Hong Kong is soooooo nice, soooooo many things to see, soooooo many things to play and soooooo many things to buy. It was practically the best trip of the decade!

Cityscape of Hong Kong Central over the sunset.

Okay don’t expect too much, this is just a teaser post. I have yet to finish editing tons of pictures and videos. You think what? I’m Superman ah?

Anyway, Hong Kong is really a nice city. We’ve heard and seen so much of Hong Kong from their dramas and movies, but I have to say that seeing it for yourself is totally a different experience.

Four of us — Sophea, Kah Wai, Cheng Lam and I — had so much fun exploring the city in 6 days.

Our 6-day Hong Kong trip can be summarised as below.

• Day 1 — Tsuen Wan
• Day 2 — Kowloon
• Day 3 — Central
• Day 4 — Tsim Sha Tsui
• Day 5 — Disneyland
• Day 6 — Shopping
• Hong Kong video

I will make each day into a single post plus a video and I will post them as soon as I finish editing the pictures and videos.

3 wedding photographers has been invited to conduct the workshop — Edwin Tan, Paul Kong and Joshua Teoh.

After each conductor given their talk, we were divided into 3 groups to proceed to outdoor shooting.

Each group has been assigned a real couple as the models. My group got Dave Goh and Zi Ying.

The models — Dave Goh and Zi Ying.

First time attending photography workshop and first time shooting pre-wedding portrait. And it turned out to be a very good opportunity for me to learn.

The conductor for my group — Joshua Teoh — and I.

Many thanks to the conductor for my group Joshua Teoh who really shared a lot of his experiences with us.

P/S: 12 more photos on my Facebook album.

However, this post is not about how to make a bowl of mouth-watering oatmeal breakfast, in fact, it’s about shooting oatmeal.

I’ve been following a food blog at www.latartinegourmande.com for some time now and I’ve always admire her photography style (and of course her cooking skill as well).

The blown-out yet vibrant look of her pictures always caught my attention. You can check out more of her works at cannelle-vanille’s photostream on Flickr.

I wondered how she managed to achieve that unique look. Until one day, I saw this picture from her Photostream on Flickr.

The rounded spoon sort of reflected the surrounding of the entire setup. I can roughly guess that she used a lightsource at the back (or maybe by the window) with two reflectors at the front.

I came up with my own version and shot the oatmeal I’ve been eating every morning.

Shooting it was actually easier than I thought. The difficult part? Styling the table, cooking the oatmeal, garnishing it with fruits and shooting it in less than 20 minutes so I can still eat it while it was still warm.

P/S: All pictures taken with Nikon D90, 50mm lens shot at ISO 200, f/3.5 and 1/50. Remote speedlight was set at 1/20.

Without thinking much, I quickly agreed because it was a good opportunity for me to try out interior photography.

The first kitchen we went is located in Ampang. It is a modern kitchen designed with a lot of indirect blue lights hidden behind or under the cabinets.

It belongs to a wealthy family whose owner is a Dato’. The size of the kitchen itself (dry + wet) is bigger than my entire apartment.

It took me quite some time to find out the best way to light up a kitchen this big. At the end, what I did was shooting with small aperture, slow shutter speed and then bounce the flashlight through an umbrella off the ceiling.

The family was so excited about the photoshoot they even asked me to shoot some portraits of their cute baby girl.

After that, we went to the second kitchen which is located in Rawang. I really love this kitchen with its orange tiles and white furnitures.

This time the shoot was faster and easier since the trial-and-error from the first shoot.

The orange kitchen comes with a classic dining hall on the other side.

If you think that lighting the space is the hardest part of interior photography, think again.

What’s more difficult than lighting is styling the space. The amount of attention paid to decorate the subject and the background will just scares you off.

I must say that Connie and sister (Kent’s friends) have done a really good job in making sure that everything that goes into the camera’s frame is perfect.

Next destination, another kitchen in Kajang. This kitchen belongs to a chef who works at Marriott Putrajaya.

The owner was very excited as well and insisted me to take a few portraits of him for his Facebook profile picture.

At the end, kitchen shooting turned into Facebook profile picture shooting, and lastly turned into family portrait shooting.

Well, it was really a long and tired day. But I really had fun shooting the kitchens and the people behind them.

And most importantly, I was really satisfied with all the pictures I got at the end of the day.

Too bad my computer is still in the workshop… argh…!!!

Never mind, since I cannot play, let’s take some pictures of the boxes, let’s do some light painting! I’ve always wanted to do light painting for quite some time already.

The Evil Unleashed — Starcraft II light painting.

The setup is relatively easy compare to other types of photoshoot. All I need is a subject (Starcraft II boxes here) and a light source (I used a multi-LED torchlight). Once the setup is done, switch off all the lights, release the shutter for 10 seconds and start swinging the torchlight here and there. The hardest part of all is to try to get a nice random pattern of the lights.

I took over 40 shots and I am most satisfied with the shot above. I really like how the picture turned out. It looks like some spirits unleashed from the boxes and flying around.

So I named this picture,

“The Evil Unleashed”.

Can’t wait for my computer to be back this Friday (hopefully). Until then, let the war begins!

P/S: I’ve updated my blog footer (scroll down) with photos from my Flickr. How is it? Please refresh if things don’t look right.

Thanks to Kevin for lending me his old MacBook or else I would died of boredom.

While I was browsing through Flickr, I saw a very nice photo collage. I got inspired and wanted to try it out myself.

I dug out some old photos of friends and colleagues taken with my iPhone, added some vintage effects and arrange them nicely in Photoshop.

Clockwise from top left: Kevin, Max, Richie, Ted, Peter, Reuben, Sophea and Tim.

After I’m done, it got me thinking, sometimes, photography is really not about megapixel, aperture or ISO. When we go back to basic, what really matters is nothing else but the people that we want to remember.

Afterall, photography is all about preserving memories. And you can do that even with the shittiest camera (of course I’m not referring to iPhone, I love my iPhone).

P/S: Vintage effects added using lo-mob for iPhone.

Without much pictures taken, we decided to leave. Just when we were walking towards the car, we saw this spectacular view.

Well, I definitely didn’t expect to return with any good picture that day. While this shot turns out to be quite good.

Picture taken with my new ultra wide angle lens Tokina 11–16mm, post-processed in Photoshop.

In order to learn how to use the new Nikon Speedlight SB-900, I did some quick setup in the living room and shot some pictures of a teddy bear I borrowed from Kevin.

It was my first time shooting with a remote speedlight through an umbrella. My setup was fairly simple and classic — white background, speedlight on the right and a reflector on the left.

Bedsheet as the background, remote speedlight on the right and white cardboard as the reflector on the left.

First few shots were all failures as I have no idea how to make use of a remote speedlight. After experimenting for while, things started to become clear.

Experiment with remote speedlight. Fail fail fail fail.

I then started to experiment with different lighting. First I took a few shots without the umbrella just to see what’s the outcome.

Left: Speedlight from 45 degrees. Right: Speedlight from approximately 22 degrees.

Like what I’ve expected, direct speedlight produced harsh shadows which is not what I wanted.

After that, I put on the shoot-through umbrella and tried position the speedlight from different directions.

Left: Speedlight from the top. Right: Speedlight from 45 degrees.

Speedlight from the top overexposed the hair while Speedlight from 45 degrees evenly exposed the subject, but in-turn, making it looks flat.

I then pushed the speedlight a little bit further to approximately 22 degrees from the subject and suddenly the shadow between the hair gave the teddy bear more contrast, depth and textures as you can see from the picture below.

Final shot with speedlight coming from 22 degrees from the subject.

I settled with this picture and brought it into Photoshop for post processing. After background removal, colour balance, level adjustment, increase contrast and some other touch-ups, I finally have my final image.

I’ve learned a lot during the process especially in setting the background. Firstly, using a cloth as the background produced a lot of unwanted shadow which makes it difficult to remove it in post. Secondly, I should’ve used another reflector to lighten up the background so that shadows can be reduced.

It’s not perfect but I think I’m happy with what I got from my first attempt at flash photography.

A year later, I decided to add 2 more items to my collection, a speedlight and an ultra wide angle lens.

Left, Nikon SB-900 Speedlight and right, Tokina SD 11-16mm F2.8 DX.

After I bought them, I went to Pavilion to do some test shoots.

A shot of Pavilion Kuala Lumpur and the fountain.

This Tokina lens is just incredible. The pictures came out ultra sharp with high contrast even though they were shot handheld.

Another shot of Pavilion Kuala Lumpur and the fountain.

Even though I own the lens for less than a day, I already start loving it. Can’t wait to play with the speedlight soon.

Jenn Ting, Ted, Sophea and Cheng Lam (the first-timer).

This time, I didn’t manage to catch any sleep the night before the race. Maybe it’s because the 1/2 litre of iced jasmine tea I drank for dinner.

I was rolling on the bed, consciously and wide awake. By the time I took up my phone to check the time, it was already 3AM.

Ok I’m going to skip all the crap. Everything is more or less the same as my previous run in 2009 — Wake up early, go to Dataran Merdeka, warm-up, line-up, count down, bang! and run.

At the starting line ready to run.

Then we keep running and keep running.

Sunlight peaking through the clouds.

3km… 2km… 1km… finally reached the finishing line!

Ted, Sophea, Cheng Lam and Jenn Ting with their Finisher Medals.

And we got our medals. Happy.

Me and my 10KM Finisher Medal.

I finished the race at 1 hour 21 minutes and 43 seconds. Slightly slower than my last year’s result.

This year’s medal is nicer than last year’s. More solid and heavier. The entire event was more organised than the first time.

I’m kind of lazy to write already. I’ll be back again next year Standard Charted KL Marathon 2011.