Don't like the past week

I haven't blogged for quite a few days. Not because i am lazy but because i have been as sick as a dog the past few days. There must a potent virus around that gives people the mother of all runny nose and nausea. Nausea and vomiting have never been my symptoms when i get flu. I absolutely hate the experience of waking up at night and retching in front of the toilet with nothing but gastric acid being expelled.

To top it off, the super bad rain last week has flooded my balcony and caused some unsightly water damage to one of my walls at home. Then came tropical cyclone Wilma, bringing lots of rain again. Everytime it rains my heart pounds 10 times faster. I worry a lot about my house as it doesn't seem to tolerate high rain falls well. Blame the poor building standard in New Zealand.

Then my precious boy racer car WRX got stolen yesterday morning. That was when cyclone Wilma visited our neighbourhood. I parked my car on street. My street is supposed to be a rather safe street. I have made a police report pronto but have not heard anything about my car so far. According to statistics only 30% of stolen cars in New Zealand get recovered eventually (wrecked or not). Now, I am car-less and mega pissed off.

My mood is much better today though. Although i still have to put up with my niggly cough, i did something cool today. I have done a 1/2 day photoshoot for my friend, Kait and Luke, lovely couple. I will need some time sorting out some editing and will make a full post on the shoot. So stay tuned and watch the space. Meanwhile, here are a few photos from the shoot, just to tease you for now.

A dog, a cat and a skater

The weather has been less than predictable the past few days. Summer is supposed to be dry and warm, but it has been raining on and off recently. This annoys me because it means i have to stay at home.

The rain has decided to stay away today. I spent a while trimming down my Lavender which has grown rapidly into a wild bush, rather unpleasant to sight. It looks heaps better now. I have kept most of the Lavender flowers i have removed and stuck them upright into two ceramic vases at my door step. Now when i enter my house i will be greeted with a light and somewhat "Tuscan" scent. These photos of the Lavender were taken with a Nikon 35mm f1.8. One of my other new purchase. I have decided my 50mm f1.8's focal length is a bit too long for most of my shots.

I went for a walk at the park (Onehunga lagoon). There is a skate park there. Most of the time it is quiet and unoccupied. I guess not many people know about its existence. But this time, there was a group of skateboarders training. I managed to take a few snaps of one of them in action with my new Nikon 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 VR (except the wide angle shot of the skate park, which was taken with Tokina 11-16mm).

Onehunga lagoon is a good place to photograph dogs. There are always people walking their dogs. There are also a lot of birds in the park due to the wetland of the lagoon. There are two tide gates. When the tide is low, the waterbed get exposed and that is the feeding time for seabirds. There was a nice Labrador playing fetch with his owner. I got a few shots of him in the shallow water. These were also shot with the same 70-300mm lens.

On my way back home i saw my neighbours cat resting on his driveway. Out came my 70-300mm again. I love photographing cats. There are so much details to their face. The stripes, the long whiskers, the emerald or blue eyes can look amazing when you get your photo right. If the cat has decided not to run away from you when you approach, it will usually stay at the same spot calmly for a while for you to do your thing. Whereas a dog can be more curious and playful with strangers and tend to come up to you.

 

ATP world tour Heineken Open

So i was sitting on the couch at home, watching tele in the morning and found out Heineken open was on. I was feeling bored at home. I flick on my IPAD and did a quick search and found out tickets for the quarter finals were still available. I have never been to a tennis game before but have always wanted to. I came very close to going to Australian open three years ago but my holiday in Melbourne was short and it was a scorching 42 degrees in Melbourne, way too hot even for a Malaysian.

So i hopped into my good old WRX and raced down to ticketek counter and managed to get a good seat at Redwood grand stand of the ASB tennis center.  I have recently purchased a new Nikon lens which i was very keen to bring out for a test run. It is a Nikon 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 VR. Before this i have been using the cheapskate 70-300mm f4-5.6G (No VR). This new lens with the VR is significantly heavier and a lot better built than the budget lens. I thought the results were pretty good. It was a very sunny day, so i must say i didn't really have to use much of the VR since i had my shuter speed beyond 1000 most of the time. One of these days i will try shooting the same object with both lens and show you the difference. Here are a few of my favourite shots from the tournament.

 

David Ferrer resting at the stand after winning his quarter final match.

He is a tall tall man.

Halfway through holiday

Time flies. Half of my two-month holiday is over. I got back from Malaysia almost a week ago. I departed at Singapore's Changi airport. I took a super early flight flying at 8:50am, meaning i had to check in by 6:50am. I stayed a night in Johor Bahru the day before and had the opportunity to walk around the older part of town for a bit. The few photos you will see here were taken at a street called Culture street (Tan Hiok Nee street). There, you will find old buildings with a very vintage feel. We found this cafe with pretty cool decor and display inside. The weird thing is you will find a crappy stairway at the back of the cafe that will lead you into a tiny hair salon upstairs, tucked away quietly. If i hadn't been led there i would have never thought i can get a haircut there.

My last dinner in Malaysia was a sumptuous seafood feast at a local restaurant called "Three stories" (San Lou). It has a semi open air foodcourt style setting, doesn't look like much on first impression but their killer secret is their food, not so much their presentation.  It is always packed full of hungry people, mostly from Singapore.  We had stir fried fish head, chilli crab,  deep fried squid, and stir fried rice noodle. Unfortunately i did not bring my camera along to the dinner, so no pictures of the yummy food to show.

Arrived at Auckland at midnight. Haven't had much sleep on the plane. An Indian woman kept hassling me to swap seat with random members of her very extensive family. Somehow her family members were all allocated seats far away from each other and she was not very happy. The thing is i always request for an aisle seat so i can stretch my legs a little and it will be easier to get to the toilet. She wanted me to swap with her daughter (a rather uncomfortable middle seat). The annoying part was she made the demand in a rather impolite manner. She sat down beside me and pointed towards her daughter's middle seat and said "Can you go sit there" (in a rather stern tone). She sounded like a grumpy headmistress ordering her student around. I wasn't very pleased. So naturally i said no. But she was persistent. Five minutes later she hassled me again to swap with another daughter of hers, this time my aisle seat for another aisle seat further back in the cabin. I thought if i said no, there would a good chance she would make my next 10 hours on the plane a bit  unpleasant. So i agreed. There was no thank you or any sign of appreciation after the swap. Don't you just hate it when people have no understanding of good manners?

It's good to be back. Back to a place where cars actually stop at a zebra crossing, back in a place where people understand what a queue is, back in a place where freedom of speech and basic human right means something.

Vegetables garden

My house in my home town Batu Pahat is located in the hilly fringe of the town where the population is fairly low.  It's a quiet place at the bottom of a rain forest. Some of the forest areas have been converted into vegetable farm by local farmers.  It has been that way for years.  I can literally see the farmers from my balcony. Sometimes i can smell the fertilisers they use (not very pleasant at times considering they use a lot of "organic" fertilisers if you know what i mean).

I have never been onto the compound of the vege farm although i am aware that people from my neighbourhood often go up there for evening walks and pick up a few free cabbages, chillies etc on their way out.  Today i have decided to follow my mum up there for a visit. And of course, i went with my DSLR.  The sky was totally overcast and i feared it was going to rain and that the rain will drench my camera. So i brought along two of my cheapest lenses and carried them in a Lowepro camera bag for partial water resistent. We also had an umbrella handy.

We met some farmers up there and i politely asked permission for a few portraits but they turned my offer down without hesitation, saying that they are shy. In the end i took a couple of shots of them with my tele-lens anyway.

You will be surprise how many people around us are camera shy. According to a survery done by Fujifilm in 2006, 73% of women and 50% of men are uneasy in front of a camera. The body weight of the subjects, the messy hair and the clothes they are wearing are apparently the commonest reasons for the camera-shyness.

Anyway, i took a few landscape shots of the farm but the sky looked super gloomy, not very ideal for landscapes. On my way out, i saw a few crows on the lamp post. It was almost like they were talking to each other. The original photo of the birds were nothing exciting due to the dull sky. So i converted the photo into a mono using gradient map, followed by a quick level-adjustment and finally a hue/saturation layer with the colour set to a sepia tone to create a better tonal range.

Red hot chilli

Lady's finger

Mum's birthday

Mum turns 61 yesterday. Happy birthday mum!

We had a small family gathering at a popular local chinese restaurant. We had so much food, at the end of the dinner i could barely move. We had Lobster, Blue cod, Abalone, goose feet, Sea cucumber stuffed with shell fish, roast duck crispy yam cake, shark fins soup and dessert soup.

We even have a birthday cake.

Here are some photos.  The lighting was not great, i had to do bounce flash with my flashgun.