Photography Archives - Page 19 of 21

Category: Photography Page 19 of 21

A long shot. And for the birds, how near and yet how far from the sky. And how far away are you reader from Singapore where this picture was taken?

Phoneography Monday Challenge: Black and White
Pic #1 Apps used – Camera+, Gorillacam, Snapseed
Pic #2 Apps used – Camera+, Snapseed, Blendcam, Camera360 (Jelly), HDR Art (Red October)

Pic #1

This is a scene from my mother’s neighbourhood. Keeping birds seem to be more a pastime for elderly man. The birds get to go out on their “walks” and a bit of sun when the elderly men congregate at the bird poles to socialise and enjoy their feathered friends. Perhaps hanging them up high helps the bird song weave through the atmosphere further. I can’t really say.

I took a picture because there aren’t so many of such pole-dotted landscape nowadays. I imagine it would be quite a sight and soundscape should the poles have been filled to capacity.

Pic #2 (colour version on instagram, click.)

While the clear sky showed up the bird cages on the bird poles really well, I found the surrounding trees noisy and disrupted the pattern of the poles. I decided to disrupt the image further by blending in a previous picture I had taken of clouds over the surrounding landscape of blocks of flats. What you see is a triple exposure of two images only. Perhaps the ghosts of apartment blocks predict the future removal of this public interaction space? That is not impossible.

The colour filter I used for the picture (before conversion to black and white) has a pretty distinct signature to it which I do not favor. Hence if you look carefully, a bird silhouette added in photoshop helped to shield the number “5” that comes with the filter. In my mind’s eye, I could see a swarm of ghostly bird silhouettes building into a crescendo from the poles to the sky to create a visual image of bird song. That could be cool :P

I recently created a Twitter account for this blog. I was surprised to find people using the hash tag #unfiltered for their images. This makes me wonder, do you prefer your photos clean or filtered so that they become virtual/alternate versions of what exists in reality?

Bougainvillea in late afternoon light

By weliveinaflat

On July 12, 2013

In Photography

We visited the Gardens by the Bay in the late afternoon. Very lucky because there was a very short stretch of time where the plants were bathed in dancing light. I have always loved the interplay between light and shadow, though I am too lazy to go out of my way to capture it. :P

I have never liked the bougainvillea. It is a very common roadside plant, often in its many gaudy colours. Deep bright fuchsia horrors. I was never fond of fuchsia. And because it is by the roadside, it is inevitably dusty and tattered, sometimes dry and twiggy.

But see it in a different light, pink veins lining the delicate paper-like petals. These I quite admire.

I even wrote bad poetry for it, titled “Bougainvillae”

Had to power up my dusty OmmWriter to find the haiku within! :P Donna had one for Ku too! You should go see it on Ku’s blog at Haiku by Ku! ;)

Phoneography Weekly: The blue wolf

By weliveinaflat

On July 8, 2013

In Photography

“Oh, grandmother, what big eyes you have!”

“All the better to see you with.”

“Oh, grandmother, what big hands you have!”

“All the better to grab you with!”

“Oh, grandmother, what a horribly big mouth you have!”

“All the better to eat you with!”

*chuckle*

Accompanying text: Excerpt from Little Red Cap, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Phoneography Challenge: Macro – Donna
App: Camera+

People who are unfamiliar or have a fear of dogs may see the dog as the sum of its parts – the staring eyes, the long black claws, the gaping mouth, the sniffing nose atop the fangs, but most of all the unpredictability that comes with an unfamiliar animal.

But what I see is a lovely canine companion, fun-loving, playful but also patient and smart enough to put up with all sorts of non-dog things I make her do, like playing dead and high-five. How else could I get a dog to let me take pictures of her parts at such close range? :)

Dogwalking, Bright light, Harsh shadows

By weliveinaflat

On July 7, 2013

In Photography

Today, the Arian Ox was in the mood to explore and lead the nomadic life. She led the walk out of the park, across the overhead bridge and into an adjoining neighbourhood across the road. And then, the “pack leader” couldn’t make up her mind where to go from there.

There she is standing quietly in the big courtyard. Nevermind, let’s take you where you can wrap yourself around a tree.

You’re welcome.

Otherworldly Bridges

By weliveinaflat

On July 2, 2013

In Photography

#1, #2 Lorong Halus Bridge – gateway to the Lorong Halus Wetlands.
#3, #4 A small bridge in the World of Plants, Gardens by the Bay
#5, #6 OCBC Skywalk in Supertree Grove, Gardens by the Bay

Out of the set, the OCBC Skywalk in the Supertree Grove looks the most otherworldly to me. Do you agree?

But I do find that stripped out of colour, black and white images can sometimes take on an otherworldly quality.

It only requires imagination to see the Lorong Halus bridge as a structure in an alien mining terrain for example. But in real life it is but a foot bridge with steel bars that zig-zag along its overall wavy frame across the river to a wetlands park. We visited quite a while back so you can see from the bridge the construction still taking place in its environs. Previously this area was a landfill site for close to 30 years.

#3 and #4 can perhaps depict an alien forest where strange creatures lurk unseen. But perhaps I am pushing my luck with this :P

Now here’s a not so otherworldly image populated by humans :P

OCBC Skywalk (picture above, foreground) and the Marina Bay Sands SkyPark (background) – These integral connecting links between the Supertrees and the three towers of the Marina Bay Sands respectively afford birds’ eye view of the Gardens by the Bay.

Anyway, we are lucky the air quality returned to good levels in the last week so we can be out and about more carefree-ly. The Skywalk looked solid, but once I got my feet on it, I do still feel quite obvious trembling and there were times that my hands feel weak gripping my iPhone tightly, haha!

Dogs are allowed in the open areas of park land belonging to NParks, but I suspect not the Skywalk since this requires ticket admission. As required by the law, all dogs need to be leashed. We couldn’t bring Donna along yesterday since we were intending to take our parents to the Cloud Forest, one of the two domed conservatories that require ticket admission for humans only. So poor Donna had to stay at home.

We are expecting the haze to return end of the month, since Aug-Sep is typically the haze season. It is not inconceivable for the PSI to go to as high as Malaysia has experienced in the past since it’s really highly dependent on where the winds have a mind to take the haze to. So yes, if you are in Singapore, make the best out of the improved air this month!! You know what they say, make hay while the sun shines. How’s that for being optimistic! :P

Note: All photos taken with my iPhone, except for #7 which is a poor quality capture using Mr P’s Samsung Galaxy phone. So it is highly edited to death! :P So you’ll understand why it looks kind of artificial. :P Bwahahahaha!

Phoneography Weekly: Not exactly timber

By weliveinaflat

On July 1, 2013

In Photography

Somehow the image of an woodcutter chopping up a tree and yelling “timber!” as the tree fell is ingrained in my memory, even if there is no woodcutting culture or industry here. Hah! That’s the power of the media for you.

Anyway, the tree cutting has started. Here’s the guy who will take the tree apart, limb by limb.

Phoneography Monday Challenge: Nature – I seem to be making a habit to take pictures of man and/vs nature nowadays.
Apps: GorillaCam, Snapseed, Camera+ (Cyanotype and Toy Camera filters)

S7F5XFJMWQHA

The fall of leaves

By weliveinaflat

On June 30, 2013

In Photography

It is sunny here all year round and the town council maintenance guy didn’t get to this tree soon enough.

The fall of leaves

Walking the dog has made me notice more the outdoor environment around me. In general the weather here is hot and wet but there wasn’t any rain in the last couple of weeks, and when it finally poured some areas in Jurong experienced hailstones… in the tropics! Go figure~

Abandoned, but for the sun and moon above

By weliveinaflat

On June 25, 2013

In Photography

This is a shot of the neighbourhood childrens’ playground that I took last week. On any other day, the picture will be clear and sharp, the buildings in the background would not look as faded simply because we are generally a hot, sunny island with very clear visibility. And yes, there might be a child or two about the slide, ladder or climbing wall.

We have been beset by smoke haze from hot spot fires in Sumatra, Indonesia from last week and the PSI index reached as high as 401 (air quality is described as hazardous when it climbs above 300). Over the weekend, things seemed to have improved, and air quality seemed to have stayed more or less moderate so that’s good.

On another day, I noticed the sun reflecting off the windows of a building.

I turned around searching for the sun and there it was.

I was telling Mr P how without the haze shrouding the sun, the picture above would have been impossible for me to shoot. And then he shared with me his own photo that he took coming back from work at 3a.m. The picture was shot from the carpark downstairs.

Mr P doesn’t take pictures very often, but the moon, red from the haze is something neither of us has seen before.

While I may whine and gripe about the haze like everyone else, I also have to concur with Wiley who was wise to say,

… poop happens in our lives every now and then. Are we going to ignore it…(or just whine about it)? Or are we going to face it head on and pay it forward…

Not sure how to pay it forward in this case :P Mostly, we are just thankful Donna and I have the option to hole up in our tiny air-conditioned study when necessary. Although I expect the electricity bills will climb.

Dogs lick themselves when they are relaxing, bored or stressed it seems.

Note:

Haze is a yearly occurrence in Singapore normally in the months August-September. We’ve been lucky to escape the worse of it in the last few years and one barely notices it if one is stuck at work in the office all day. This year’s haze is so unexpected and it’s not until I experienced how severe it can be in our own backyard so to speak that one starts to empathise with those who have to live with it daily.

Haze health tips for pet owners, read this previous post.

This post is a companion post to Weekly Phoneography: Population, in capturing our already very urbanised neighbourhood at a point where:

we have started to see physical changes in the landscape, growth of buildings around 3 times the height of existing flats
the interplay of the elements of nature in an urbanised environment – air, trees, sun, moon

Weekly Phoneography: Population

By weliveinaflat

On June 24, 2013

In Photography

new vs old flats
Phoneography Monday Challenge: Architecture (challenger’s choice)

New flats less than 2 years old on the left; old flats easily more than 20, 30 years old on the right.

As buildings grow taller, trees are growing shorter.

news infographic on roadside trees in Singapore
Excerpt from The Sunday Times, May 19, 2013

I have written before about the impending removal of some tall Angsana trees downstairs to make way for three new blocks of flats.

Change is inevitable, but I do like trees that stand as tall as 12 to 13 storey flats. When walking the dog, they provide welcome shade in our hot, bright climate although yes, they also harbour poop-dropping birds and life-threatening falling branches when it storms.

roadside trees

Wherever they stand, trees and the oxygen they produce enable life.

This is the main road junction of our neighbourhood. Look how well the trees obscure the blocks of flats behind them, and then scroll back to the first picture. How hard and stark the buildings are with the small trees. And then I think about the haze and know that I will always still prefer the big trees of life that cleanse the air around us faithfully.

Note: Copyright of the newspaper belong to SPH, I will be obliged to remove the clipping if requested.