We live in a flat

Many Adults, 1 Boy & 1 Dog's Montessori Life in a Singapore flat

singapore dog blog adopt dog adoption

Tag: black and white

Look upwards and find a little tale








Picture 1

“Hold on a minute,” I said, “I want to take a picture of the flower-shaped lights cast by the roof on the floor.”

But there were people walking by. I snapped the roof with its flower-shaped cut-outs that let escaped similarly shaped light shadows on the ground as I waited for the passerby to clear the frame. When he had passed, the flowers were gone too, as the clouds obscured the light.

Picture 2

I was waiting for the family to arrive for a buffet dinner at a hotel. I was in the lounge and spied a many thousand (I exaggerate!) baubles of a chandelier. I sidled to the couch somewhat directly underneath and pretended to be playing with my phone… and then non-nonchalantly snapped a few pictures. I just didn’t want to look like I had never seen a chandelier before :P Muahahahahaha!

Picture 3

Night loo break and short walk with Donna. Leaves lighted up by streetlight. They looked numerous, and yet still lonely in the dark.

Picture 4 and 5

At the petrol station while Mr P was filling up petrol. The light was bright so I couldn’t see the flowers of this blooming tree clearly. No problemo, let’s take a picture and look at it on the screen at a later date. I love blooming trees.

Picture 6

I stepped onto our tiny bedroom balcony, took one look at the sky and went back in for my iPhone.

Picture 7 and 8

Mr P and I were standing on our tiny bedroom balcony waiting for the National Day rehearsal military planes to fly past. We got bored and looked down, studying the construction site below instead. When we looked up again, the blue sky had already been crossed with these streaks of white, marking the passage of those planes that we were waiting for.

“They went past? I thought we would hear them. They usually are very loud, aren’t they?”

“Dear, they are military planes. They have a stealth mode. You can hear them on National Day because they made them loud deliberately.”

Ooops.

Anyway, if you look real carefully in one of the corners, you can see a tiny sliver of the moon.

Weekly phoneography: Triple exposure urban landscape

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?

Weekly Phoneography: Population

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
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.

Phoneography Weekly: The light in dining halls


Not the smartest advertising around but this will have to do :P Just a quick banner pointing to the Phoneography Monday Challenge since this post below is my late submission for it :P




Chandeliers in Formal Dining Space


Hanging Lights in Casual Dining Space

We were at Tim Palace (pictures #1-#3) for Fathers’ Day lunch.

The colour laser lights dancing on the chandeliers made them flash and sparkle above where we were sitting. It was interesting how different they look closeup from the bottom up (#1-#2) compared to the long shot (#3) of the dining space at the other end of the room from where I was sitting. Over there, the main light source was from the large screen display and the curved floor-to-ceiling windows since it was mid-day. The light and sound crew were setting up for a formal dinner later in the evening. There were security scanners being set up outside, which according to our uncle meant that either or both of the two key figures in our country will be attending the dinner that night.

On a different day, I took a more casual snapshot (from the moving escalator at the basement) of the organic cafe called Real Food where I had lunch. One sees straight lines at first, but notice the curved wash of light from the lamps that mirror the darker curved design in the flooring.

I didn’t plan it but once I had all the pictures in one post, I thought the way the pictures were taken were pretty reflective of the formal and casualness of each of the different dining experience:

Formal Dining  Casual Dining
> bottom up > top down
> details > general long shot
> planned shots > shot from moving escalator
> more time to be trigger happy > 1 hasty shot

Chandeliers in Formal Dining Space
Location:  Tim Palace, Toa Payoh Safra Club
Picture #1, #2 – App: Camera+, Ansel filter
Picture #3 – App: Snapseed, Black and White filter, Center focus (vignette)

Hanging Lights in Casual Dining Space
Location: Real Food, Novena Sqaure 2
Picture #4 – App: Snapseed, Black and White filter, Center focus (vignette)

My last entry for Black and White Phoneography Monday explored light reflection, light and shadow in the interior of a mall called iVillage. I seem to like to picture interiors in black and white.

Page 4 of 4

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén