| (no subject) |
[Nov. 9th, 2010|10:24 pm] |
I think with my Sigma 17-50mm f2.8 and my new 550D, I may have the perfect camera.
Until I upgrade to the 5D MkII that is =D
And hopefully then the sodding lens will be able to autofocus in artificial light.
Nothing else to report, sah. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Aug. 29th, 2010|08:56 pm] |
|
Where have you all gone? I miss you. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Aug. 15th, 2010|11:49 pm] |
I hadn't taken any photos for 2 weeks and was getting itchy. As always, my mother's amazing garden delivers.
She despairs that I don't take photos of any of the actual flowers. So here we go.
 |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jul. 13th, 2010|11:12 pm] |
So. Hampton Court Flower Show.
Quite a disappointing year, gardens-wise. And not many of them. And fewer things to see and buy in general.
Also, unbelievably hot, especially inside the giant marquees.
But still an enjoyable day, despite all that.
And this lens is definitely growing on me. For a while I was worried the AF was broken, it was hunting like crazy even in good light. Then I discovered I had the camera in a strange AF mode, and it picked up.
I've done minimal editing on these, they're mostly straight from the camera, taken with a polarizer, with a little bit of clarity and vibrance tweaking. So yes, I'm pretty pleased with it :) Still not 100% convinced on the image stabilisation, but Lightroom 3's sharpening is so good that I haven't felt the need to test it thoroughly yet. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[May. 23rd, 2010|12:05 am] |
|
Omg, How To Train Your Dragon. Loved it loved it loved it. |
|
|
| Day 11, Singapore |
[May. 15th, 2010|11:50 pm] |
Hang in there folks, we're nearly home.
We went on a walk round Little India and Chinatown on this day. Chinatown was great fun, almost as good as the Temple St night market in HK. Bought lots of fun little trinkets and got a couple of good deals on camera accessories! So yes, another day containing lots of shopping :P There's a reason my suitcase weighed 6kg more on the way back.
A couple of shots of pretty Chinatown colours. It's a little weird that a country whose population is predominantly Chinese and Malay has a China town, but what the hey. I still haven't done the Arab quarter, Kampong Glam, though! That's one for the next visit :) Now Tammy's moving back there for good I'm going to have two excuses to go visit :) Maybe I'll go and stay for a while again before Gemma and I do Japan ;) (I'm getting restless again, can you tell!)
The Buddha tooth relic temple. The more I learn about Buddhism, the more it confuses me.
Recognise this shot?
Here's the same one from three years ago :) I can't decide which I like best. Now that that building on the left is finished, it messes up the symmetry! Also it was a bit breezy that evening, so not good for reflections.
In the evening I took Gemma and her mum out for dinner to say thank you. This is Chijimes, a church turned restaurant venue. It looks amazing at night, but we didn't fancy any of the places there (it was a bit expat-y) so we ended up at an Australian restaurant (no, I didn't know such a thing existed either) where we had the best fish and chips ever. Amazing food. Afterwards Gemma and I went for a walk waddle. We'd eaten a lot.
The photo Gemma took of me taking this photo is currently my facebook user pic ;)
General night time prettiness.
The Fullerton again.
This photo is technically terrible but completely embodies what living in Singapore is like, to me. You sit, with your friends, by the water, surrounded by amazing, beautiful, surprisingly quiet scenery, and just enjoy the warmth, the silence, and the company. It makes me wish I'd grown up there. I love outdoorsy cultures. Days in this country where it's warm enough to sit outside == well, you'll only need one hand to count them.
A few thumbnails to keep this post from getting too epic:
  
  
The last day contained the Chingay Parade, where I took 650 photos. So that post may be a little while in coming. |
|
|
| Singapore... day nine |
[May. 3rd, 2010|03:20 pm] |
*crawls in*
...Singapore.... *gasp*...day... *cough, wheeze*.... nine!
Jurong Bird Park!
Whenever I look at this picture I hear Yakko's 'Aaaaaaaaaahh...' noise in my head. (get the youtube deep linking! Also, the whole video's worth a watch because it's funny :P)
This was a part where we got to feed the boids. Live maggots. In little cups. Which they climbed out of. Onto your hand. And everyone was holding these cups above their heads to attract the birds. You can guess how that ended :D
I got a bit obsessed with closeups. But they are strange and amazing up close, birds!
Also, they like the attention, obviously :P
And we fed the Lorys :D Or lorikeets, as they're properly known. You got into a huge walk-in aviary, and they give you a cup of what looks like peanut butter mixed with water. You go onto a walkway, hold out a cup, and suddenly these cute little parrots are fighting for a chance to lap it up :D And lap they do, they have weird finger-like tongues that dart out and lap it up.
We spent ages in there, it was a lot of fun. Gemma befriended a particularly scruffy-looking one and named it Tiny Tim. Here's a picture on her blog of me feeding and photographing one at the same time.
There were also flowers.
Then we popped over to the Japanese and Chinese gardens, but left it a bit late!
It was a good day, it's a really impressive park, just like Singapore Zoo, an excellent example of how these things should be done. Fun for people and animals :)
Coming up, because it's a bank holiday, day ten. Don't worry, it's a short one. |
|
|
| Hong Kong Day Six, part 2 |
[Apr. 8th, 2010|12:19 am] |
Woohoo, the last of the HK photos! And good grief, this was only 1/3 of my holiday XD
Okayso, once we were back in HK, we popped back to the hotel for noms and to put some warmer clothes on because it was socold. Then we headed down the road to Victoria Park, where there was...
the New Year Fayre. Or Fair. I forget.
A huge, huge market + food thing, selling the most random array of Chinese New Year stuff ever. Inflatable lightbulbs? Check. Stuffed-toy orange trees? Check. (Actually, Gemma bought one of them, and me a lemon one). Fake memory sticks? Yup. Orchids? Every sort. Tiger everything?
Check.
And it was absolutely packed.
This is one of the less busy aisles, where they were selling the traditional orange trees and cherry blossom branches. You can tell it's less busy because there are gaps in the people. There weren't everywhere else. You were literally squashed between other people on every side. It was not a place for those of a claustrophobic or nervous disposition. There was a one-way system in the aisles, but of course huge groups of people ignored it, so instead of everyone moving very slowly in one direction, everyone was trying to go towards each other and therefore going nowhere. At one point we didn't move for about 15 minutes, it was that solid. And then people start getting impatient and pushing. And everyone pushes back. And that's when it started to feel a little dangerous, when I had to actually climb into someone's stall to avoid getting crushed. You hear about these huge crowds where people actually get hurt and I've always wondered how they start, and now I know!
Anyway, after an hour of this we couldn't take any more and slowly pushed our way to an exit.
When we got out the police had arrived and were blockading the streets to stop more people going in.
I thought there'd been a lot of people in the market, but every street leading to the park was a queue of people as far as you could see, it was absolutely crazy.
There were an awful lot of police by this point. We weren't surprised when ambulances started to pull up too.
So we wandered the streets and marvelled at the people, popping into shops as we went. It was about 1am by this point, and they were having to stagger people leaving the market too, just to allow some traffic through the roads.
I know exactly how this guy feels.
Oh, plus it was raining.
So we slowly made our way back to the hotel and were up til gone 3 in the morning packing the vast amount of shopping we'd done into one hand luggage suitcase!
They have funny bugs in HK.
And that was the end of our trip! Next up... Singapore! |
|
|
| Hong Kong, day six |
[Apr. 5th, 2010|07:07 pm] |
I actually wrote this entry three weeks ago but have only just finished editing the photos ¬_¬; Would rather not edit another photo of a lantern for a while now, kthx.
So, Hong Kong day six was one of those days you call an 'experience', which always means, absolutely horrible at the time, but you can look back at it later and laugh -_- Actually, there was so much experience that I'm going to have to tackle it in two posts. Not much happened on day seven, anyway. So, the first half, Lantau.
On Saturday we took the MTR to Lantau, one of HK's islands, and a cable car to Po Lin Monastery.
However. The weather was already bad, and as we went up...
...the cloud came down! For most of the 25-minute trip we could see absolutely nothing except the occasional other car suddenly looming out of the mist, going the other way. It was really, really weird. But we were sharing the car with a couple of very giggly gap-year girls and I think our combined hyperness was what stopped it from being scary XD Every so often an empty cable car would go past, or one with dead-looking people in... well, sort of, you get what I mean, we kept ourselves amused XD
Besides, the complete sensory deprivation meant that when the wind picked up, we had absolutely no idea how much the cab was swinging back and forth ¬_¬
When we got to the top of the mountain, it was very windy.
Very, very windy.
Which made for atmospheric, yet rubbish photos of the Big Buddha.
There were lots of steps.
It was so freaking cold too. And raining.
Then we went to Po Lin temple/monastery, which was totally worth the wind and the rain and the cold and the risk of death.
Just for this guy.
No, this is what it really looked like.
There were several monks sweeping up the leaves. What with the gale-force winds, I couldn't help but feel they were fighting a losing battle. Must be a zen thing.
Dragon love. I've never been much of a fan of dragons, but the ones in Chinese art are awesome.
It was just so darn pretty inside, I got a little crazy with the photos. I was also incredibly grateful for the rented Canon's f2.8 and IS.
No pictures of Po Lin village itself, because it was brand-new and touristy. Think Disneyland does Buddhism. That bad. We did have a very nicely warming hot chocolate at the Starbucks though ¬_¬ Yes, that touristy. Starbucks. On the top of a mountain.
Not long after we arrived, they closed the cable car for safetyness. I suppose the cars swinging and hitting the pylons as they go past could be a bit distracting. Apparently the weather doesn't usually get so bad, but I saw the padding they'd put on them :P
Dear Buddha, thank you for inspiring some awesome art and architecture. It's a pity the Communists destroyed most of it. Love, Claire.
Back a la island, we rushed to the harbour front to see the famed lightshow, which happens every night, lighting up all the buildings on both sides of the harbour with lasers, decorations, etc.
...unfortunately thanks to the weather, what we mostly saw was a few lasers and some flashing in the clouds. We gave up and went in search of food. Insert supermarket of awesome here. I need a whole post just to talk about food.
But the day didn't stop there, oh no. Coming up tomorrow, why not to visit Victoria Park on New Year's Eve!
Until then, here's the rest of the photos that I couldn't fit into the post.
         |
|
|
| Hong Kong, day four |
[Mar. 13th, 2010|11:13 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Shinedown - Her Name Is Alice | ] |
I have more love for this song than I have words to express.
Anyway, I've been getting a bit behind on my photos :S That's because... er, I can't remember my excuse for the other days but on Thursday it was because me and Jenny went to see The 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre! It was great, really good fun, I don't think anyone stopped chuckling the whole way through. Four actors play all the roles (139 of them apparently) and do all the set changing and the end result is very funny. And the Criterion is awesome, a full-on old-style theatre, really decorated, chandeliers, the lot. But. Seats only about 200 and is so far below ground that you can hear the tube rattling past :D I tried to take photos but apparently that isn't allowed ¬_¬
Anyway, photos.
This was a busy day. We went into the business district for a wander around the skyways that link all the big buildings, and ended up at the harbour. We thought a boat tour would be a nice way to have a look around. Good grief, in the middle of the huge harbour, with tens of 80-storey buildings either side of you, you really do get a feel for the sheer scale of the place. It's amazing. It's all so big that your brain has issues accepting it as real.
After that, back on the island, we ended up on the Escalator. Yes, an escalator with a capital letter. The HK Escalator is in fact a series of escalators and walkways that go up the rather hilly portions between central HK and the more residential areas on the 'mid levels'. We were on it for half an hour and we'd only done a fraction of it, it's huge. Or lengthy, even. In the morning rush hour it runs downhill, and the rest of the day up. Great idea.
Here's an idea of what you see from the escalator.
And that covered bit on the left that people are coming out of, that's what it looks like.
You see all sorts of terrifying strange things from it...
Then we had a quick look at Man Mo temple...
...then we followed the tourist signs to 'restaurants' and ended up in a Chinese one where the owners spoke no English and kept trying to force pork on us when we wanted chicken ;_; In the end due to their clever language confusion, we ended up with about 5 different dishes. To be fair, it was good pork XD
Then we wombled about a bit, did the less fun part of the escalator, which is walking down huundreds of steps...
(I love how they still use bamboo scaffolding over there, even for the skyscrapers. The only concession to technical advance is the plastic cable-ties they use to hold the poles together!)
...and took the tram back home across the island. The top deck is a great way to see the city, if a bit whiplash-inducing!
I could photograph the streets all day.
But mostly at night. I just love the colours. Pity about the old lady, but hey... faces are distracting? :D
Let me know if you would like this entry lj-cutting ¬_¬ |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
lastingtwilight's journal