To all the fathers out there and those who have left us, Happy Father’s Day. Your love, discipline, patient, spoken and unspoken wisdom and sacrifice have made us a better person today. Thank you.
100 Strangers Project – No. 17
His name is Mohammed Hanif and he is my stranger no. 17.
Hanif came from Karachi, Pakistan about 9 months ago to work at his uncle’s carpet shop in Arab Street. He is now in his mid 20s. Sound familiar? That’s because Hanif is the older brother of Arif, my stranger no. 16. I met Hanif when I went back to the shop to give Arif his photos that I took one week ago.
Here are the two of them together.MORE +
100 Strangers Project – No. 16
I am back with my 100 Strangers Project after a long break. And here is my stranger no. 16.MORE +
Morning Ride in Joo Chiat
Images shot two weeks ago in Joo Chiat. The morning low angle sunlight created nice shadow and highlight effect on the shop door and the cyclists. Shot with Olympus E-P3 and Minolta MD Rokkor 50mm f/1.7.MORE +
The world of the fairies
I have found where the ‘fairies’ live. They do have wings and they fly from one flower to another. They seem to enjoy every single moment.
All shot with Olympus E-P3 and Olympus Zuiko 45mm f/1.8. Enjoy watching the ‘fairies’.MORE +
Don’t discard the elderly
For the past three years, I have found myself drawn to old cameras. There is something about them that is timeless. Maybe the style, the shape or the sound of the shutter curtain. Or maybe it’s just me who is bored of the current modern styles and just want to go back to basics.
Though not a lot, I have started collecting some old camera. Working and not working. One of them that I really like is the Canon P, a rangefinder camera that Canon first released in 1959 and continued until 1961. Mine was a ‘late’ model. Upon researching, based on the serial number, I believe mine was manufactured in mid to late 1961.
The camera is a solid and pure mechanical machine. It does not have battery and it uses film! In this current fast moving world, sometimes it’s good to slow down, enjoy the moment and just shoot a roll of 36 exposures.
So, if you have any old cameras that your grandparents or parents owned, try to clean them up, buy a roll of film and have fun shooting with it. But if you are really thinking of getting rid of them, email me first. 
And, here are some of the photos I took using this camera:MORE +
Lomography Smartphone Film Scanner
I bought a Lomography Smartphone Film Scanner yesterday and played with it to scan my old slides and some recent black and white negatives. Definitely not a perfect film scanner but it’s fun to use and fast.
Here are some of the scans I did. MORE +
iPhone Photography – Abstract
We know that energy can not be created nor destroyed but can be changed in it’s form. If it can not be formed then it can not exist. We may not exist. ~ Mohammed Ali
The above are the screen shot of thumbnails of abstract images I took using iPhone just now. I pointed the iPhone to some light sources outside of my apartment and started shooting by moving the iPhone in a circular motion. Shutter speed was set to 1 sec using the 645Pro app. Just having some fun before I go to bed after spending hours working from home today.
Hope you all had a great weekend.
If you have a moment to spare, MORE +
Live your life, live in the moment
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough. ~ Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941)
Kampong Buangkok – the last surviving kampong in Singapore
I finally went to visit this place after knowing about it for few years. It’s the last surviving kampong in the modern mainland of Singapore. The place is very accessible. It’s off Yio Chu Kang road, near the Church of St. Vincent de Paul and it’s already surrounded by high rise apartments and landed houses. Not sure, how long more it will stay this way.
I met a nice gentleman, Pak Jumadi, who was cutting a fallen tree and was kind enough to tell me a story of this place. He and his family moved there about 50 years ago. He was only 12. Though he does not live there anymore, he still comes to visit his mother, who does not want to move out, when he is free. He told me a little story about this place. In the 1950s, it was called Kampong Selak Kain. In Malay, it means hitching up one’s kain or sarong. Sarong is a piece of cloth (kain), usually worn by the Malays, wrapped around the waist and it usually covers the legs till the ankle. The place was flooded quite a lot in the old days, hence the people living there had to hitch up their kain or sarong as they waded through the flood water. The place used to be a swamp, hence it’s also called Kampong Paya sometimes.
Buang Kok was actually the name of the narrow street (Lorong) there. In the photo above, you can see the old street sign, Lorong Buang Kok 1954, which the resident there keeps. 1954 was the old postal code of this place. Singapore has had six-digit postal code system now.
He invited me to sit in the veranda of his mother’s house and drew a map and explained to me about the place. Lorong Buang Kok was about 2.5 km long, he said. In Malay, they call that distance 2 batu.
This house, according to Pak Jumadi, was already there when his father moved to this place. It could be the oldest house there. Nobody seems to live there anymore now.
And this used to be a big fish pond, he said.
That’s Pak Jumadi in his yellow rubber boot that he wore when he was cutting the fallen tree.
He politely declined when I asked if I could take his picture, but he said I could take picture of his back :)
I may visit this place again when the weather is dry. I would like to get into one’s house and have coffee with them. Enjoy the rest of the photos below.
Multiple Exposure
I like playing with multiple exposure function in a camera. While I know combining images in Photoshop can yield the same result, but I like doing it in the camera. The above was shot with Fuji X100s’ multiple exposure function switched on. The camera was shot first and then followed by the box of Ilford PANF Plus 50. That’s my Olympus OM-1n film camera. A cool way to tell what film inside the camera now. :)
Below are two multiple exposure images shot about ten years ago when I was still shooting only negative and slide films. There were shot with Minolta Dynax 5 film camera. The first one was on Kodak EBX slide film and the second one was on Kodak E100VS slide film. I need to find the original slides to rescan them to get higher resolution files. I used the double exposure function of the camera to shoot two exposures so I could position the full moon where I wanted it to be.
Fuji X100s – Macro Photography
I have been shooting leaf since probably as long as I started photography about ten years ago. There is something about leaf that always attracts me to it. Maybe the colors, the textures, patterns, lines, etc.
My 8 year old daughter and I spent some time shooting leaf this afternoon. She used my old Panasonic GF1 and the pancake lens 20mm f/1.7 and I used the Fuji X100s in macro mode. The three images here are my favorites from this afternoon shoot.MORE +
Fuji X100s does Little India
I brought the Fuji X100s out to shoot in Little India late last night and spent few hours there till past midnight. This time I set the camera to shoot in RAW + JPEG mode. All the images here are the JPEG files, straight out of the camera. No post-processing other than resizing them for web usage. All were shot at ISO 6400 except for two of them.
Enjoy the photos. MORE +
Fuji X100s – First Impression
I rented the newly released Fuji X100s last weekend and had only few hours to play with it. But, that’s enough!!! Enough for me to rent it again today! Will play with it again some more. For those who are interested in renting camera and lenses in Singapore, visit this Camera Rental Centre near Clarke Quay.
So, that’s me shooting with the Fuji X100s near the construction site of the Jalan Besar MRT station. I managed to draw the attention of some people walking there.
All images here were shot in RAW format and then converted to JPEG with almost no post processing. I cropped two of them and converted one to black and white. I actually shot it in black and white but I don’t know why it’s showing in color when I downloaded it.
First impression? MORE +
Mobile Photography – The Alley
Shot with iPhone last Sunday night near the construction site of the Jalan Besar MRT station.
The curve of nature
Mobile photography of young banana leaf, shot with iPhone 4s using the 645Pro app. Minor post-processing was done on iPhone using the FilterStorm app.