An aesthetic evening at Punggol beach

Picture Info:

I haven't taken a landscape photo for quite some time already. So, here I go once again to the punggol beach with some of my friends. It was my second time visiting there... ^^. It was also a beautiful evening, although the weather's a bit cloudy.

All these times, I've been only taking normal landscape shots. So, for a change this time, I decided to try making a complete HDR. The acronym HDR comes from the words High Dynamic Range. In a photo, dynamic range means the difference between the lightest and the darkest color value. In other words, dynamic range means the contrast of a photo. HDR photo is basically a photo which has larger dynamic range than an ordinary photo. You can find more about making HDR here. HDR has always been of interest to me ever since I started shooting photographs. Yet, it requires your editing skills for it to become a mind-blowing Tour de Force. Below is my first stepping stone to HDR photography :D. The picture is not of a good standard but this is what I've tried, and I'm posting this to share with my readers and my fellow photographers.

Please click on the picture to enlarge! ^^

Settings Used:

No of shots taken: 3 [-2EV,0EV,+2EV]

Picture Format: RAW

Aperture: f/9

Focal Length: 18mm

ISO: 100

Place: Punggol Beach, Singapore

Postprocessing:

- The three shots were merged using Photomatix Pro and the resulting picture tonemapped.

- Adjusted temperature, tint, and clarity in Adobe Lightroom 2.

- Stacked back with the overexposed picture [+2EV] to get some details of the rock

- Stacked back with the normally exposed picture [0EV] to recover the blown-out parts of the sky.

- Added an unsharped mask by a small amount to sharpen the image.

Comments and Criticisms are warmly welcomed and appreciated! ^^

The Helix

Picture Info:

I've posted some helix shots in the past. This is one of the many shots taken on the same day... I tried playing with the curve function in Photoshop CS5 for this one. I'm still not satisfied with the results obtained but have no idea how to improve it lol.. I guess I need to practice more on this from now on :D... Please click on the picture to enlarge! ^^

Settings Used:

Exposure: 5.0

Aperture: f/3.5

Focal Length: 18mm

ISO: 100

Place: The Helix, Singapore

Comments and criticisms are welcome! ^^

Floral Indulgence..

Aite... it's been such a very very long time since I've posted my previous post, part of the reasons being that I couldn't get to go for photo shoot as frequent as before, and partly due to lack of time for editing. I've just started using photoshop for postprocessing so editing a single photo can take me 3 to 4 hours these days... ^.^

Picture Info:

I had a second visit to the botanic garden this week and got the chance to get into the national orchid garden for free.. The following are some of the pics I've taken inside...

Please click on the pictures to enlarge! ^^

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/80

Aperture: f/5.6

Focal Length: 47mm

ISO: 200

Place: Botanic Garden, Singapore

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/200

Aperture: f/5.6

Focal Length: 47mm

ISO: 200

Place: Botanic Garden, Singapore

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/40

Aperture: f/5.6

Focal Length: 55mm

ISO: 200

Place: Botanic Garden, Singapore

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/80

Aperture: f/5.6

Focal Length: 55mm

ISO: 200

Place: Botanic Garden, Singapore

Comments and Criticisms are welcome! ^^

Pregraduation Photoshoot Part 2 (Portraits)

Aite... I'll be graduating officially in less than 24 hours... :D

Here are some more shots taken during the photoshooting at Fort Canning Park. More photos are yet to come tmrw too.. I apologize for posting this one-day photoshooting batch by batch as I don't have enough time to process my photos these days.. :). Please click on the picture to enlarge! ^^


Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/1600
Aperture: f/1.8
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 100
Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore


Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/4000
Aperture: f/1.8
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 100
Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore


Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/640
Aperture: f/1.8
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 100
Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore



Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/640
Aperture: f/1.8
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 100
Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore


Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/800
Aperture: f/1.8
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 100
Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore


Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/640
Aperture: f/1.8
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 100
Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore


Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/800
Aperture: f/1.8
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 100
Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore

Comments and Criticisms are welcome! ^^

Pregraduation Photoshoot (Portraits)

Phew.. finally an outing for portrait shooting came! And what's even better? It's for finally graduating from Singapore Polytechnic after 3 longly-awaited years. Today's is gonna be a long post with more pics than as usual. [^^]...

An outing at Fort Canning Park on a sunny day is really an ordeal. The Sun was scorchingly bright at its best.. I'd say this was the sweatiest outing I've ever been.. =.=". However, I had quite much fun back there :D.. And I thank my dear friends.. for giving me this chance to try out portraits..

All the pics below were taken with 50mm f2.8 since I thought it would be a good time to utilize it..

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/640

Aperture: f/1.8

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO: 100

Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/800

Aperture: f/1.8

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO: 100

Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/800

Aperture: f/1.8

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO: 100

Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/2500

Aperture: f/1.8

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO: 100

Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/800

Aperture: f/1.8

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO: 100

Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/640

Aperture: f/1.8

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO: 100

Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/2000

Aperture: f/1.8

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO: 100

Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/2500

Aperture: f/1.8

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO: 100

Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/250

Aperture: f/1.8

Focal Length: 50mm

ISO: 100

Place: Fort Canning Park, Singapore

Comments and Criticisms are welcome! ^^

Close-up shots

It's been a long time since I've last updated my blog, the reason being that I've been busy hunting for jobs..and there's hardly time for a photoshoot outing with friends since they're busy with their stuff as well..

I've been dying to go out for snapping, dying to try out my new 50mm lens (really a cheap one yet so useful ^__^). I hope I can go out for a photoshoot at least in a two weeks' time from now.

Right now I really have a feeling whether I could continue pursuing photography as a hobby. I haven't even started work and I'm losing my consistency... Nonetheless, I'll still be trying my best to keep the passion alive.. (^^)..

Picture Info:

Below are the few close-up shots I've taken in the long past.. They've just been touched today...due to my busyness and my laziness as well :P.. Please click on the picture to enlarge! ^^

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/2500

Aperture: f/3.5

Focal Length: 18mm

ISO: 400

Place: Chinese Garden, Singapore

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/500

Aperture: f/5.6

Focal Length: 24mm

ISO: 400

Place: Lorong Buangkok, Singapore

Settings Used:

Exposure: 1/640

Aperture: f/6.3

Focal Length: 47mm

ISO: 800

Place: Unknown, Myanmar

Comments and criticisms are welcome! ^^

Time for a shooting day out!

It's been quite a while already since I went out for shootings.. T__T.. and I'm honestly out of photos to post here.. lolx.. This is the one of the last best pieces I found.. :)

Picture Info:

This was taken together with one of my previous post And then she left me...

Settings Used:

Exposure: 4.0

Aperture: f/5.6

Focal Length: 55mm

ISO: 100

Place: Home, Myanmar

Postprocessing:

- Up the vibrance to get a brighter colour

- Up the clarity to get more details

- Crop

- Increase the contrast

- Increase the orange color saturation

- Do some black clipping a bit

Comments and criticisms are welcome! ^^