I love to photograph at the traditional market wherever I go. That would be one of the locations I have in mind even prior to making the trip. So, next time you are on a trip overseas, don’t forget the traditional market. You will find a lot of subjects for you to photograph. Trust me.

I have had fun playing with the new watermarking feature of Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta and I believe this is what I am going to use for all my pictures posted on the web moving forward. And I will for sure upgrade my current Lightroom 2 once the full version of Lightroom 3 is out as I like its other new features too, such the Grain, Noise Reduction and their new Print module. Having said that, I do like the new Slideshow feature of Aperture 3 which I saw when I attended the Apple product briefing couple months ago, but not sure if I would upgrade my current Aperture just for the slideshow. Will see.

The photo above shows this man biking to cross Jalan Sultan. I like this picture a lot, as there is a strong contrast between this man and the moving cars in the opposite direction and high rise buildings in the background. I hope you like it too and do let me know if you have any comment. Thank you.

I am still very excited after my favorite team, Chelsea, won the English Premier League couple of hours ago and I am still very wide awake now. So, I thought of posting more photo here as I can’t sleep yet.

This was shot back in March this year at the traffic light, at the junction between Jalan Sultan and North Bridge Road, if my memory serves me right. This man seemed to be on the way home after a day’s work and was waiting for the green light to cross the road.

I shot this not so long ago in the area of Kampong Glam. I had been walking for few hours doing street photography when I suddenly saw this man reading something on the second floor of that shop house. I did not want him to look at me, so I quickly composed a shot. The sky has gotten darker and the street lights helped to illuminate the wall. I had to bump the ISO up to 800 and shot at wide aperture of 2.8 to give me a fast enough shutter speed for hand held shooting.

When I first saw this moment, it reminded me of a shot that I took back in January 2006 at Little India which I posted on my old photoblog before. Then, I saw this old man opening his window and I had only split second to take the shot. Sometimes, you just need to be in the right place and in the right time to take a good shot.

On the Streets of Jakarta – Shooting from the Cab, taken in January 2006 is a series of photographs that I took when I was in a cab from home to work and vice versa. I was in Jakarta for few days then and was taking a cab every morning and after work. I brought my camera with me everyday and decided to shoot from inside the cab. Isn’t that a good way to forget about the traffic jam?

All these photos are from the original posts in my old photoblog that won the Photobloggies’ Best South East Asian Photoblogs in 2007. The border and the credit line in each photo were all there in the original photos. I decided to keep them intact.

The above photo shows my cab driver taking a power nap during the traffic jam on a rainy day.

I am slowly re-posting my old photos from the old blog that I have unfortunately deleted after changing the design of my website few times. Here are photos from the posts I made back in 2006. They were taken in Chinatown, Singapore. The above photo was shown on the UK Black and White Magazine in August 2006.

A Blue Vespa parked along the Bali Lane

Saw this cool vintage blue vespa parked along the Bali Lane near Arab street, Singapore.

A Biker on Victoria Street, Singapore

Shooting at high ISO is sometimes necessary, especially when shooting in low light condition and if you are like me, prefer not to use flash. Bumping up the ISO to 800, 1600 or even 3200 is fine if that helps you achieve a higher shutter speed to help freeze the subject and reduce the handshake. Current generation of digital cameras produce wonderful pictures at high ISO with very minimal noise. Let’s forget about pixel peeping. I am not shooting for a cover of fashion magazine. Few of the latest digital cameras have high ISO up to 12800 and 25600. You don’t have to go that extreme of course, but if you own one of those cameras, just don’t forget that you have that option if you have to.

Do not worry about the noise produced by the high ISO setting, because to me, they are just bigger colourful pixels.

Shooting at high ISO in low light condition without flash gives you the advantage of using a high enough shutter speed to freeze the movement of the subjects.

Unless a special effect is intended, it is better to have a sharp grainy picture rather than a smooth picture with no noise but the subject is blur.

The above image of a biker on Victoria Street in Singapore was lit only by the street lights which were quite dim. The aperture used was f2.8 and at ISO 3200, the manual exposure metering gave me a shutter speed of 1/30 sec. I used the panning technique to shoot the subject and was happy with the result. I know that when you re-size an image shot at high ISO, the noise will either go away or reduce significantly, so you can’t really see the noise in the above picture, but I hope I made a point that to be able to have ideal shutter speed for dimly lit subject like the above, you need to bump up the ISO.

As I walked further inside, I saw rubbles. They looked like they belonged to a house before. I also saw people selling stuffs like snacks, candies, cigarettes and also food. I heard music from somebody’s room or house. I caught a glimpse of TV program being watched by someone in their living room. I saw women washing clothes. I saw children studying and playing. I heard children’s laughter. I saw people having their meals together. All the streets there have name even though the houses have no number.
That place was like any usual small densely populated village except that it has both the living and the dead sharing the space together. It’s a cemetery. It’s the Manila North Cemetery, at Laloma, Quezon City, Philippines. I first went there in 2006.

It was a total shock for me when I first stepped inside the Manila North Cemetery. When I was a young boy, during the annual Chinese tradition of Qing-Ming festival when we visited our ancestors’ graves, my parents always told me to watch my step, so I would not step on somebody’s tomb. It’s a big taboo. But what I saw was beyond just stepping on somebody’s tomb. They jumped on it, they played on it, they bathed on it, they ate on it, they slept on it and .. I will just stop here. They built houses on top of the tombs or enclosing them, or just lived in the huge mausoleums.

I am not going to talk about whether or not it’s right or wrong of them doing that. I will leave that discussion for the relevant parties. But, I just would like to share the art of survival those people have. A lot of them came from somewhere in the provinces outside of Metro Manila. They came to Manila where they thought they could earn more money. And as they do not have place to stay or cannot afford to rent or buy a house, they live in a cemetery which in their mind means free accommodation. Many of them have lived there for 10, 15, 20 years or more. Many of them were born there. A lot of them were also employed to look after the tombs and clean them regularly. Some of them live in the family mausoleums or the mausoleums that belong to their employers’ families.

They may be living in the cemetery, but their spirits remain high. They remain friendly. They smile despite the hardship they have gone through. What an art of survival they have in their heart.

As I walked further inside, I saw more rubbles and I wasn’t sure what I stepped on anymore.