The first time I came across this rather peculiar ritual was back in 2007 at Changi Beach. It’s only recently that I’ve learned from a dear Hindu of mine whose dad had passed away the true meaning of these rites. Apparently, this was part of a funeral service. The cremated remains of a family member is scattered into the sea by the eldest male of the family.

It took 14 hours by train, an hour on the road and another 45 minutes by boat to reach here. I thoroughly enjoyed the latter two. The train ride? Not so much. It was loud and mind-numbingly boring. For someone who loves train photography, I’m decidedly not a train person. 14 excruciatingly long hours is enough to put me on the verge of cabin fever. If it took any longer I would have rampaged through the cabins like Jack Torrance in a Malaysian re-imagining of The Shining. “Johnny di siniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!”

Located off the north east coast of Terengganu, the Perhentian island duo of Besar and Kechil is a popular retreat for backpackers, divers, snorkelers and camera totting travellers like myself. Unlike the more bustling Redang Island just 20km south of it, Perhentian is somewhat less touristy and more laid back.

Blessed with the finest white sands, crystal clear waters and blue skies, anything that you snap here will look like something out of a cheesy travel magazine. At the more remote pockets of the island, it’s probably dark enough for a spot of star trail photography. Admittedly, if you are not geared for underwater photography, there’s not much else to shoot for.

The lack of photography doesn’t really bothered me that much, as I spent most of my days here kicking back, whiling the hours away on the beach. Under the watchful sun and caressed by a soothing tropical breeze, screeching trains and cabin madness melted into a distant memory.

This post is the first non-local related image that I’ve posted in this blog. For 4 years, I’ve stubbornly dedicated this website primarily to landscape and seascape photography in Singapore. At the get-go I was told time and time again that there’s no decent landscape photography to be had here. Perhaps a part of me wanted to prove them wrong as I was and still am a firm believer that great images can be captured with the right frame of mind and fundamentals, regardless of where you are. So for 4 years I’ve been pushing that envelope, or at least I’ve been trying to.

Alas, the law of diminishing returns is a cruel mistress. For the past year or so, I am not particularly pleased with the results I’m getting, subsequently new content for this site became few and far between. I was tempted to fill the gaps with my commercial and wedding works, but decided not to because that would go against the grain and personal nature of this blog. It’s time for me to face the hard truth, that the concrete jungles of Singapore and its few pockets of nature doesn’t do it for me anymore.

Therefore as of now, I’m casting the proverbial net wider. As I’ll be travelling more around the region, I”ll be packing my camera with me.

Good times.

Water flows from a canal into the awaiting sea, carving a stream only visible at low tide. This is Changi Beach.

My photoblog went offline last February. It was then hosted on a friend of a friend’s server. For reasons only known to him, he went MIA and we couldn’t get hold of him through the usual channels. Curiously, the site came back online last September but only for a few days. By then I was at wit’s end and the thought of starting all over again was too daunting to even think about. A few days ago, out on a whim I emailed him. Surprisingly, he replied and after a few exchanges he brought the site back up again. I managed to retrieved the essential files and migrated to a reputable datacenter in the States where it is now hosted.

Thanks to the many who asked. Sadly, I don’t have much to post even after the long hiatus. I do have plenty of commissioned works but I’m hesitant to put them up because it just doesn’t fit the personal nature of this blog. That said, I’m just glad that it’s back online again for good, so I will try my darnest to post regularly.

Also, you may find me on Facebook as I’ve started to use it more often now (Yes, I’m rather slow in these whole social network thingy). I’ve uploaded a selection of the blog’s photos in an album as I think it’s great platform to share information. Tutorials are something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time, so if you got something to ask.. e.g how an effect was achieved, where was a photo shot, equipment used, etc.. just fire away over there. Most of the techniques are outdated by today’s standards I guess, but it could a be great starting point if you are new.

Hazmee helped out in this fun shot. We had to rush because we were more keen to capture the magic hour scene that was fast approaching than me scrawling words in the air with a torchlight.

Have a great year ahead.

I know, it’s a reprocess of an older image I posted 3 years ago. I didn’t like what I did to it then so I had another go at the image. It’s funny how we see things differently through the years.

Have a great year ahead

Tampines Quarry Lake, taken sometime last year.

In other news, I’m having some problems calibrating my monitor. If you are on the lookout for a new display for photo editing, you might want to stay away from the Dell 2709. It’s quite hard to get the colors right on this one and I’ve been at it for month. I might just ditch it and pick up a smaller Apple Cinema Display instead.

Thank you for your thoughts and comments in the previous posts.

You might have seen it on the telly when F1 came to town a couple months back. The Singapore Flyer is the latest centerpiece in Singapore’s ever-changing cityscape. Standing at 168m, it is currently the highest observation wheel in the world, soon to be surpassed however by the Beijing Great Wheel in 2009.

An easy way to shoot a scene like this with a high contrast film, is to expose for the highlights. This will result in a silhouetted image. But I wanted to preserve some details in the shadows. You may not be able to see them at this resolution but there’s a whole lot of details in there, which I think will look pretty cool when it’s printed big.

To achieve this I took readings of the highlights, shadows and one of the buildings on the far right as midtone. I just then have to ensure that the shadows and highlights are within 2 to 3 stops from that zone. I used 3 pieces of Neutral Density filters to control the exposure. A center ND filter is screwed on to reduce vignetting. To coerce the highlights to fall within the film’s latitude I mounted an all-important hard grad ND filter. This filter was rotated 45 degrees counterclockwise. Lastly a soft grad ND filter is stacked for good measure. It’s also crucial for the rightmost part of the image to be correctly exposed because I needed it to provide a visual balance to the composition – which is the main reason why the filter was rotated as such.