Glory Past

Glory Past
You know that “winter” has arrived in Singapore when… it’s raining non-stop for the sixth consecutive day in a week 😛 As the rainy season continues, here’s looking at an old picture I took a while ago (when it was sunnier)…

MacRitchie Reservoir presents numerous opportunities to create pictorial/visual art kind of pictures such as this study of a fallen leaf by the reservoir edge. I love the details captured in the leaf (I have a nice enlargement of this — you can actually see beads of water on the full-size version of this shot) contrasting with the dark background of the water. This was taken in May 2004.

Exposure information: Camera – Canon EOS 300D DIGITAL, ISO – 200, Exposure Time – 1/160 sec, Aperture – f/13.0, Flash – Off, Focal Length – 190mm, Lens – Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO II Super Macro, Exposure Program – Manual, Metering Mode – Center Weighted, Auto Focus Mode – AI Focus, White Balance – Auto, Capture Format – RAW (processed with CaptureOne DSLR Rebel Edition)

Mating Damsels


It has been a while since I last took macro-shots of insects at the Botanical Gardens. While the rest of the northern hemisphere is having cold weather for now, we are experiencing the rainy / monsoon season which makes photography almost impossible. In fact, the skies were pouring non-stop for the most part of yesterday!

I took this picture of mating damselflies at the Botanical Gardens in 2004. I had quite soft lighting for the initial few shots I snapped. As luck would have it, the sun decided to make a strong appearance, bathing the two in warm and bright lighting. Lots of post-processing done on the original RAW file in boosting the colours and saturation… Wanted to give a Velvia-feel to the final result 🙂

ARPS #12 – Total Captivation

ARPS #12 - Total Captivation

Image #12 from my ARPS series…

These gentlemen were seen captivated by a chess game at Chinatown, Singapore. Selective processing/desaturation of the background was done using Photoshop to bring out the main subjects of the photo. These group of men have provided me with numerous photo opportunities on my repeated trips to Chinatown 🙂

Interestingly, I did a Google search on myself recently (you should try it for yourself — it’s amazing some of the things you can find sometimes!) and found a link to this photograph from a tutorial on selective desaturation 🙂 It’s worth taking a look!