The Only Girl In White


This is another image that I took at the Singapore Youth Festival opening ceremony at the Singapore National Stadium. I montaged a piece of magenta diazo film with the original transparency to colour the white shirts of the performers, all except for one. I already had the idea of applying the colour derivations technique to the scene even before I pressed the shutter. The final image has a much greater visual impact. This image was very successful in gaining acceptances at photographic salons. It was awarded a number of PSA Gold Medals for the Best Contemporary Slide of the show in various international salons in 70’s and 80’s.

(Courtesy of: The National Museum of Singapore Permanent Collection, National Heritage Board, 2008)

One and Two

Simplicity is always the keyword in my capture of images with good visual impact. This picture is of a group of students participating in the Youth Festival at the Singapore National Stadium. Multi-racial festivals are aplenty locally. To date, they remain my favourite subjects in creative photography.

This picture was captured from a vantage point. The bias relief effect was created by montaging the original with a piece of lith film. The slide won a plaque in the 9th Torreon International Salon, Mexico in 1976. This image also won the PSA Gold Medal for the Best Contemporary slide of the show at the 25th Worcestershire International Salon, UK in 1977.

Final Heat


The South East Asian Athletics Meet at the Singapore National Stadium in the early 80’s provided me with an opportunity to capture this decisive moment image.

In this day and age, you may think that I might have used the motor drive to take a series of exposures (and then chose the best picture). Actually, I had only one shot of this right moment. For such a picture, your timing really had to be right on the dot. Incidentally, this image was the Grand Prize winner of the Canon Photo Contest, 1984. The prize included a Canon new F1 with motor drive unit and two lenses with focal length from 50mm to 210mm. On top of that, I enjoyed a free stay at the Mandarin Hotel with my family.