different angles for your shot of the same subject if you can. Go high, go low, go eye level and walk around the subject. Keep shooting everyone!

Now, time to rally for my blog again. Have you voted today? If you are new here, this blog has been nominated as one of the 10 Finalists for Singapore Best Photography Blog 2011. Voting is open until July 3. Anyone can vote, including those outside of Singapore. Just register and vote here. Thank You everyone!!!!!

Joo Chiat Road is located in Katong area and it offers food, drink and entertainment with its restaurants, pubs, coffee shops and karaoke lounges you can find along it. It’s very lively at night when the place offers both the food for the stomach and the food for lonely souls. You know what I mean.

But what attracted me to shoot there was not the skimpily-dressed-girls you can find walking around, standing or sitting nicely and patiently. It’s the old Peranakan shophouses because of their unique architecture and colors. So, when you are there, just stay focused and shoot … with your camera.

I spent two days shooting the photos you see here. And it was only about 15 minutes each. That’s because I wanted to shoot only during the short moment after sunset when you could get the dark blue color in the sky rather than completely black. During this time of the year in Singapore, this “blue hour” will be anytime between 7.15pm to 7.30pm. Needless to say that I was only able to cover a small portion of this area within the two 15-minute days. I will come back to shoot more, but not too often until my wife becomes suspicious.

So, try shooting during this blue hour and you will see you can get nice pictures at night. Don’t forget to use your tripod as the shutter speed will be too slow. The photos here were all exposed for about 8 to 15 seconds at ISO 100 and shot with Canon 1D Mark IV and Carl Zeiss Distagon 21mm lens.

This blue hour also exist before sunrise, by the way. Have fun.

The last one was taken a bit too late as the sky was already much darker.

I seldom use flash. Very very seldom even though I have had an external flash, Canon 580 EX, for few years already. I love natural light and any other available / ambient light when shooting. Almost all of my photos at Masakecil were taken without flash. But every now and then, I use flash for some creative photography, like the ones here. They were shot using stroboscopic flash technique.

I first used this stroboscopic flash technique in 2006 when I shot my cousin’s pre-wedding photos. See below. Do you notice the softer flash light for the photo below? That’s because I used the LightSphere flash diffuser. I didn’t use it just now.

I wanted to do it again tonight, so I asked my daughter if she would like to help her daddy. She ended up having too much fun and didn’t want to stop. I had to stop it because she has a field trip to a library tomorrow morning with her school and she is not a morning person … yet. She’d better be next year when she starts her primary school.  

When a flash is set to be in Stroboscopic mode:

• the flash will emit pulsating flashes of light
• the camera will be able to capture (read: freeze) moving subject multiple times in one shot

Cool right? No photoshop needed.

Most of the theory on stroboscopic flash will recommend you shooting against black background in order to avoid the background to be over-exposed. But, for me,  I like to mix it with ambient lighting in the background, unless the shot is for some specific subjects that really require black background. I will try to find some time to do this later.

Some important factors to note when setting your flash in stroboscopic mode:

• the firing frequency or cycle per second (Hz). 1Hz means something happen once in a second. 5Hz means something happen 5 times in a second.
• number of flashes per cycle.
• the speed of the moving subject (usually the faster the movement, the more flashes you would need in order to capture / freeze more movements).
• you need to set your camera to Manual mode. The minimum shutter speed to use is (number of flashes per cycle) divided by (the firing frequency or Hz).
• the power of the flash.

So, for 10 flashes at 5Hz, you need to set the shutter speed to at least 2 seconds. This will give the flash unit enough time to fire the number of flashes you choose.

What about the power of the flash? When your  flash is set to function in stroboscopic mode, the flash unit is splitting its power to each burst of light. So 1/16 will mean each burst will have 1/16 of the full power of the flash. Less power will mean less light. Just go ahead to experiment how bright you want the subject to be.

Have fun.

Photographing childhood means much more than just taking portrait shots of your children. It means photographing memories. Sometimes, some of these memories cannot be repeated anymore, or sometimes they become very important because they happen for the very first time.

These memories happen every day, from small things like when they first put on their own clothes to a bigger event such as a trip to a park or birthday party. Memorable shots from these events may not always mean shots that show your child’s face or expression, but it can also be shots of details of what they do. The shots can also be about what they have or what they create at certain point in time.

At home, I always have my small camera ready to use. The battery is charged and the memory card is either empty or has enough space. The camera that plays this role now for me is my Panasonic GF1 + 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens. It’s smaller and simpler compared to its big brother DSLR and it’s freeing. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my big DSLRs no matter how heavy they are, but I use this Micro Four Thirds camera for a lot of daily photos shot at home or sometimes when I am out with my family and I just want to travel light.

The photos of my six-year-old niece tying her shoelaces here were all shot using this GF1 and 20mm lens. Shot using aperture priority, the chosen aperture was wide-open, f/1.7.