days of otaku-ness » Photography

Revisiting my hometown’s treasures

ronnie — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:18:39 +0000

It has been more than a decade since my last visit to these local attractions. As a local boy there, there is no reason walking into temples and caves once every week like a shopping mall unless I have a reason to. This holiday, I had one; showing my girlfriend around especially Sam Poh Tong and Kek Lok Tong caves. My home town is surrounded by limestone mountains and these historic hot spots is a must, aside from gorging good food (another top ‘attraction’) from the local eateries.

The trip to Ipoh was a short one so I decided not to carry my heavy DSLR along. The shots I took was from the Samsung Galaxy S2′s camera. It does take pretty shots IMHO.

Timelapse in a residential kitchen

ronnie — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:00:34 +0000

Another experiment on the timelapse and the photoshoot was done at my colleague’s kitchen. This time, it’s rendered under 24 frames per second hence the motion is smoother.

Post production for the photos are edited in Adobe Photoshop CS4 under video mode. I didn’t have Adobe Premiere but the Photoshop CS4 seems to support timelapse and able to perform simple video editing. Final product is rendered with VirtualDub with Xvid compression. Motion blur is added post production. I have yet to full grasp the concepts to perform the perfect motion blur. Let’s hope I can make it happen on the next timelapse photoshoot

Preparing for wedding photography

ronnie — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:54:47 +0000

I’m going to take a short break in the mid December for two weeks. It’s the time of the season to relax, visit family and get together with mate. While I’m at it, I’ve been invited to attend two weddings of my school/college chums. And that’s not all; I was requested to be their photographer of the day (not the official one, thank goodness).

Since this is my first time, I hope I live up to their expectations. Okay okay, I lied. It’s not my first time; I did a very short stint for a mate of mine and it was not professional at all. It was s**t. Zero substance. Of course that was two years ago; I should have learned my lessons, identified my lackings and improved a little by now. We’ll see how it turns out then. ; )

The egg with a smiley face

ronnie — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 22:17:23 +0000

I’ve seen a fair few of branding on eggs but during my photoshoot at a commercial kitchen last week, I found some with a happy face on it. After staring at the adorable smiling oval little fella, you don’t feel like breaking them up huh?

P.S Of course the chef we worked with didn’t share the same sentiment and turned them into a cake.

Office 360 degrees panoramic view

ronnie — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:11:17 +0000

Another experiment for the day. And today’s experiment is a 360 degrees panoramic view of my office with my mobile phone. I was thinking to use this idea as a template material for my organisation’s upcoming content development. Or perhaps a virtual tour video.

I used my Samsung Galaxy S2 camera and took a 360 degrees of snapshots of my office.
Stitch them together with Photoshop using Photomerge automation.
Created a Quicktime VR video with Pano2QTVR

The video below requires Quicktime player plugin and it’s about 5MB so be patient.

Panorama shots in Mornington Peninsula

ronnie — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 11:20:06 +0000

I went to Mornington Peninsula for a holiday last weekend with an old Scoopon voucher that I purchased last year. The short trip was good; calm weather and pretty sunny day. I also had a chance to experiment around with some panoramic shots there. The weather was a little gloomy so the shots didn’t really turn out the way I wanted

p.s. Flickr resizes all my shots to fit a 1024 resolution since I’m using the standard free account.

Timelapse in a commercial kitchen

ronnie — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:06:53 +0000

I was lucky to have a photoshoot offsite and to continue my experiments with timelapse. This time it’s a commercial kitchen.

This is also my first time mucking around with panning a timelapse shot. It was awful; my timing is so off and my cheapo tripod is clunky hence the not-so-smooth panning.

Timelapse in green screen photography

ronnie — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 23:13:39 +0000

My second attempt on timelapse

Street photography lessons for cowards

ronnie — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 03:30:21 +0000

Ah this is what I need! Street photography guide for cowards [Link]

Street photography – the first attempt

ronnie — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 23:43:01 +0000

Inspired from the street photography videos (this and this), I wanted to try it out myself. So on a sunny Saturday, I headed for a Mid-Autumn Festival at Box Hill to give it a go.

I think I am too timid to take the shots head on and I wasn’t too invasive enough (not that I want to jump in suddenly like a dodgy person, take a photo and run away) to capture their unprepared reaction. Hopefully I can hone my skills more in this method of photography.

Late night work photoshoot = edgy mind

ronnie — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 01:02:35 +0000

Had a offsite photoshoot till 10pm yesterday. When you get too tired of it, you’d start thinking something else besides work.

FPS gamer + photography + tiring day = pyscho mode

Why food photography is sooooo rewarding

ronnie — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 04:12:42 +0000

…because I get to eat the cooked food and keep the rest! Muahaha

Well, at the same I learnt some cooking skills (and secrets!) from the chefs

A Sleepy Friday

ronnie — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 05:18:00 +0000

Taking stock photos is part of my job and sometimes it is fun. This time it’s an offsite photoshoot in a kitchen, courtesy of a colleague of mine. While my team is preparing themselves with the recipes and procedures, I took some shots of Raz, my colleague’s quiet pet dog, which is obviously patiently waiting for free treats from our leftovers. And yes, she got her munchies alright.

DSLR tethering with Nikon D90

ronnie — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 01:49:32 +0000

(Pardon my shot. My Motorola Milestone camera is not something worthy to brag about)

It’s pretty frustrating especially for a newbie like me who do not know how to judge a picture preview via the camera LCD or reading the histogram. So I always ended up realising of bad photo capturing only when I got home, copied to my desktop and viewed on a computer monitor. Precious moments are wasted and there’s nothing I can do.

There is no way a poor employee like me (sad cue coming in…) to afford software like Nikon Camera Control Pro or Mac Aperture 3 to manage my photos live in real time. Like the saying goes, “When there’s a will, there’s a way” and with much perseverence, I found some nifty applications/workaround for free. DIYPhotoBits has provided a script that lets you tether the DSLR with the laptop via USB cable on Windows. Now I can easily preview my images on a larger screen instead of the camera LCD and manage my shots. And yes, Mac has an application for tethering too; Sofortbild.

And oooh, I’m so tempted to tether my DSLR with the iPad via this method but it will cost a bit of investment in both hardware and software. More fun times ahead

A noob timelapse

ronnie — Tue, 24 May 2011 07:18:46 +0000

My first attempt to make a timelapse video; A simple 2 hours 30-second interval shots from an office window.

Made a few mistakes when I was making this time lapse. Firstly, I forgot to turn my white balance auto mode off. Secondly, I didn’t check where the sun is coming hence I had to stop when the glare was about to hit right in the centre of the shot. And lastly, I forgot to set the video frames from 10fps to 24fps. Anyways, a good try. Let’s hope I make a better one next time.

Offsite Photoshoot @ Holmesglen TAFE

ronnie — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 21:39:58 +0000

As the official photographer for the company, I am obliged tol answer any requests from the higher ups, should it be inhouse or offsite jobs. Today marks the last offsite video and photoshoot for this year and today it is my third visit at Holmesglen TAFE. Our subject is the process of making pastries. What sort of pastry, I do not know; me ain’t privy to such information. All I need to do is to show up and shoot on the fly.

Now I’m waiting for the rest of the crew and the chef himself to arrive. Guess I’m a little too early.

Super Spy Lense

ronnie — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:43:52 +0000

Why am I so tempted to buy this? *Thinking all potential sinister shots*

(Source)

Looking at nature through the magnifying glass

ronnie — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 23:02:07 +0000

Waiting for Spring to come

ronnie — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:02:08 +0000

Stepping into the Autumn

ronnie — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:04:20 +0000