Finally got my grubby hands on some sample photos from the pre-wed shoot last Monday! Showed them to some friends already so it's time to share them here too!

Blessed Sacarment Church

Jones the Grocer @ Dempsey

Outside Ben & Jerry's @ Dempsey

Botanic Gardens - newly minted UNESCO World Heritage Site haha

Botanic Gardens

Some field in Tuas

Photos taken by Samuel of Pixioo.

And the countdown says.... 82 more days!!!

*blows dust off blog*

My poor, long suffering blog. Always here when I am angry or upset and I need an outlet to rant. But when things are calm and peaceful, it goes down the pecking order and gets ignored while I get distracted by Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and what-have-you. Ever selfless and giving, my blog doesn't fight for my attention and always waits patiently in the shadows. *pat pat*


And seriously how many social media platforms do I need?! Haha recently I hopped on the Dayre bandwagon (it's like microblogging on the go - if Twitter and Instagram had a rendezvous and had a kid, Dayre would be it).

But well nothing fascinating has been happening... or wait has there been? OK let me share some recent bakes:

Went for a log cake baking class last Saturday and this ended up as dessert for the Nepal celebratory dinner!

I asked my mom to buy lots of Christmas cake decorations back from Phoon Huat. Haha. Shall attempt to replicate the log cake again closer to Christmas.

 Banana Walnut Muffins

I'm pretty sure I baked something similar before but since I only had 3 small bananas left, I went to google for stuff that I could make with 150g bananas haha. So specific. But anyway I liked this version a lot, they were incredibly soft and fragrant. As with all banana+walnut combinations, it could do with some choc chips but I ran out of them.

Been really tempted to buy a lot of stuff lately, like a hand mixer, the Olympus Stylus XZ-10, and the Babyliss Big Hair 42mm. AHHH CONSUMERISM IS EVIL!!! All these are just wants and not needs. Like my Olympus E-PM1 is still serving me well but sometimes it's a little bulky to carry around plus I want something that can transfer photos from camera to phone using the wi-fi card. -_-

And I want a hand mixer because it's more handy and convenient instead of having to lug the huge mixer out of the storeroom when I want to bake something simple.

And seriously I always tie my hair up so why do I need the Babyliss product so that my hair can look like I just stepped out of the salon?

OK I shall convince myself that all this is not needed. Coz if I buy all these then essentially I will have nothing leftover from my AWS.

#firstworldproblems

And recently Paul got himself a second-hand bike and I've never ridden on a bike before (save for one time in Cambodia) so this will take some getting used to! Riding a bike requires lots of planning and also the mood of the skies. I wanted an orange helmet hurhurhur but I guess most riders like boring colours because there are absolutely no orange helmets out there unless I spray paint it myself. So my helmet is pink. Haha. Wave if you see a pink head that looks vaguely like me on the roads!

I first heard about the Capture the Colours contest through Mad, who nominated me to join. (Check out her awesome entry here!) The idea is to post 5 photos from your travels, each representing a different colour and I thought it was an interesting concept for a blog post, even if I'm not out to win anything.

Initially I was highly doubtful that I can even find 5 representative photos, since I usually take human beings and food more than gorgeous scenery. Anyway, I quickly scanned through all my photos and woah I'm quite glad all these photos exist because although I won't say that I'm quite the globe-trotter (there are still so many parts of the world I haven't been to!), I realized I have seen and experienced quite a number of things through my travels. And without these photos to remind me of what I have seen, I think I would have forgotten most of them. For example, I can't even remember all the places I visited in Beijing.

Also I realized that the quality of my photos were all pretty lousy circa 2006, not that it's fantastic now but I guess the quality of the camera also helps LOL.

There might be more hidden gems in my folders but sifting through everything is gonna be super time consuming. I tried to find one photo from each of my more memorable trips so here goes:

Red

 

The Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto, Japan. Taken in June 2009. It looks orangey here but the pillars are red in real life, perhaps my camera wasn't good enough to capture the colours properly. There's a picture of me mimicking a scene out of Memoirs of a Geisha floating around somewhere hahaha.
Read more about my Japan trip here.

White

I visited Cambodia the same year, in December 2009. This was taken in the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I thought this really suited the white theme well and sent a really strong message about the sombre sentiment of our visit to the Killing Fields. It reminds you of the cruelty of the Khmer Rouge regime, and perhaps even of mankind in general.

Yellow

  

I had a few photos for the Yellow category but ultimately chose this even though it only has slight accents of yellow because 1) It's THE Great Wall of China! 2) It was during the World Cup in 2010 and we saw a group of Brazilians who were very enthusiastic about their support for their country, as you can see from above. 3) We didn't know them but just went ahead to take a photo with them anyway. :D

Taken in Beijing, China, June 2010.

Blue

  

I had such a hard time trying to find a photo that suited the blue theme because I felt that they all weren't representative enough. In the end I settled for this shot, taken at the Death Valley, California, USA, June 2011. We stayed over a night here en route to Las Vegas and this place really lives up to its name. There were very few people around, it was super dry and scorching hot, so much so that I could feel the heat radiating up from the ground.

Green

 

Last but not least, this is my shortlisted photo for Green. The most recent of the lot, taken in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia in July 2012. This trip was a purposeful one, as the aim was to summit Mount Kinabalu, and I feel that this shot was very representative of the seemingly never-ending hike up to the top. Surrounded by lush greenery, all we could do was to focus on taking one step at a time, slowly, ploddingly, surely.

Read more about my Kota Kinabalu experience here!

Check out more awesome photos on their Facebook page, I just did and it sure puts my lousy humble photos to shame!!!

OK I'm supposed to nominate 5 people to join too and I hereby "arrow" the following (no obligations though! The deadline's nearing anyway...)

1) Gillian

2) Adelene

3) Mabel 

Shucks running out of friends to arrow...

4) Su Yi

5) Can I re-nominate Mad? Haha

I will save the other photos that I selected but didn't make the cut for another entry next time! Laters!

What happened on Good Friday:


Drove in to JB and was stuck in a Jam at the Tuas 2nd link for 2 hours :x


The look and feel is the same, but the size is only about 1/3 of the ones in US




Coach is super expensive there





I am the official photographer hahaha

Oh and I finally bought the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens after much deliberation!
According to the guy at the camera shop (I was bombarding him with lots of questions haha), it's a good lens for potrait shots. With a lower F-stop (hence shallow focus - I think?), you can achieve the bokeh effect!

I haven't really had the chance to play around with it, so here are some test shots that I snapped.


Those out of focus lights in the background produce the bokeh effect!


My new buys at the Mitju sale. Cheap man! The silver glittery wedges were only $8 and the mustard flats $15!


Shinhwa's 10th album! <3 Collected it on Saturday and lugged it all around town. :x


My favourite test subject hee :)


My new pancake lens! Costs a hefty $545 but I managed to save $200 thanks to Capitaland vouchers + StanChart credit card cashback :)


The original lens that came with my Olympus Mini. The pancake lens definitely shaves off some of the bulk.
The flip side is that I can't zoom at all with the pancake lens. :( Guess I need to do "manual" zooming - i.e. walk nearer towards my subject!


This wasn't shot with my new lens but here's a nice photo of us at Canton-i! :)
Sad that the long weekend is over just like that. WE NEED MORE LONG WEEKENDS PLEASE! :x

I bought a new camera at the IT Fair a couple of weeks back and I've been trying to figure out how to use it well.

Was originally gunning for an Olympus E-P3 but it was selling for close to $1,300! :O

My other option was the E-PL3, but the only fancy thing about it was that it had a flip screen. So I settled for the Olympus E-PM1 instead. Smaller, lighter, and half the price of the E-P3!

I must say that the Olympus is not exactly very user friendly or intuitive. Took me a while to figure out the bells and whistles. There is a dial button and you're supposed to turn the wheel to playback photos, instead of using the left/right buttons. And I don't like the fact that it has no auto-rotate feature. :(

But my intent of getting a mirrorless camera was to try and learn to take better quality photos, without the bulk of a DSLR. And this means I gotta learn about aperture, shutter speed, and all that gobbledygook.

For someone who is used to a point-and-shoot camera, now I have to fix the camera lenses on, bring along an external flash and a huge casing wherever I go. It's not exactly very convenient. And I'm realizing that this is going to be a rather costly hobby if I were to be serious about taking nice photos, because the lenses don't come cheap. :(

Here are some photos that I took while trying to test out my camera. My test subject is my favourite little purple thing, Grimace! :)


'


Trying to play around with the depth of field. It's not that obvious but the top one is supposed to have a sharp background, blurry foreground and vice versa for the second photo.


My plate of food, Veron's wedding @ One Rochester