more photos lagi - the king's joint

These shots are from the Summer Palace of King Rama IV at the Phra Nakhon Khini National Park. Built in 1860, it was named Phra Nakhon Khiri Palace. It consist of roayl halls, temples and othe buildings, constructed in mostly of harmoniously Thai, Weatern Neoclassical and Chinese architectural styles.

This is a shot of a portion of the roof on one of a temple. The challenge of this shot is that the temple area consist of a few structure tightly packed together in a small compound. Therefore getting a clean (no cluttered background) of the temple will be near impossible. Most importantly, the idea here is to capture the intricate details of the design instead of mashing everythin into one shot. So i selectively picked a a corner of the roof and placed that against the sky. The ironic thing is that the spot where i took this shot is actually the same level of this roof. (the structures were so packed that i was at an adjacent building when i took this shot). But i still bent down to shoot at an angle up. Why? Well, the points of the roofs in the Thai architecture seems to be pointing heavenwards (up) and i wanna project the impression through this shot. I also limited the amount of the roof captured, instead, placed a lot of sky for 2 main reasons: 1. This will keep the shot clean. Sometimes too much details will make the shot too busy and make the viewer lose his/her attention. 2. also, by putting more sky, it accentuated the point i am making about the tips of the roof pointing heavenwards. I like this shot for it's balance of simplicity and amount of details shown. Probably going to be my money shot.

This is another shot of the same temple (another portion of the roof). As you can see, i have included more details and less sky in this shot. In this shot, Obviously i try to capture the details of the roof. Unlike shot 1, the angle is parallel to the roof and i use the 45mm (planar) lens to keep the perspective correct. I like this shot for the symetrical angles the roof is lined up. This works well with the contrast created by the intricate detailed patterns on the ridges. (I think by now one would have guess that i am big on contrasts!). I also loved the fact that the details in the shadow area are captured in detail (much thanks to zeiss). But if i can be truly frank with myself, i think this is just a so so shot. The main reason being is that other than capturing the roof details, there is nothing much else. As compared to shot 1 it does not tells the story that i want to project well. The roof details portion is begining to overwhelm the shot and there is nothing much in the sky to warrant the space spent. Besides, there is a small dark spot on the bottom left of the shot that although does not spoils the shot much, does not really contribute to the shot. Good shot but did not do much in telling story.

This is a simple shot of the Stupa at the same compound. I won't make excuses but the color from the scan did not do justice to the shot. I loved this shot for the fact that the red tones really contrast well against the sky. Another fact is that i liked the texture of the surface of the stupa. The roughness really contrasted well against the creamy blue sky. OK, but not going to be my money shot.



I like this shot because of the way the light reflected against the surface of the arches. It just oozes out details but on the other hand is clean and simple. How can that be? Detail and yet simple? Well, the shot in itself is simple and clean, but the details of the arch surface is captured well. (again thanks to Zeiss) I like arches because they represent strength, but on the other hand are curvy, which provide the nice contrast. I shot this from a low angle with a wide lens (28 biogon). I like this lens as the level of it's distortion is really beautiful and its front to back sharpness among other things. But, other than the fact that this is a nice shot of an arch, there is not much that it does to document Thai architecture. Money shot?... Maybe, but in terms of telling a story, probably not...

more photos again this tme river kwai

Here are my intepretation of the bridge over river kwai.
For this shot, i tried to project strength. As with structures, my inclination was to project strength. to do so, i went low, in fact almost to the water line and shoot with a wide angle looking up. This will make the subject looks dominant and strong. Another reason for me doing so (shoot wide and low) is to put a little bit of blue in the sky. It was noon time and the sun was too bright, so shooting at angle will force some blue out of it. I like this shot because it managed to show the strength portion of the bridge (pillar). Unfortunately, the story of this bridge is not of strength. It was destroyed by the first ever version of the guided (through remote control by an operator)bomb developed by the good old US. Besides the angle of the shot compressed the bridge so much that not much of it is seen.

In this shot i tried show more of the bridge, I moved up a bit and used a longer focal length reduce the perspective distortion. Unfortunately it turns out to be a so so shot. Sky is not blue enough and left a blank wasted area. The ripples in the water also did not do much to improve the shot. It is neither too wavy nor too calm. In fact it sort of made the bridge looks weak, the reflection of the bridge in the wavy water gives the sense of movement. That is not good for shots of structures.


In this shot i shot the bridge from another angle. In this case i kinda did a combination of shot 1 and 2. Wide angle but higher elevation. The result is that the strength portion is still evident while a bit more of the bridge is shown (compared to shot 1). Water is calm enough to get an almost perfect reflection of the bridge. The problem i see with this bridge is that it is shot from a side that might not be too familiar. Background: to get to the bridge, tourists will come from the left side of the bridge and their first sight of the bridge will be from the angle where shot 1 or 2 was taken. Shooting a familiar structure from a different side might confuse the viewer and the impact of the shot will be lost.


This is a standard cover shot for the location. I shot this with a wide angle immediately after i board the train. Wide andle to ensure that i really get the window to frame the signboard. Most of the times signboards are not much in terms of significance, but as this place is of some significance, this shot kinda did a summary of the area. For this shot i also tried to do something about 'showing what is not shown'. When one speak of the River Kwai, different viewers will have different projections (imaginations) of the place. Putting just the signboard leaves the viewer to their imaginationand their own projections. I also deliberately framed the signpost with the window (plus the head) and metered on the brightest area to ensure that the window is darkened (300D no spot metering mah). The reason i darkened the window and head is to accentuate the intepretation of the place. For those in the know the place has a history. Having the signboard 'surrounded' by this dark area sort of projected the idea of htere is something more to this place than just a name (it's history). I was lucky enough to have a person sitting right smack at the edge of the window. Having his head here puts a human feel to it. History after all is about people and their actions. Without the head, the whole shot will be too cold. This shot might just cut it for me....

more photos, this time from a temple

here are some pics of the stupa from Wat Wangwiwekarram.these are 4 shots of the stupa. I1 was around noontime and technically it is near impossible to get good exposure (coupled with the fact that the stupa is painted in gold. But that did not stopped me and chien (another photog from photomalaysia.com) from shooting. I have included some brief comments on the technicalities of the shots.

the first shot is the stupa taked with a ultrawide angle directly at the corner. I was trying to achieve the effect of putting the subject right smack in your face. In a sense to show the massiveness of the structure and inject some element of power in it.

the second shot is more of my standard shot of structure against the sky. i tend to have an afinity to shoot with the structure pointed offcenter to project the impression of strength and power. Somehow it feels like the structure is putting a foot on you and looking down at you. i find that a very intimidating pose and that helps in infusing the power element into it.somehow i find it hard to inject the power element if i were to shoot it directly under the structure and have it pointed straight up. My other reason for shooting at an angle is to maximise the blueness of the sky. Some test shots of shooting directly up (even with F22) aperature did not resulted in blue enough sky.


For the 3rd shot, i tried to put into perspective the size of the stupa. Obviously i exaggerated it by a bit but it makes an interesting perspective. The timing was also made to position Mrs Chien at the corner. This is done to as to put a subject into the shot. My logic is this. the natural lines of the stupa in this shot seem to point to one spot where she is standing. Having her there serves 2 purpose. 1. as mentioned earlier, putting a subject to the shot and 2. to put a perspective of the size of the stupa. Having a human figure there makes the audience get a picture of the comparative size of the object.



4th shot are some closeup. actually they are not really closeup. Ther are 'harvested' from a wider shot. when i was sorting out the shots i noticed that i have missed out on one very important aspect of the stupa. within the cavities, there are small buddha statues. I have totally missed out on the close up shots. This shot is just to illustrate the detail portion of the structure. All too often we get hung up on the size and the massiveness of the strycture and go for the widest angle lens to capture everything, but one must not forget that there are little gems to be had if one were to zoom in closer for the details. that is definately one lesson that i will remember for the next shoot.



The ironic thing about photography is that never underestimate yourself and a photo opportunity when you see one. When we got to this place, the lighting was absolutely horrendous. Another thing was that the first level of the wat was totally covered and if one did not go up to the higher level one would not have known the magnificent stupa is there. These 3 shots are from my intial wanderings around the first level.The first level was actuallycovered with zinc roof. To let light in , certain parts of the roof was coveret with the translucent sheet.I guess as time goes by, the translucent tiles start to lose color and resultes in a greenish tint. I find the pattern very intriguing as it is not typical of Thai Wats. looks more like Hindu temple kind of design.

For this shot i tried to capitalize on the lighting created by the roof. The greenish tint of light actually did not do a good job in hilighting the patterns around the 1st level. This is because the patterns are painted in bright red and yellow. Anyway in any case, i tried to tackle this shot by going for a more conservative focal length (~30 mm) on same level instead of wide from a dramatic angle. The reason is that i wanna reduce the distortion on the intricate patterns. Distortion ould have killed the nbeauty of the patterns. On the other hand i did not go to too long mainly because i do not want to flatten the pattern, but most importantly i wannt capture the light from the roof. I really like this shot mainly because the darkness and greenish tint evokes a feeling of coolness and quietness (which is the feeling that i had when i was there) but the coolness was contrasted by the bright red and yellow pattern. The yellow and red pattern sort of evoke a feeling of heat that is deep inside. sort of like a slow burning fire that is deep seeded somewhere inside. In a way it kind of represent my intrepetation of the food and culture in Thailand, very cool, calm and soothing, but when you go deeper you will see the firey hot spirit.(akin to their food)



This is a shot that i myseld am still struggling if i should like it or not. what i did was to try to frame the stupa outside with the window. I also used the rows of pillars to lead the viewer's attention to the window. What i tried to do was to try to evoke the sense of religious / cultural identity. there is also a play of contrast at work here. Cool inside (dark/greenish) and hot (bright/yellow) outside, Stupa (Thai Buddhist influence) and Pillars (Hindu influence). Actually i took 2 shots. one with the human figure and one without. I chose the one with the figure to inject some human feel to the geometric shapes. In the end i am torn on this. still have not decided if it worked or not.



This is another part of the hallway. very similar to the pattern in pohoto. but this one has a small cup on it. For this shot i went closer and shot, then photoshopped it to increase the contrast and convert to BW using channel mixer. Why this shot work for me? the inclusion of the cup as a focal point. sometimes when I engcounter beautiful patterns, i am at odds as to how to capture them. Sometimes too much pattern becomes noise and screws up the shot. The cup seres ad a focak point for the viewer to focus on, instead of getting lost in the patterns. But why BW? i think just for the heck of it. The lighting is good for BW, so why not. should have shot it using my contax though.... so, in all these 3 shot are mostly reminds me of contrast. It is really hard fopr me to explain, but you have just got to be there to know how i feel. On one hand it is a hot day outside, but it is really cool at that first level. what initially thought wwas a bust for photography turned out to be a good yeilding trip. not to mention a Hindu influenced Wat!




Here are are two shots from outside the Wat. These are taken with slides.

this is the head of one of the two large statue outside the wat. The interesting thing here is that the statues are actually quite big (abt 2 -3 storeys high). They are uite magnificent actually, but to go for a wide angle and capture the whole statue will only make the shot lost. I think it's a case of not putting everything into one shot and confusing the viewer with all the details. So i chose to just to capture the head and limit the details shown. this keeps the shot simple and not so confusing to the viewer.



Shot 2&3. This is a shot of the roof of an altar outside of the temple. Again the same concept of limiting the details is employed. But i am torn between keeping it as a colored shot or a BW shot. In color (Shot 2) i like the way the red and yellow contrast with the blue sky. Unfortunately, the scanned result has a slightly different tint and the contrast seems to have wear off a bit.In the BW shot (actually the same shot as shot 2 converted with channel mixer) (shot 3), i think it works better for me as the shot looks cleaner and not as confusing. Your thoughts? Shot 2 or shot 3?

another excellent trip

this year's chinese new year mr and mrs webster decided to save some ditch the idea of giving out ang powa and use the money instead to go makan angin to thailand. So on the wee hours of the 2nd day of CNY we sneaked out of the house at 6am and drove off to meet the rest of the fellas.
We covered the Kanchanaburi and the death railway + bridge over river kwai
I will show you some of the photos here and this first instalment is is from the 'death train' on the original track.

this is one where we were crossing the famous bridge and evere were looking out of the window, waving at the tourist etc. i noticed the girl in the center not joining in the activities. Probably the 2 hour ride wore her out.

this is a standard person looking out the window as it zip through the landscape

I was sittong on the steps between the carriages for most of the way and saw this guy. he seem to be thinking about something and were detached from the the environment. I waited for his to be positioned this way to enforce the sense that the world is only seeing half of what he is thinking and the half is being hidden.

This little kid was sitting a few rows in front of me and was looking out of the window. everyting o tried to shoot , he will hide until we reach one of the stations, and i smiled and make faces at him. only then that he did not hide when i shot. i like this shot because his eyes are so pure.

of course the standard wheel contacting the rail shot. don't ask me how i got it.

that's enough for now. will upload more later.

additional entry

i don't like to edit the content of posts so instead of editing my previous post, i will just put a new entry. (it also serve the purpose of self-bragging that i have posted so and so much of entries in my blog)

additional post.
Today will also be the day where husbands go scrambling the whole day calling florist after florist and gife shops after another looking for something to give to their wife just because they detected something like a hint from their wife the morning that she is expecting something. Then only to end up with buying some inane object from the hardware shop and passing it (and heavily justifying) as a gift of affection to their wife. Those multitasking ones will also go through the same process of calling from one restaurant to another which will only end up buying something from the hawker on the way home from the office and then try to pretty it up at home as a 'cooked-with-my-own-effort-just-for-you' dinner.

Tonight, the very same husbands will watch a lot of TV because the couch is too uncomfortable to sleep in...

today...

Feeling a bit lazy to post things these days but today have to force myself to do it. Reason: today is a very interesting day mah.
Today is the famous February the 14th.

1. today is last day for guys to assess if their investment is spending huge amount of money for ridiculously expensive flowers will return in them getting laid by the end of the night. If the assessment of the chances is low, today will be the last day to call the florist and cancel that order and save some money.

2. today will be the day when imagination of couples will be put to the test. Couples will be stuffed into packed (for maximum business returns) dimly lit restaurants and served the standard cookie cut meals to order with cheesy romance themed food. The imagination part comes in when they have to try to imagine and try to be romantic amisdst all that.

3. today will also be the night where the girls will make note of all the effort the guy has put into to woo her. How much he spent on dinner, weather he opened the car door, what car he came in, what restaurant they go to and that sort of thing. And mind you, if the restaurant they go to is some artsy fartsy foreign sounding name, the girl will need to find a way to learn how to pronounce it properly. (lest they be laughed at when they mention it tomorrow) Nothing will be missed out so that tomorrow they can ‘chat’ about it to her girl friends during breakfast at the office.

4. today will also be the last day for the ladies to decide if they need to turn to the emergency plan of calling the florist and sending flowers to themselves. Not because they love themselves, but to show to the office jokers that she still have it.

5. today will also be the day the guys will take a double dose of the v pill or whatever cocktail of their choice just to make sure that the flag has a pole to raise with. Knowing the side effects of some of those stuff, tonight will be the night where they will end up either ‘going for a round the world trip’ or a trip in the ambulance or a trip just to the front door of her house.

6. today will be the day when guys and girls evaluate their lives and what went wrong. Among other topics that they will ponder of are, what they hell are they doing in their 30s and why are they still not able to get a shag. From any person (gender, race or creed) for that matter.

7. today will be the day most hormone overload (or publicity deprived) joker will pull ridiculously insane stunts to show off to their girl in the hopes of getting laid in the near future (hopefully within the 24 hours of the stunt).

8. today, guys will consider if they need to engage a lawyer, just in case they need to sue their date for the money they spend on the condom that they did not get to use. Interestingly today will also be the day the girls also will consider engaging a lawyer just in case they need to sue their date for damages in case they did not get to get laid properly.

9. today will also be the day when some couples go somewhere private and quiet, have a good time together and maybe end the night making sweet love (instead of getting laid)

so, therefore today is an important date.
btw, today is also Valentine's day. that one day where the gifts and hospitality industry encourages you to Spend! Spend! Spend!

...

someone sent me this...


"Conclusive proof that global warming is a fact ..."

never thought that i would say it, but i sure hope the globe gets warmer.

some random thoughts

being the narcisist that i am, i came in to check on my own blog today. lo and behold there is one comment. What do you know? i have a reader and mind you a reader who comments? (adakah ini suatu petanda besar Kiamat!!!)

But what am i doing here. I got people so i should be welcoming them. Have some tea or something. Who knows they might increase and grow into a fan club and sooner than i know it will grow into a frenzy of girls gone wild and throw their pakaian dalam at me.

in order to keep the blog moving, i think i better post something. so, here are some random thoughts.

you know that you are no longer in penang when you walk into a shopping mall and see a 18 year old with a hair color that he/she was born with.

when the concord is flying at supersonic speeds, how does the stewardess asks if you want tea or coffee?

note to the ang mo kows who are new here: OUR CHICKEN HAVE BONES!!!

i wonder if humans can fart and burp at the same time

if everything tastes like chicken then what is chicken suppose to taste like?

never ever miss out on a chance to use the free toilets at the malls

what does a nudist porn magazine look like?

can a fish fart? for that matter, if you have been feeding your fish beans will it get gas and float up?


aiyoh... now i ended up with more questions than thoughts...
not i have to spend tonight thinking about it....