02 February 2009

この醜くも美しい世界 (Kono Minikuku mo Utsukushii Sekai)

This time round's blog entry is borrowed from an anime with the same name as title and is translated to "This Ugly Yet Beautiful World" in English. I'm not a fan of this animation but I just thought the things I wanted to pen in this entry were somewhat gross which happened recently and also add and share some pictures which I felt was pretty nice during the weekend. So please be forewarned that I bear no responsibilities should you continue to read the gross part of this posting. Of course, I'll try to put some visual warnings before you set eyes on them. And I thank all those who gave me feedbacks on the site - e.g font size too small. So yup, I am going to be lazy and use default size from now on.

Alright, first off, the nicer stuff! Of course, I don't want to put off my readers the very minute they read my post, because that would be bad for my site and publicity haha! To put things short and sweet, I took slightly over 300 pictures over a saturday which happen to be the last day of January this year too. Considering 300 isn't too much since most of the pictures were filtered (or deleted) even before I published them. Resulting to about 200 useable ones (far from a "productive" photographer...). Obviously, I am not going to put all those up here for you to waste the whole day loading thumbnails of the pics, therefore I will just put some of those few which I felt were above average for my readers. For better coverage, you can see the (smaller) pictures from my facebook albums "All within a day Pt x: PQRSTUVWXYZ". There are 4 parts (albums) to the pictures I have posted/shot that day.

Pt 1 started off with my Uni-study group gathering @ Toh's house. Nothing major to highlight except almost everyone is just as restless about the bad economy and their job security. So we talked about life and caught up with one another over lunch, despite many others did not turn up for one reason or another - maybe their job depended on it. :P Oh yea, Toh cooked some dishes for us too - well pretty alright considering he don't cook on a regular basis. And so, I took the opportunity to snap some pictures of the guys (since EEE is such a GUY-cohort). Ended off with taking 1 candid and some serious group pictures. Well, since all are guys, guess not much people would want to see it, hence I shall save the space to upload other pictures instead. Oh yea Toh, thanks for the invite! :)

As I had to make my way to meet KL and Alex for the "Little Nonya Thank You Road Show" @Suntec, I left Toh's place and reached the event ground at about 3pm. Goodness sake, despite such road shows have heavily been abused, there are still a crazy bunch of crowd. Heck, I don't even watch TV these days (let alone to watch SG's chinese serial - *puke*), I was there merely to see Olivia perform. Nothing much to highlight, just post a picture or two of Olivia and cast of Little Nonya. After the shoot, we + Boon headed off to check out "Punisher: War Zone". Senseless violence and unnecessary gore I say.

Olivia Ong

Cast of Little Nonya & Olivia with fans


Part 3 started after we had dinner and strolled down Marina Square to catch Chingay performances. Unfortunately, in the course of heading towards the performance, the crowd sorta decided to head into River Ang Bao and take some pictures instead and so we diverted towards the Bay Grandstand and Floating Platform where the decorations were at. Nothing really eye catching this year - recycled God of Fortune... Just gonna post some pictures which I like a bit more.

'Niu'Red Lanterns
'Zhuan'God of Fortune
'Qian'
'Kun'
Guan Yu'Gan!'

Just when we were about done shooting the Chinese New Year decorations, we headed back towards Marina Square and see the Chingay coming to an end. So we camped by the side of the road and snapped the last of the enthusiastic performers. Fortunately, they were drawn towards us and we were able to snap some pictures. But alas, I was using my telephoto lens and was only able to 'see so much' when they come near towards us >_<; Some better pictures below for your viewing pleasure. Really loved the closed up portrait shots of the werewolves. Apparently, they were the best of my shots for the short Chingay performers shoot we had.









It's late, I shall continue the 'ugly side' another time... >To Be Continued...<

5 comments:

  1. I really like both the lantern pictures. (Actually, I'm not too sure if the 4th picture on the right column are lanterns but I'll just think they are). I really like how the colorful tiny lights appear in the background subtly behind the bright lanterns.

    Gosh... I didn't even know there was Chingay at all. Great pictures anyway. :)

    - clap

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  2. Thanks clap, I'm glad you liked them too~ I'd appreciate your inputs on what you don't like on the other pictures as well. I know all these likes/dislikes are a matter of personal preferences, but I believe feedbacks are important such that an opinion may open the whole new world to me, a new paradigm for me to shoot and experience -in future.

    Many thanks for spending time (loading and) looking at the pics.

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  3. I personally do not like some but I can't really put them together as they're just individual photos. Eg. The half body photo of the wolf-man, the 4 girls in the golden dress and the chinese character ones. :)

    The chinese characters do not really bring out any feeling to me; they're just big words lighted up. ^^; The others are the way the photo is being composed but it's just my personal preference. ^^

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  4. Wow I think I just saw a half-nekkid werewolf! lol

    Hey ben... I mean shutterciser... have you tried Photosynth or SeaDragon/PhotoZoom yet? I think you might find them useful (especially the Deep Zoom function) since you snap in the hundreds.

    http://livelabs.com/photosynth/
    http://livelabs.com/seadragon-ajax/embed-viewer/

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  5. Thanks clap & ion, I'll review your inputs and check those recommendations out. :)

    ReplyDelete