Olympus E-620 Art Filter

The following images were taken with the Olympus E-620 fitted with the Zuiko Digital 70-300mm lens. The E-620 was set to Large Fine JPEG quality, Auto White Balance, ESP metering and the Natural Picture Mode with Normal Gradation; Noise Reduction and the Noise Filter were set to their ON and STD settings respectively. In-camera Image Stabilisation was enabled for all these handheld shots.

 Aperture mode 1/2000s f 8.0 ISO 200 FL 70.0mm

 'Pinhole' art filter 

 'Grainy film' art filter.

 The Olympus camera allows you to apply art filters to your photos after you take them or even as you are taking them. These art filters are a way to adjust your image without having to learn or use a complex editing software.

Kuching City- Urban Street Style.

I may not know them, but the most stylish people in the world are the people that no one knows. I always say like, we're not the best dressed, but there are so many people out there that can do it just as good and even better.

 It’s not street style in the genuine sense.  I shoot people doing everyday things, stepping out of the grocery store, walking to work, out for lunch, etc.

 There are a wide array of reasons that people love big size hats. If you have a big head, you may need a large hat to fit it. Some people, however, just like the style of having a big hat, as they can be great fashion statements. They can also do a good job protecting you from the sun.That what the above picture tell you ,she wearing hat.What is street photography for me?
It’s all about a feeling and flavour, the peculiarity of its corners and narrow streets.meet people with style.

A moment.  Something unique that catches my eye.  Style is important, but more so a personality that shines through.  I’m actually somewhat annoyed by the whole ‘fashion show’ I don't shoot modelling either .

I like to photograph people the way they are, beautiful but also human and perfectly imperfect. I think streets have an identity to show as well… the way light crosses the streets, the walls and ground, how streets welcome people and host them, how that street portrays and shows the identity of the city itself.

  I found actual street style. So candid, these people don’t even know they’ve been spotted. I look for the atmosphere.This  people just happen to be in the frame.

Kuching City-In the small hours of the morning.

I took all the below shot in the old part of Kuching City.The open air market ,India Street and the surrounding area.It' a usual thing for me to be up at wee hours just to photograph the street.By the way I love early morning scene and if good weather soon after  sunrise I like the long shadows cast across the street and also the early  morning atmosphere and the culture of local people.

Most street cleaning happens over night and the early morning often finds city scenes with less litter to clutter your shots.

 Of course you might want people in some of your shots –

in the wee hours of the morning there’s a whole different group of people wandering the streets can give your shots a whole new focal point.

Shots around dawn have less likelihood of being cluttered by people. It’s amazing who lonely a city can look if you’re able to get a people free shot.

Business As Usual.

Business as usual for many people on 3rd day after Chinese New Year.Perhaps you want to see the photos that I shot yesterday around the old part of Kuching City.

 By now I am sure a lot of you are eager to know when is the best day in 2012 for you to start working again after this Dragon Chinese New Year.Well, not for this uncle he say I even work on celebration day.

My boss a Chinese towkey is at home and he ask me to look after the shop say Agus..My boss  say it is important for him to start working again on an auspicious day after Chinese New Year, so that his whole year will be a prosperous, smooth-sailing year filled with all the luck and wealth that he need. So if you had a bad year last year, it was probably because you started working on the wrong day after Chinese New Year! So don't make the same mistake again in this new Dragon Year.

 Business as usual say auntie ..people will come at last minutes and I don't mind waiting and I work half day to-day.

As for me I don't have any BEST day to start working I do have several so-called GOOD days to work after my break. 

The 3rd day of Chinese New Year business as usual....

Black & White Wedding Photograph.

These days, you’ll find a lot of individuals who are usually planning that black-and-white images are outdated. Indeed, these kinds of images look classic as well as out of trend. These types of also give a perception that the occasion that got caught took place a long time ago especially if the audience is of younger generation. Many still don’t recognize that black-and-white images are still quite significantly most desirable.
 A Malay wedding is usually performed when either one or both spouses are Malay. Malaysian law defines a Malay person as a Muslim.Malay weddings are grand affairs where the couple is treated as royalty. The traditional wedding ceremony is in two parts. The first part is the akad nikah (marriage contract), which is the legal and religious part of the wedding. The second part is the bersanding (enthronement), which is a family celebration. It is usual for the two parts to be celebrated over two days. However, it is becoming common for there to be a gap between the parts of the wedding, during which the couple are legally married, but saving up for an elaborate bersanding. In cases where the couple have family spread around the world, a number of bersanding may be held in different countries to allow everyone to wish the couple well.

 A Malay wedding proper begins with the akad nikah (marriage contract) ceremony. The groom signs the marriage contract and agrees to provide the bride with a mas kahwin (mahar,literally 'marriage gold' in form of money or goods or anything as requested by the bride).It is opposite to dowry where the mas khawin is paid by the bride to the groom. The mas khawin is a symbol to show that the men is willing and are prepared to build a family with the lady he chose to get married to. The contract signing is done before a religious official and is accompanied by prayer.

 The contract signing is done before a religious official and is accompanied by prayer.

 The couple now officially 'Husband & Wife"
 In relation to wedding photography, black-and-white images might be excellent option. At the affect of the modern day, increasingly more couples highly recommended it far more than the colored pictures. It also became the specialization of some of the most well-known wedding photographers. Research shows that if someone would be shown images in which some are of black and white print out, they’d don’t forget these kinds of even far more. There’s constantly some thing distinctive and remarkable about black-and-white wedding pictures.

  The bersanding is to take place the next day and  actual wedding day is the Bersanding. This literally means the "sitting together of the bride and bridegroom on the bridal couch". Known as the Pelamin, this couch is the centrepiece of the whole ceremony, and two pelamins are required - one in the bride's house and the other in the bridegroom's. As the Bersanding ceremony customarily takes place in the afternoon, the bridegroom entertains guests at his own house in the morning. The bersanding (enthronement) ceremony begins with the groom's procession with friends, relatives, musicians and people waving bunga manggar (palm blossom) to meet the bride. Often various good-humoured attempts are made to waylay or stop the groom from getting to the bride. The main part of the bersanding involves the seating of the bridal couple on a dais and sprinkling them with yellow rice and scented water by family members, relatives and guests as a sign of blessing. Each guest will receive a bunga telur (egg flower), a decorated egg with a fabric flower, as a sign of fertility. The couple are considered royalty for the day, and so various royal customs are performed for them, including musicians playing court music and 'bodyguards' performing a display of Silat (traditional Malay martial arts).

The modern days Malay wedding have flower girls to accompany the wedding couple to the Pelamin .

After the bersanding ceremony, the wedded couple and their guests attend a celebratory feast called the makan beradab (formal meal). This involves the bride and groom feeding each other sweetened rice. The celebrations are concluded by posing for family photographs.

 The couple are considered royalty for the day,

 Candid family photograph...
The celebrations are concluded by posing for family photographs.

 Well, Malay wedding also have wedding cake this day......

It can be really funny that in the past, individuals wished to put some colors inside the wedding pictures. Nowadays, we desire to take away the color to make the picture less vivid. The main reason behind it’s constantly people’s wish to come up with pictures that reflect the beauty of the entire wedding ceremony.

Street Photography-Hunting Down The Moment.

Location:Waterfront @ Kuching in Sarawak. Photo by Awang 2011.

One of the exciting things about photography is the anticipation of ‘the shot’ – hunting down the moment in time that is worth recording and being there with your camera poised when it happens.

India Street Mall in Kuching.

 No genre of photography creates this anticipation like ‘Street Photography’; moving with the crowd, ever alert to the signs of human activity, watching and waiting: to see and not to be seen.

 Street photography has been a passionate past time for many since the discovery of photography. The very first fixing of a photographic image  of a person was a street scene.

Everyone has the potential to be a street photographer. Not everyone is game.
This is my approach. It doesn’t suit everyone and there may be some ethical questions I am answerable to, but I’m sure you can weed out the bits you like from the borderline criminal behaviour of an obsessive street photographer such as myself.

Photo by Awang 2011.

Irrespective of your ‘rights’ there is the question of etiquette. That also varies from culture to culture and person to person. I have my own personal approach (which requires the wearing of a good pair of running shoes and a more than ignorant look on my face) but that may not suit everyone. Ultimately, discretion, common sense and personal safety, are the prime considerations. It may not always be about ‘getting the shot.’

Photo by Awang 2011.

Talking about place of the shot.The usual venue is where people gather. ‘Street’ can be interpreted in many ways and might include alleys, shopping malls, shops and cafes, parks, buses and trains, market places, in fact, anywhere you will find the structures and architecture of civilisation with the people who frequent them.

My favourite places are shopping malls (open and closed), High Street in small towns and villages, and the back streets of big cities.Just be careful if you catch someone doing something they shouldn’t be doing. That’s when it can get ugly.

Black & White Street Shot with Panasonic Lumix LX3.

The LX3 is fairly well known to photographers who appreciate manual controls and the fast and wide angle Leica lens. However, it’s not a camera for everyone, some photographers want more of a zoom range, since the LX3 only has a 2.5x zoom from 24-60mm (in 35mm equivalent), nor does it have a standard viewfinder. Those are of course limitations for some photographers; however, it does have a large, high resolution LCD screen that seemed to be easy to use under most conditions and outside. I even thought that it was a bit bright, so I turned the brightness down. I also appreciate the fast (f/2.0 max) lens with image stabilization that allows you to shoot wide in dark environments with no flash.

Local coffee shop in old part of Kuching City in Sarawak.

Street newspaper vendor .

 As I usually take color photos and later convert them to B&W in post processing, I thought it would be interesting to see how the LX3 did with the built in black and white preset setting. There are two to select from in the camera. One is a standard B&W setting that looks very good, and another more contrasty setting called “Dynamic” that creates a bit more contrast. I decided to use the Dynamic setting along with center-weighted metering with an ISO set to 400. I probably could have used the auto ISO setting with a maximum set to 400, but I didn’t think of it at the time (I was thinking of the old Tri-X settings!)

Street scene in old part of the city.

Medicine man on business in old part of Kuching City .

All the above  photos are caught while I was walking around in old part of the city. As a side note, all of the LX3 “films” can be adjusted to the users preference. I think in the future, I might turn the Dynamic contrast down a bit to get a bit more clarity in the shadows, but then I do like a high contrast B&W image.
So, do you like to shoot in black and white? Do you use the built-in settings in your camera, or do you like to do it all in post processing? Overall, I’m pretty pleased with the effect you get with the built-in settings on the LX3, so I’m sure I’ll use this setting again in the future.

Kitten Photography.

Some people feel the same way about their pets as they do about their kids. When the kids are gone the focus turns to pets, and if you have a brand-new kitten, the photo opportunities are practically endless. As an hobbyist photographer, I may take lots of pictures of my family pet, but unless I learn to take better kitten picture.

Camera Shy......

Hunter..

I read a  few tips to help you take better kitten pictures.
INCREASE YOUR SHUTTER SPEED.
Kitties move at the speed of light. Unless you pump up your cameras shutter speed, you’ll end up with more blurs than photos that you can keep. One way to increase shutter speed is to increase the amount of light in the shot. This could happen by moving the subject, your kitten, to a better and more lighted location.
It could also mean increasing your ISO setting to a higher number. Moving the ISO higher than keeping the aperture the same will increase shutter speed. Try to avoid using the flash, because it usually causes artificial looking colors.

I'm not wild ...

 CHANGE YOUR ANGEL.

Snapshots of pets are usually quite boring and dull simply because they all look the same. The photographer is standing or squatting above the pet. If you get down on the same level as your kitten, you will immensely increase the interest of your shot. This may mean having your camera right down on the floor, but if you try it, you will be happy you did.

Black & White Cat.

 All the above photos snap from my Olympus E-620 & lens 70-300mm.

Spontaneous Street Walk.

Came late Monday afternoon, my hand was itching so badly for shutter therapy session I decided to grab the camera bag and attack the streets just before sunset. Made it home from work rather early, I sped off to Petaling Street in the city, just in time to catch the dying lights. Unfortunately, it was raining rather heavily when I arrived, but that did not stop my determination to come home with enough pictures to make myself smile. I just need to be on the streets, and shoot purely for myself. Oh no, is this what we call, an obsession? Or an addiction? say Robin Wong.

Oh my goodness ..this guy really motivated me to do street photography but of course I can't be like him,this guy  simply the best.Read what he say (Above statement).Want to know him and visit his blog kindly go to his site and I'm sure those who is crazy about street attack will not regret .His name is Robin Wong so click http://robinwong.blogspot.com

Yesterday (Sunday) late afternoon I grab my entry level E-620 and go to the street.My shooting target is the old parts of Kuching City.Like Robin say "shot purely for myself "...yeah,that what I'm trying to do but to be honest I'm just an old guy who shot just like the tourist or carry DSLR but more on P & S style.Haha,,that my style .Again Robin say "to come home with enough picture to make myself smile" .Well , I liked it.

My version of street attack with my Olympus E-620  and Lens Zuiko 14-54mm f2.8-3.5.

 

This is my target India,court house and carpenter Street.

I did not photograph much on Carpenter Street, just this lonely red postal box .

I have a chance to speak with this gentleman,he is a hired van operator .I ask him,are you reading about our petrol & sugar new price in Malaysia ?

Wow !!!! this guy really count every single cents he spend.

"My car tank is 52 litter.Previously when petrol price was RM1.85 x 52 litter = RM96.20, now after increasing I  can get only RM1.90 x 52 litters = RM98.8. It only different by RM2.60". What do you think about the differences of RM2.60? Does sugar price affects you too? ..........

 

Most shoppers who do shopping around the Indian Street Mall are from middle to low income group .I meet Bujang he work as street cleaner around this area.He remark"I’m one of the small salaries workers in Malaysia. For the past 4 years our monthly expenses just for food raise 3 times. That means 300%.What kind of government that raised our expenses but failed to offer a rewards for the small salaries group?

And so are most people around me, so it doesn't really matter what I do.I smile to strangers and say hello.Every one seem happy to-day including the 'Tukang Gigi'  or shall I call it 'False teeth maker' not Dentist....he smile 24 hours .

 

Do you know how much money this street medicine-man collect from the public to-day? I saw they give him Rm10.00 for every small packed of medicine he sold.I saw him doing few trick by drinking so call poison water being prepared by himself .Actually I wanted to photograph him while he perform the trick or magic but I have to be caution other wise instead of I attack the street  for picture he attack me.I advise the people after enjoying watching his trick 'Don't do this at home".

 

To-day is a beautiful day but I cannot see it....being thoroughly entertained by blind musician this little boy put some token in a cash box.

Playing with billboards......
Another great classic of street photography is to compose with the giant billboards used for advertising to create unique pictures, micro comedies or dramas. Very often, the desired effect is obtained when a billboard either presents a feature that supports a character action, or, on the contrary, presents an element totally opposing it. In some cases, a scale effect between a character and the picture displayed in a background creates a fantastic impact on the viewer.
The easiest approach is to find a great poster having a high photogenic potential (pictorial, funny, or dramatic), and to wait before it. Then to patiently watch the moment when an a typical person comes and pass-by or make an action before the billboard. It requires a lot of luck but also a lot of time and patience, and the result is not guaranteed. Also you can lose precious time waiting that could be dedicated to other better catches.

So the most rewarding experience remains the typical street photographer approach : capturing this very fortuitous moment resulting from a combination of three major elements: 1) A billboard with a high potential, 2) a subject in complete match (or mismatch) with this billboard, and 3) the presence of a street photographer at this precise moment to observe the scene and freeze this moment, that will never happen a again.

I wanted to try playing with billboard but no many billboard here in old part of Kuching City . And again I need more practice ,practice and practice in street photography.

Cheers......