The Day The Earth Stood Still

Our friends always recommended us to go to Château de Versailles, Paris on a sunny day with blue sky. We waited & left with no choice but going to the place on the last day in Paris.

Anyway, with this photo, I can't tell which weather is better :)

Q: Did you forget to run noise reduction on this photo?
A: Hmm..., I didn't :)

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Mannheim, Germany

I went to Mannheim on the second weekend of my staying in Germany. A friend told me: Sunday here is for staying home with your family, praying, having rest or doing laundry... No shop is opened, not like in Singapore.

These photos help remind me of the silence, the emptiness and the peaceful scenes of the city on Sunday when I visited...

Big thank to my friend, Vinh - a Mannheimer, who helped show me around the city!

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Heidelberg, Germany

I like Heidelberg a lot. Aside from the old European buildings & streets, I still can recall the peaceful breeze at the river where the artist played his guitar, the houses with flowers on their balcony, the blue sky and the warm sunlight reflected from the old castle...

... going to Heidelberg Castle

... going to the river to watch this beautiful sunset

... and walking along the streets to the metro

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1st day in Paris

The train from Frankfurt arrived Paris at 4:30pm.

On my first day here, my friend (Duc) planned to give me a tour around Paris by asking me to join his friend's wedding photo session. It couldn't be any better, right? :D

We walked along River Seine, to the French version of the Statue of Liberty. At this late hour, the sky turned dark pretty fast while the available light from the street lamps was not really nice too. Not only I had to act fast to catch the blue sky, but it was also hard to ask the new couple to wait 15' just for your lighting setup and testing. So, I went with FL-50R triggered by camera's built-in flash, just hard light with double CTO...

The bride is Hien & the groom is Fred. Good luck & wish you two happiness, my friends :)

And this ended my first day in Paris, perfectly.

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Street photography

The definition of street photography is quite arguable among photographers. To me, a photo should be taken on the street & does not involve any arrangement of the photographer at the time of shooting to be considered in this category. Because of this nature, street photos are often taken with natural light... Nevertheless, you still can set up lighting on the street, wait for the scene to happen and take a shot (hmm, but be aware of people's reactions afterward :D). Also, there is a thin line between street and candid photography, but I guess the latter is more towards portraiture category. What do you think?

Aside from this discussion, here are some of my favorite shots recently

(@Frankfurt - Germany)

(Heidelberg - Germany)

To end this topic, I would recommend you to read this interview of 'Memetic', one of my favorite photographer. I agree with many of his points, especially this

I : Photography is a pretext to…

Contemplation. I’ve found that, since putting a camera in my hand, I’ve noticed more of the world around me even when I’m not carrying a camera. It could be simply looking up at what’s above me or constructing stories out of the scenes I see on the street.

There is something else also. I think photography helps me learn more about myself. I think, as people, we spend our lives wrestling with our own mortality. Photography is, to me, much for the same reason we have children, giving birth to something that will live longer than ourselves. Every photo I take has a personal piece of me in it. I could even say I think of every photograph as a self-portrait in its own way. Photography freezes those moments forever, immortalising not just the subject, but the photographer also.

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Our pre-wedding photos

It is certainly a good way to start our photo-blog with some wedding photos taken by ourselves :)

It was a fun and tired afternoon with beautiful sky & the sun high above. Two bare flashes on one lightstand to get the power that we need. My shoot-through umbrella was actually broken when falling down because of the wind. Ants were all over the grasses & trees. After many trials, here are what we got

Hmm, you can either be a perfect groom, aka model, or a photographer, but hardly be both. Here is the rare shot of her that I got during a photo session with our friends, our official wedding photographers :)

The photos below were taken around 11-12pm at our house. We decided to get this studio shots at 9pm. She made up, I set up lighting and camera on tripod. Then we fought for a while. Here are the results :)

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