As of last week, I’ve started a smallish project called A Shot A Day, where I’ll be attempting my very best (fingers crossed) to take a couple of good shots everyday, from the time where I work commuting to weekend traveling. One of many reasons I’ve decided to take up such a project is to push myself to do more photography on different angles instead of the same old style I’ve been sooooo comfortable with. With that I’ll learn more and face different challenges every now and then.

The projects rules are simple:

1. One shot a day for 365 days
2. Free for all methods: Indoor, outdoor, street photography, scenic, abstract, macro, portrait, wide,  etc.
3. Interchange randomly with my small collection of lenses weekly (Starting with my prime f1.8 50mm)
4. That’s it!

I know this is a late post, but I’ve started this project since 16th April 2012. Hope it all goes well for the next few months and onwards.

If you are curious of the daily outcome, you can follow me at Twitter @ronniechong or via hashtag #AShotADay (previously was #OneShotADay, so inconsistent I am)

I’ll try and setup a Flickr album on this too once I post process it via Lightroom.

Management sometimes thinks it’s an extra cost in the production budget but it won’t hurt if you invest a teeny weeny of time into it. Simple problems can be easily fixed  in a jiffy but horrible ones can bring down the image and reputation of an organisation. Or being made fun of.

A good example is this Target ad in facebook. At this point of blogging, they have yet to fix it. Can you spot the little hiccup?

No? Yes? The main male in the ad has three arms.

Well what can I say, I’m moving on to a new organisation. Today marks 5 years (ok ok ok, 4 years and 11 months) of giving away my blood and sweat into this e-learning education provider. If you peeps are reading this, you know it’s true.

It has been a great journey in retrospect; picking or taking over photography and other technical skills, diving into the world of education and e-learning. It was mind blowing and also challenging at times. The most satisfying thing was photography and I do not regret gaining so much insight of capturing these visual elements for an e-learning content. Lenses and gadgets that I could not imagine I have access to and the opportunities to go offsite photoshoot or in a green screen studio; it was very rewarding for personal development.

What about the education/e-learning? Totally engrossing. It was (and still is) a totally new world. I admit I was struggling to grasp the concept of producing multimedia content in the context of a learner, be it a young schooler or a senior individual. At the end of the day the process of producing a complete, universal and engaging learning material still eludes me. In short, an ongoing experience helps and I’m still learning as I’m counting my fifth summer.

So, where do I go from here? By next week, I’m jumping out of my comfort zone and deep into the aggressive world of digital agencies, fighting for customers’ satisfaction and meeting impossible timeframes. Ok, maybe I exaggerate a bit too much but the point is, I’ve not experienced any digital agency work life and like the saying goes, “there is always a first time”.

I’m an advocate of documentation and knowledgebase. To be honest, when I’m leaving this current organisation it is like I’m taking away the entire server with me and render partial of the organisation paralysed.  I have too many fingers in too many pies, metaphorically speaking. Of course I have ill intention of burning any bridges. I won’t lift my middle finger and walk out the door along with the knowledge. Having said that, for years I’ve been preparing for my organisation should this day would come. Documentations, documentations and more documentations. So much stuff, so little time.

Aaaannnyways, the final day is at hand. There’s a farewell party/lunch today with everyone. Plenty of opportunity to say my goodbyes and am looking forward to my new challenge.

Wish me luck!

[Official website]

Smartphone widget

They also created a moe version of her as a widget for smartphones and I tried it on my Android. Not sure about the iPhone and oh, it’s in Japanese but it’s a very simple RPG-ish widget. You train her archery skills, feed her with mochi and watch her gobble up the food. The app can be found in the Marketplace.

[More info]

Travelling the Great Ocean Road is not all about cruising along the coast. Some inland roads have remarkable attractions as well. This one is taken on a misty morning at Lavers Hill, the day we return back to Melbourne. It was a peaceful quiet morning and since there’s hardly any incoming cars, I stopped and took this shot with my mobile phone.

Took this shot when she’d just finished her dinner. I guess the pillow belongs to her… like, forever.

I’ve had a long weekend road trip to the Great Ocean Road last week. It was a blast and there is so much to blog about. The experience at the break & breakfast accommodation, timelapses  I played around, scenic photography and the long coastal drive at Great Ocean Road itself. With so much other stuff going on for the next couple of weeks, I’ll have to find some time to break these travelogue posts apart in the upcoming future. Stay tuned!

I usually don’t use iTunes as my choice of player unless I have to sync with an Apple product but I’m using it to listen to my internet radio while leaving the Visualiser on for fun.

This arvo I just noticed this. Is it me with a  twisted mind or we have a bunch of dancing sperms in iTune’s default Visualizer?

We get to choose our appetiser, main and dessert and I chose beef tataki for my appetiser. When the dish came and placed in front of me, I just can’t help laughing out loud when I saw the way they present my food. The first thing came into my mind was the egg (where the facehugger is born) from Aliens. The picture below says it all.

I wanted a speedometer mount for my bicycle but I am too cheapskate to buy an proper attachment and can’t be bothered to mount it up, so I went to eBay and bought a mobile phone mount for my Samsung Galaxy S2. After all, a smartphone can do more than just displaying me the speed stats. All I need now is an app and I found this nifty free app called MapMyRide. Not only it has all the basic speedometer and statistics tracking features, it also records my rides/journey/workouts using GPS. Arming with the app, I recorded my first 10 kilometres workout  Here’s my route info.

Of course with that punishing workout without warming up myself, my back hurts again. My physiotherapist is not going to please to hear about this, but it was worth it. : )

P.S Oh, one of its cool features is letting me to capture images with my mobile phone’s built in camera and uploaded along with my route info. But the shots are not rotated when they are shot in portrait mode.

What about prezzies? Nah, I’m way too old for that now. I buy my own present and it’s a bicycle.  The irony is, it was that same darn bike that aggravated my back in the first place when I tried to transport it back to my home. It was also one of my new year resolutions, to pick up cycling again after more than 15 years and go healthy. Now, the new shiny bike is sitting idly in my garage and I’m not in a position to ride it.  (-__-)”

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.

My god, I feel like I’m 70 years old now with a crooked back. Going to see a physiotherapy this arvo. Hope he’ll somehow ease up the muscle cramps/tensions so I can drive safely home and get myself a good night’s sleep.

Some of many reasons to do so:

• I can save up my annual leave for something else better since going out for holidays during these crazy peak seasons ain’t worth it.
• I can concentrate on my work without a hint of disturbance/ distraction from my fellow colleagues. Well if I’m really that good, I wouldn’t be blogging right now -___-”
• I own the office for a short time!
• I can blast my music loud and whenever I want.
• I can practically stripped naked and do silly walks in the office without anyone seeing me.

Okay, the last reason is just a figure of speech. Not that I actually did it.

Enough time wasted to think what to write next. Back to work.

I celebrated my New Year on a plane, returning from my two weeks holiday break. The year 2012 greeted me with a very hot summer. It has been high 30s for the past couple of days (yesterday was hitting 40) in Melbourne. My car was heated up like a microwave and the steering wheel is scorching hot. Not funny at all.

As it has been predicted by the ancient Mayans, 2012 is the year where the world is going end. Let’s see how it goes.

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

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. ; )

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.