Marina Barrage, Singapore

We decided to go to Marina Barrage for a walk after a long holiday of much good food and no exercise. As it was meant to be casual and just for fun, we only brought our Canon 40D + 17-55mm f2.8 just in case something nice caught our eyes.

I'm not sure it was because of the scenery there or because I was so relaxed that I ended up taking quite a lot of photos that evening.

Anyway, it was amazing to see how the whole scene was totally transformed in just half an hour. Couldn't ask for more!

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The lock of love

We were surprised to see these padlocks for the first time in Ponte Vecchio, Florence. It turned out this tradition of affixing padlocks to symbolize love had been pretty popular all over the world.

There were a whole lot of different locks: big, small, tiny, huge with all kinds of message in all kinds of languages. Somehow I thought the lock reflected how one thought about their love or the unbreakable bond holding two people together. Or in other unromantic words, maybe how strong you want to lock the other person with you.

If you think about it, how would your love look like?

Is it fancy...

or colorful...

or romantic...

or simply 'hardened solid steel'?

In any case, it doesn't really matter how it looks like as long as it suits you and your other half. It shouldn't matter how other people say love should be.

Wish everyone will find their love, hold on to it and be happy always.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Admiré

In a darkened room

(Olympus E520, Zuiko 12-60mm. Self-timer)

The lighting is quite obvious: one FL50R on 60x60 (cm) softbox on cam-left, 1/16 power @ 12mm zoom. FL36R on cam-lelf, below, 1/32 power @ 42mm. Only directions of light matter here, to control the position of the shadow & the gradient in the background. Took me less than one hour of shooting.

The blue is created by setting the camera's color balance to 2300K. Quick post-processing since the RAW is pretty much what I want. By the way, this looks much better in AdobeRGB on my monitor. First time I see the colors change drastically when converting from AdobeRGB to sRGB profile for Web publishing. But no choice :(

Forgot to say, please take your time to view this photo in large (1600x600). Recommended :)!

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Having fun

The final photo is a lot different from my initial idea which was a scary/horror scene. Simply because I can't hide under the table as expected. So I switch to this fun idea (hah, my wife is not at home, coincidentally).

(Olympus E520, Zuiko 12-60mm. Self-timer)

The lighting is pretty simple. One light (FL-36R) behind the monitor, CTB, at full power. One light (FL-50R) on camera-left, snoot tight, CTO, at 1/8 power.

It took me one and a half hour (11pm to 0h30) for shooting. Couple of hours to process, mainly for cloning "unwanted items". Big lesson: you'd better get it right in-camera, especially the props, or wasting your time fixing it later.

Sometimes, it's just for fun & that's enough!

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Through the bus's window

It was raining heavily outside.

My favorite part when sitting on a bus under this weather is to look out through the window. I see blurred images passing by, or raindrops rolling - leaving random traces on the window's glass. Things happen subtly and everyone follow their own thoughts...

For this moody scene, simplicity works best...

(Olympus E520, Zuiko 12-60mm, manual focus)

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