Category: Decisive Moment

Fleeting moments frozen in time

Queen Of The Golden Hoops

I prefer to work in RAW mode on both my Canon Powershot G3 and the EOS 300D although working with RAW files usually chews up my storage cards as well as hard disk space very quickly. Some digital photographers find that working in JPEG format saves them a great deal of post-processing time since the sharpness/contrast/white balance settings would have automatically been taken care of. However, I find that the flexibility of being able to adjust these settings in post-processing invariably gives much high quality images compared to JPEGs (even when the JPEGs are further tweaked in Photoshop). Besides, I believe that post-processing should be very much a part of digital photography itself, just like the way photographers in the past enjoyed tweaking and fine-tuning their images with dark room processing.

The above picture was taken in Chinatown just shortly after I purchased my Canon 300D last year. Working with RAW initially entailed using a version of Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) since that was the only software available then that could process RAW files with a fair amount of flexibility (the Canon File Viewer Utility was hopeless at this!). Looking at the image one year later, I tried reprocessing it now in PhaseOne’s CaptureOne. I am amazed by the detail I could still push out of the image with minimal artifacts/noise compared to the original ACR version. The RAW workflow process is definitely staying with me for now 🙂

The Dummies And The Blonde


My first visit to Perth, Western Australia was just over one year ago in 2003. I was there first for a work-related conference. Staying back after the conference for a vacation, I was joined by my dad. While exploring the streets of Perth, we chanced upon this candid moment of a sales assistant enjoying the sun outside her shop, right across the street. We were struck by the wonderful lighting as well as the wry humour of the situation. Making a quick grab of my camera, I was fortunate enough to capture this shot right before the girl realised that a candid photo of her was being taken.

The Runaway Shadow

Australia ranks as one of my top destinations for photography currently 🙂 I had the pleasure to visit the country twice (once in September, and again in Novemeber last year) and came home with lots nice pictures.

This is one particularly memorable one taken off Busselton Jetty, Western Australia. A little girl playing along the sunny coast cast a striking shadow on the pristine sands. I had the advantage of a high view point when capturing this shot. The tricky bit was the exposure. Due to the high contrast between the reflected light off the water and the girl, I had to underexpose the shot generally so as not to blow the highlights in the water. I am thankful for the RAW capabilities of my camera though: the details in the sand and in the girl were later restored with the help of post-processing of the RAW file coupled with levels adjustments in Photoshop.