Monday, June 30, 2008

Walkabout

Went shooting with Ron the other day, but unfortunately we didn't really have any idea where to go, so here are the results:

Kicking off with the railway station. These are railway switches.

Tracks. The sky sucks when you don't put on the polarizer.

View along the outside of the Station Master's office.

Kitten!

After that, it's the district and land office. The jury's still out on the performance of my recently bought EF 28-90mm III lens though. Some shots like this one came out surprisingly sharp - much sharper than my 18-55mm kit lens in fact. What you see here was just cropped, with no software sharpening done.

But some like this weren't that sharp and I had to rely on a little software sharpening.

Hate the govenance, love the country.

The nearby local council building.

Macro shot of some insect I found hiding in the nearby bushes.

The south face of the land office.

Another angle of the same face.

At the lake gardens. Just love this shot, with its warm evening colours.

Water running down some rocks. Too bad the pipe was in the way.

View of one of the lakes. Took a shot of the same lake a few weeks ago.

Like I said, mixed reviews from me about the 28-90mm. Aside from the occasional sharpness streak (instead of being sharp all the time), it also suffers from a focusing problem, often focusing on the background instead of the object when the aperture's wide open. But I guess one gets what one pays for, and for SGD60, a mint condition lens to bridge the gap between my 18-55mm and 90-300mm isn't too bad at all.

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Saturday, June 07, 2008

Taiping Lake Gardens, Part Deux

Went back to the lake gardens a few days later on June 4th to see what I could get on a weekday morning and also to help my bro snap some pix for his school project. Most pix here are also my personal experiments in photoshopping:

Tranquility

Walkway

Walkway, this time in B&W.

Overlooking the lake towards the northwest.

Same angle, slightly different subjects.

The same walkway, but this was photographed after the bamboo stuffed Chinese bridge.

Across another section of the lake. This is looking westwards, I believe.

Greens and blues. Okay, I think I may have overdone the color adjustments on this one...

An underexposed shot that's here cos I kinda like how it turned out.

One of the many lakes. Love the tree on the extreme right...

And this is what you'd get if you shifted your gaze towards the right. They sure as heck don't call this place the lake gardens for nothing!

More greens and blues with such great weather and light that morning.

A path into the trees. Used a simulated yellow filter on this one.

Surprisingly this shot came out well. Gotta love those circular polarizers.

The grass somehow looks inviting from this angle.

Once again that nice tree I mentioned earlier. Would've preferred the tree branches to be out of the sides of the pic though. My bad.

And by this stage, I really am tempted to make another "fuyoh...macam Switzerland," remark.

Cheers, folks!

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Saturday, May 31, 2008

Taiping Lake Gardens

Lotsa green everywhere on a Saturday morning...but I admit I could've done better though. Blame it on the lack of a caffeine fix that morning.








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