Shirley and Ezone’s photoshoot
Managed to get this young cute couple to model for me just before they went back to Borneo. It was a bit hard to start off as always since I was at a loss of ideas. But once it got off things went a bit better.
Location of shoot: UPM Bukit Expo and Presint 2, Putrajaya.
Here are some of the photos:
Thanks again to Shirley and Ezone for helping me out with this 
A few more tips regarding photography
- Snap as much as you can
- Best lighting conditions are early in the morning or during the evening
- Starting is always hard but after a while it will become easier to conduct the shoot
- Allow the subject to do something with each other.
And with this shoot I’m hope I’m ready for my big assignment this Saturday.
Joanne and Leo’s photoshoot : Behind the scenes
Here’s a few photos to show what happened during the photo shoot the other day. Honestly it was an uneventful shoot except for a very tired and very sweaty photographer. No special setups or equipments except for my camera and a 50mm prime lens.
Gosh… I looked so disorganized.
*Credits: Photos above are mostly taken on Phoebe’s camera.
Joanne and Leo’s photoshoot
Thanks to Joanne and Leo for following me out on this shoot. We did this at Putrajaya and I learnt a lot of things from this shoot since it was officially my first outdoor shoot with real life people modeling for me. Also it was a bit awkward when we started since neither I nor the models know how to get things started. Even Phoebe, the bun eating assistant, didn’t really know what to do.
Well we eventually got started and I got tons of photos which didn’t work out right but some did turn out quite well. All photos were taken using a D90 with 50mm f/1.8 lens.
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Things I’ve learnt thus far:
- Prepare food and drinks for the model
- Go shooting outdoors early in the morning
- Its better to choose the day after a rainy day since it reduces chances of haze.
- Read through magazines to get ideas of how you want the shots to be
- Bring a towel or an extra shirt if you sweat easily (Like me)
Anyway… I’m really looking forward to the next shoot.
My journey with Esme [My D90]
Warning: Newbie giving advices, so not all info might be right. Do correct me if I’m wrong.
It was 2 years of training with my semi-pro digital camera before I decided to make the transition to using a DSLR. The transition was because I found that there were still a lot of limitations on a digital camera and on the contrary of my experience in a digital camera, I haven’t had much practice on a DSLR before I got mine.
I remember when Esme first arrived. I spent a few hours reading through the manual, understanding only parts of it before I started my hands-on on it. And a lot of things really seemed new to me. It really takes a while to get used to it.
I gotten Esme late November 2009 mainly because I was planning to bring her to Taiwan with me during my trip. I remember experimenting with Esme a few days before the trip, among which I went to Putrajaya to take some night shots [Which mostly turn out horrible]. Some of the photos are shown below:
Horrible!!! [Quite underexposed]
One thing which I really couldn’t get used to then was using the viewfinder instead of the liveview. [FYI: viewfinder is where you look through with your eye to see what you are taking photo of, and liveview is what you find on most digital camera LCD screen where the image you want to take photo of is shown on the screen]. This caused quite a problem because I totally lost my ‘balance’ as in I couldn’t make my photos look balanced. It’s either leaning towards one side or the other.
The photo looked tilted here.
And that caused a lot of cropping to get the images balanced. Even now, I still do a lot of cropping especially when things like that happen.
After that I became a bit conscious about the lens smudges and dust off the lens every now and then. especially how much a single lens cost so I went to read up on how to take care of lens and gotten myself a UV filter to put on every time I’m near water or near the beach. I’ve even gotten myself a lenspen to ‘clean’ the lens when it’s necessary
Then a few days before I got to Taiwan, I gotten a circular polarizing lens (CPL) filter which helps in making the skies bluish especially when it looks boring. It also helps in reducing reflections which really came in handy especially when I was taking photos in the aquarium and by the seaside. The only problem with the filter was that it’s full potential can only be unleashed when the sun is at a proper direction. It also did help a bit while I was taking photo out of moving vehicles as it reduces the reflections from the glasses. I guess I might be using it as a tone down filter also if I’d want to make river flows seemed smooth especially on sunny days since CPL filters darkens the exposure by one or two stops. Some better photos from Taiwan [even better might not be too good]
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The following photos were taken with CPL filter on. Notice the lack of reflections from the glass
In the end, I did get quite a number of nice photos from Taiwan but my framing and composition was horrible at that moment. Not to mention that there’s still a number of things I still couldn’t understand. So after the trip, I started reading a number of books on composition and tips and tricks on taking photography. I would really recommend Petersen’s Photographic Digital Photo Guide which can be found in bookstores in Malaysia. There are currently 5 volumes of this magazine out and the guide really helps a lot in teaching you framing, composition, exposure, taking shots of nature, lenses etc etc. Do grab a copy if you find one at a bookstore near you. There’s also another 1-volume magazine which teaches on basic photography techniques and some post processing techniques called Ultimate Guide to Digital Photography, 3rd edition.
Source: Petersen’s Photographic Digital Photo Guide
I was very much engrossed in reading up on photography for the next 2 months and while reading about that, I learned about the nifty fifty lens [50mm prime lens f/1.8] which was one of the cheaper lens which give good bokeh [Bokeh means how some lens can throw certain areas out of focus depending on where you are focusing at]. I’ve read about how potential this particular lens was and decided to give it a try. Bought it, and played around with it and learnt a lot of things after playing with it. Its so hard to get the focus right especially at f/1.8. Another thing which I failed to realize was how narrow 50mm was. Being a prime lens, you cannot change the zoom in it and so you’d have to adjust yourself and your subjects just to get a shot right [which frankly is what photographers should do]. And you’d have to stand very very far away if you want to take group photos. Very far away especially when the group was big. I found out about this while using it to take photos of the big large group during the CNY dinner. Failed photo below
I was standing quite far away when I took this photo and all I can see is still half of the people present. [Note to self: Don’t use 50mm prime lens to take group photos]
But the good thing about the 50mm prime is that with the proper settings you can get something like this:
Notice the bokeh
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The following shows just how powerful the depth of field of a 50mm prime lens can be at f/1.8
Focus on foreground…
and then
Focus on midground [the pillows] throw both the foreground and the background out of focus.
and finally
Focus on background [the plastic bags] throwing both the bottle and the pillows out of focus.
And with that, the possibilities are almost limitless. Imagine what a f/1.4 or an f/1.2 can do.
But it’s often very hard to get the focus right without proper practice. I’ve gotten spoilt photos because the focus was off. Imagine a photo with the eyes in focus but the nose out of focus.
Till now I’m still practicing with the 50mm prime lens.
After I gotten the lens, I decided to take back revenge on my failed first shoot at Putrajaya at night and gotten myself a tripod and this time with the proper knowledge, went for a Round 2 photo shoot session at night. Guess who won?
Sorry for the watermark but I really want to use it for some other purposes.
After that I noticed that at night it was hard to take photos of people at night so I invested in a hot shoe flash.
And I managed to overcome the darkness and played around with bounce flash [which is basically bouncing the flash off the walls to make more natural light and not use the flash directly on the subject] and filled flash [by which you flash in broad daylight to reduce the shadow effect produced by the unique features on the human face or by other things]. Also learnt to make a better bounce card as shown here.
I’ve learnt all this to prepare for the CSSUPM Annual Dinner by which I was one of the photographers. You can refer to this link to see the photos.
One of the nicer photos.
Even so, most of the photos are a bit overexposed since I was using Auto flash with the flash aimed at the ceiling, so it almost every-time gave out a full powered flash which overexposed the subjects. Will use manual controls to control the bounce flash power after this.
Also Joachim, a junior of mine who has more experience in the photography field also taught me about color balance, about how to maintain the proper color of what you saw. Very often we have seen photos taken under orange-ish light which cast a strong orange-ish color on the skin and this can be properly corrected by presetting color balance before taking the photo or do it during post processing. This became very useful and reading about this eventually lead me to learn about another feature in photography which is using spot metering. I really want to try some spot metering portraits soon especially shots that darken most of the face but keeps parts of it visible.
And finally I went for my virgin fireworks shoot with Esme by which a mistake on my part cost us better fireworks photos. But I will redeem myself in the next fireworks event I’m going to go to.
One of the nicer fireworks photo.
Thus is my journey so far with Esme, and I’ll be doing some more photo shoots with her to get more used to it.
Sometimes I get the feeling that, photography is not only a hobby, but a passion.
Fireworks at Putrajaya Balloon Fiesta 2010. [and some tips for fireworks photography]
I thought that I was very much prepared for photographing fireworks during the fiesta. I had done my homework, brought along a tripod, a wireless remote trigger, set my ISO to the lowest I can find, use bulb mode in shutter settings and still one very unfortunate change of plans caused me the nicer photos which I should be able to get, which was positioning.
I’ve asked the organizers where they are going to let off the fireworks at, and went to set up too close to the action. In the end the fireworks went off and flew directly above me. And I had to change my angle and shoot directly upwards. Should have stuck to my previous planning to shooting from a further away location.
Another problem which suddenly came was that the wireless remote didn’t trigger at all. I think it might be because I used live-view on the camera and with all the fireworks going on, it was unable to focus at a particular point so it didn’t trigger. Tried the remote trigger in a fixed place and it worked though. Perhaps should consider using manual [infinity focus] next time. Or I might want to get a cable shutter release instead.
Will definitely redeem myself in the next fireworks display [most probably in August during the International Fireworks Competition in Putrajaya]
Anyway here are the [very few] shots I took
A lot of people commented that this last shot looks like coconut trees @.@
Anyway some tips on photographing fireworks
- Use a tripod. Fireworks happen at night and if you won’t want to use hand held camera unless you can be static and not move even a bit during a period of 5-10 seconds. Place your camera on a sturdy tripod.
- For simple digital camera, turn setting to fireworks predetermined settings. If you don’t have that settings or if you want to be adventurous, use manual settings and do the following. Set your ISO to the lowest setting possible [this is important to make your photos sharp and noiseless, you won’t like to see grainy fireworks photos], set your shutter speed to around 5-10 seconds [this is very dependent upon the type of photos you would want. If you want the trials of the fireworks to seemed long then a longer shutter speed will take in details over a longer period of time. But do remember that increasing shutter speed will cause more light to enter and possibly cause overexposure as well. The photo below shows a very overexposed fireworks photo.]
- Use timer. This might be a bit tricky but if you can use set the timer to take the photo in around 2 seconds and then predetermine the moment the fireworks will be release and later take the photo, it will minimize the chances of shakes caused by pressing the shutter button.
- No flash. It won’t help. Really.
- And perhaps the hardest thing to do is to know how to frame the fireworks. It might be hard to actually predetermine where the fireworks will fly once they are up in the air so it may be a good idea to scout the location beforehand for a good vantage point [I fail at this in the above shoot]. A good vantage point will be a place where you can take the whole fireworks action. Perhaps from that point you can try to zoom [even though not recommended] to select out bits of fireworks which you want to take.
- Use a remote release [only apply to those with DSLR]. Press once for the camera to take the photo, especially when the fireworks starts to fly in the air. And press the second time to end the shot, preferably after you seen the streaks of light disappearing or after you are satisfied with your shot.
- Take loads of shots. You don’t really have to pay to keep clicking and snapping away. Keep taking photos. Even if most of them turn out bad, there will still be a few which are acceptable.
For more information on fireworks photography, do visit this site
Cheers and hope you enjoy taking photos as much as I do
Febrianna and Elaine’s Portrait shots
Attempted a HDR with people in the photo. Color was very hard to get right though.
Anyway, the photo shoot was done very in a very impromptu condition during the Putrajaya Balloon Fiesta 2010. Still thanks to Febrianna and Elaine for being the 2 main models and Kai Leng and Sui Sien as backup models.
Putrajaya Hotair Balloon Fiesta 2010
Some photos of the event.
This photo is dedicated to the couple who was posing for another friend of theirs. I just thought it was a nice pose.
Overall it wasn’t what I anticipated also. Only part I really like about it was the shooting photos part. Its kind of sad though cause some of my juniors were really hoping to go on the balloon [and perhaps fly away somewhere]
Hmmm perhaps they can learn from Carl Fredricksen from UP. Tie balloons to the hostel and fly to wherever they want to fly to.
I wonder if I can fulfill some people wishes by sending them up on a balloon. It will be fun to be able to do something like that. Anyone knows of any competition to send people up in balloons?
Photo Post: Putrajaya Take #2
I managed to capture this on my most recent visit there. Its a lot better than the one I put up before. Click on it to see it in its full size
