A Runner and Photographer's Journal

Chinese New Year is a celebration of all sorts and personally for this year, it is a very beautiful one. It all started from a dream where I was transported back to my grandpa’s home in Sungei Pelek, Sepang during my sleep where I experienced one of the clearest dreams I had ever felt and the scenes was so real that I could ‘physically’ feel I was there all the time. It continued for 2 nights and to me, it is a calling to remind me that this year I should be heading ‘home’ to celebrate with my kin although both my grandparents had passed away many years ago. With this in mind, I asked my mom what her plans would be on the first day of CNY and she mentioned that we should be heading back home. I was surprised at first that we are having the same idea while she mentioned that the house in Sungei Pelek would be torn down to make way for a new house as it is already too old to support the ever growing household. Immediately I felt as if my grandparents had asked me in my dreams to visit this house for the last time before it is taken down. Not only that, my mum had mentioned that I should be taking some photos of this old house so that for the future generations, they would know how and what we had experienced during Chinese New Year in a kampong house.

Frontal view of the wooden house.

It is a very old house and according to my father, it should be in the region of 60yrs and above while the main pillar of the house should be around 100yrs or more. Wood was the main material for this house and it stretches from the front to the rear while not to mention, even the ceilings are made of wood planks. There is an old rustic charm to this house and the feeling is indescribable, where there is a hint of softness mixed with warmth while not to mention, the memory of boisterous laughter during those very intense family gathering sessions. These can only be felt if one is staying within the house.

View looking out to the street.
(I had fond memories on playing firecrackers on this street when I was young. It was utter madness and fun looking at various types of fireworks lighting up the sky while not to mention, running around and lighting firecrackers! Unfortunately with the government ban on firecrackers, such scenes no longer exist.)

Side view of the house
(This is our favourite place to play hide and seek. Imagine all the kids screaming and running around this area in pure happiness.)

A typical Chinese House Altar
(Years of lighting up joss sticks took it’s toll on the walls.)

Rear Section
(This place used to be a chicken and duck coop. I could still remember vividly the sound of the early crows in the morning.)

Main Hall
(Typical interior of the house with rooms attached to the main hall.)

Main Hall
(An opening towards the rear section of the house.)

Main Hall
(Another room attached to the main hall.)

Room
(I had fond memories of staying in this room. My family used to sleep inside this room and imagine, squeezing in 5 persons at one night! At the same time, mornings are freezing cold and I used to fight for the blanket with my brother.)

Rear Hall
(This is the rear section of the house. During Chinese New Year, it will be fully occupied with family and kin to the extent that we need to have 2 tables for lunch and dinner! Looking further, there is a doorway leading to the kitchen.)

Kitchen
(During my younger days, at times my grandma would use firewood to cook and imagine the smoke billowing out from the brick oven with the aroma of food mingled together, which in my personal opinion, the current generation will not experience this anymore.)

Kitchen
(Another section of the kitchen. Notice the half sized door? That’s old school man…)

Memory
(Portrait of my grandparents hanging on the wall. I rendered it in Black and White for an added effect.)

I did what I could with my limited gear in capturing the environment and with this visit, it brought back all sorts of memories during my childhood. While talking to my cousins, memories of old were brought back and seeing how each other had grown provided a new sense of hope that we may still be able to keep in touch with each other after all. I had always considered myself lucky that I am surrounded by my family and in this visit, I felt even luckier where I am surrounded by my extended family. We should always treasure what we have and I am glad that I could put this memory onto my photos. There will be more photos on my next posting.

Just to drive a point to photographer’s out there…how important is colour management in Photography Post Processing? Very Important I would say. I stumbled this by chance when my Dell notebook went kaput and had to be sent in for repairs, so I had to rely on my company’s computer  with CRT monitor to do my work. Surprisingly, when I navigated to my website, the CRT monitor showed a more natural rendition of colours on my photo compared to my notebook and I was already wondering why was the case? Painstakingly, I looked for answers during evenings and I was quite dumbfounded that some of the pro’s mentioned that our monitors (or most monitors) out there are not displaying correct colour and colour temperature. The reason for this is that, at lower colour temperature (9000 kelvins and above) the supposedly white would look very bright to the human eye and there is no way we can ever discover that there is actually a blue cast appearing on photos if side by side comparisons on colour temperature output aren’t made. Hence we tend to over compensate by post processing which made things even worse.

After gathering some info on what is ’supposed’ to be correct, I reset my CRT to a cooler (or higher) colour temperature of 6500 Kelvin just to see what the effect would be. I was actually quite surprised that my photos turned out to be very natural and this is what I had aspired to see all along. Incidentally, I compared another monitor which had a setting of 9300 Kelvin and was surprised that there is a blue cast appearing on the monitor while my photos looked ‘odd’ under those circumstances.

Setting the correct colour temperature and colour in the monitor alone is inadequate, it is important that you need to enable your internet browser to display correct colours too and that is by enabling colour management within web browsers. Currently, only Safari V2.0 and FireFox V3.0 above can be enabled with colour management to display correct colours. For Internet Explorer, I doubt there is such a thing (they are not good at rendering HTML codes too).

I was lucky that my photos turned out to be ‘colour correct’ in my case because within the PhotoShop, I enabled colour management to display colour using sRGB profile which I would think most web browsers and monitors are displaying today. Although it is by far perfect (Adobe RGB Wide Gamut is really beautiful), it is still the only medium where your photos would ‘look’ correct in most monitors and with the increase in use of the internet to display images, it is even more important to get your photos colour managed.

Yes, as the post had suggested,  I am shooting myself on my foot. Why? If you’d remembered in my last posting, I had written this:

“It’s not that I hated HDR but the appearance of a HDR photo is too unnatural and the exposure latitude is severely limited / retarded by the software. My philosophy towards light is that, ‘If there is bright highlights, then there must be hard shadows in a photo’. Sorry guys, but seriously if you were to search my photo database, I don’t process my photos using HDR’s (disclaimer: who knows what’ll happen in the future?).”

Ok, now I am going to claim the disclaimer as I had just post processed my HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo and I had inserted this photo into my photo album. Ouch, I had just slapped myself multiple times on the face…

I got up 5 am as usual for all my sunrise shots while looking into the sky from my window, the rain had stopped and I was more than glad since it had been pouring the day before. I could see some stars in the night sky and in my heart, I was quite happy that it may be a good outing after all. While driving towards the point of interest, suddenly flashes of light appeared on the sky and I screamed ‘No! No! No!…not rain again!?” and upon reaching the place, I had a feeling that things may change for the worse. By 6.30am, I still could not see the sun and I knew it is going to be disappointing day for my trip and imagine, getting up that early and just to see that your efforts are wasted…So in my mind, what am I going to do with the scene in front of me? HDR popped up after a brief 5 minutes of thought. So there I go, went about doing my stuff and due to the nature of HDR post processing, there is a minimum requirement that you need at least 3 photos of the same scene but with different exposure of -2, 0, +2. All these photos add up to quite a lot of space and that morning alone, I shot 800Mb’s worth of photo in RAW format.

Upon reaching back, I started my work on the photo and was utterly surprised that my skills took a dive where after my initial evalutation, there was only a set of photos that were usable out of that 800Mb! GOSH!

In my mind, I just didn’t want any ‘normal’ HDR photos but something that is realistic enough and can be seen as a HDR. As a matter of fact, I just didn’t like the normal HDR post-processing because of the flatness in dynamic range and the photo would look retarded. So in the shot above, I had post processed 2 sets of HDR, one for the sky and the other for the foreground. After adjusting for the white balance and colour correction, I went ahead with layering both sets of HDR’s together. In order to enhance the shadows and highlights, I kept both layers separate while adjusting the curves for the sky and also the foreground. Next, I added a touch of colour burning process to further charactrize the shadows and also colour filter to give a hint of warmth to the shot. Finally, I sharpened the photos on each layer before combining them together. I used cloning tool to further touch up the areas that would seem ‘out of place’ because of the combination and finally, resizing the photos.

The weather had taken an about turn in JB and became terribly hot.  I wasn’t sure why the sudden change but then, I welcomed it with open arms. Since September, it had been raining day in and day out without even having a chance to catch a glimpse of the sun hence, a decrease in my running activity as well as photography. With a sudden change in weather, I took the opportunity to venture out to whet my appetite for photography and with such a clear weather, there is nothing much that I would like to ask for more. I packed all of my lenses (I don’t have much anyway) just in case I needed them and made sure that my Sigma 24-70 f2.8 was cleaned thoroughly.

Upon reaching the photography point, it dawned on me that there was absolutely too much light going around where everywhere was so bright. The skies were devoid of any clouds and made the situation a very tough one in terms of exposure latitude where hard shadows and bright highlights existed within very tight confines. In my mind I was already thinking of how to expose for such exposure latitude and after scanning around the environment, my only option is to post process it later using extensive layering process. In my term, such extensive layering process would usually involve more than 3 shots with different exposure of the same scene while the usual fanfare would be to process the photo using HDR, instead I would stack these layers upon one another and slowly pick the sections with the best exposure while revealing it on the uppermost layer. It is the most painful way of post processing but then, it is the best where ‘lights and shadows’ are naturally retained without those hideous HDR appearances. It’s not that I hated HDR but the appearance of a HDR photo is too unnatural and the exposure latitude is severely limited / retarded by the software. My philosophy towards light is that, ‘If there is bright highlights, then there must be hard shadows in a photo’. Sorry guys, but seriously if you were to search my photo database, I don’t process my photos using HDR’s (disclaimer: who knows what’ll happen in the future?).

My first sets consist of photos to ‘test’ my light meter whether it would be confused by the light bouncing around the barrel and indeed, it severely underexposed my photos because there is simply too much light going around. Then out came my tripod, where it is the most essential piece of equipment for such multiple exposure shots and as usual I go about doing my business. Oh yes, there is also my trusty Lee Graduated ND 0.75 Filter where you cannot leave home without it and it helped me in this situation.

There is no shortage of photographers coming to this place, where most of them would carry a DSLR and busy clicking like there is no tomorrow. As for me, I would have been considered as an old timer in this place hence, my relaxed attitude whenever I am photographing it. While photographing, there was this guy whom was so busy getting all the shots, he ventured far out to the sea (it was low tide) to get his shots and while observing his antics, I did find that he is cute. However, as for me, it is not the quantity that counts but the quality that you can produce from your photos. There were several unthinkable areas that I had ventured to which I think, captured the attention of this photographer hence, he occupy the photographed area immediately after I had completed my work there. That’s what I mean by slowing down and you’d get more photos out from your trip because you can ‘see’ better.

It was 2 hours after I had reached this place where the sun is dipping into the horizon. I packed up my gears while there were some others whom are busy snapping into the horizon I decided to stop so that I can enjoy the sight of the beautiful sun setting. I just took my gears with me, headed towards the wooden jetty and sat there with my legs stretched out. While enjoying the warm breeze and looking into the warm amber coloured horizon I was thinking, when is my next chance of looking at such fabulous sunset?

Many times we had asked for help from the Divine One, but had we ever helped ourselves?

I love this panorama photo as it gave me a sense of time being frozen. As for the colours, it had been intentionally skewed to a cooler tempreature however without help from the prevailing shooting conditions, such colours can never be achieved.

Well, it had been a good 2 months now since the last time I had shot something that resembles sunrise. This shot is a reminder of how much hardwork that we need to put into in order to get something decent and the sun had not shown itself for the past few weeks which is also my off peak periods. All projects that needed completion had been completed and now is time for me to chart into unfamiliar waters. Yes, I had been mentioning that I needed to switch my job for a good few months but had always been hampered by myself, meaning which I had been procrastinating. I am still not sure what is the bloody reason behind this but I suspect that I am comfortable here…although I am paid pittance for the work I did. You know what, I might as well tender my resignation first and force myself to look for a job because my bloody ass could not budge from my seat.

Of all the entries that I had done, this piece would seemed to be strange that I am whacking myself full time but what I am trying to achieve here is that….I AM ACCEPTING THE FACT THAT I AM PROCRASTINATING IN LOOKING FOR A NEW JOB AND STILL NOT DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT. By accepting this fact, I CONCIOUSLY know there are things now to be done and needed to be done fast.

P.S. : At least I had settled my resume, now it is just a matter of getting the cover letter right. It’s not as bad as I think it is…right? No?

I had in my mind to do night photography after I came across several very beautiful night photographs from Tony Howell (http://www.tonyhowell.co.uk/). His photo inspired me to move my lazy butt to search for a self fulfilling photo and while his place of interest is mainly within the UK, I chose Singapore instead reason being, a safer place to do night shots while not to mention, there is nothing that Malaysia could offer in terms of beautiful night scenes with tall city buildings (with exception the KLCC Twin Towers which had been shot many times by others in which I didn’t want to repeat). So it was a Saturday and after parking my car at Jurong Point Shopping Mall, I proceed to the MRT and headed towards City Hall station. From City Hall, I wasted no time rushing (parking fees are expensive!!) to my point of interest and to my horror, it was cordoned off due to the Singapore F1 race that is to happen on 26 & 27 of September. I am not sure why it was cordoned off so early but you know lah…$$$. Anyway, I proceed towards the Marina Bay area and spent a good 30mins trying to get some decent shots. It was particularly quite difficult not to attract attention because of my tripod (which is quite big in size) and not to mention, the bulbous Sigma 24-70 f2.8 occupying the front portion of the camera body. Not only that, it was quite difficult for me to shoot with peace of mind,  not because of crime but I was particularly disturbed by the sheer number of people hugging and smooching along the sea bank while worrying all the time that I may look like a perverted clown and a half indulging in some kind of fetish voyeurism. Putting that thought aside, I just went about my routine of setting up the tripod, compose, get a decent focus and just snap away. It went about for an hour or so before I decided to switch off my camera and head home, after knowing that I had bagged several decent shots.

One lesson that I had learnt from this is that whenever you’re shooting at night, just forget about the light meter. It doesn’t work and you’ve got to take a guess that the exposure level that you need while harnessing all the experience you’ve known on exposure to produce a decent shot. The traditional light meter built within the camera is only good for day shots where light is ample and getting a correct exposure is easy. However, if it is at night, the amount of dark spaces appearing in the frame coupled with bright spots of light from the building would only further confuse the light meter and as a result, your photos would have been overly blown (highlights) to kingdom come if you’d expose your photos accordingly. So the key to expose correctly is, let the light meter ‘under expose’ by one stop and you’ll get your photo to be within the ‘correct’ exposure level for night photography (it depends on how much light the camera is receiving too, so judge according to situation).

At first, I really balked at the idea of running without any shoes but from the prescribed theories on efficient running gait, I was quite sure that my running style is not efficient and unsuitable while contributing to host of other problems. Instead of running shoeless, I took out my pair of ‘abandoned’ Diadora Mythos race flats and started to run in them. Armed with the newly learned knowledge on efficient running gait (which is to concentrate on running forefoot), I started out with a BANG and days later, ended like a flat tyre. My underutilised calves simply refused to co-operate and not to mention, it hurt like hell to run forefoot for the very first time.

From there, I came back everyday just to run forefoot and miraculously, my knee problems never surfaced again. With my new found knowledge, I further explored the net for information on shoes that mimic barefoot running and it was by chance I came to know upon a shoe named Vibram Five Fingers. These socks / shoes had been available in the United States for quite some time and was only recently being made available in Singapore. I was quite confident that I should be able to run in these shoes given that they are quite similar to race flats except, it had a very thin rubber sole.

I had a difficult first time in this shoe as it felt too awkward to run. It is awkward in the sense that your feet felt naked and there is no protection while not to mention, any pebbles larger than the size of your little finger’s nail could be felt under your soles. So imagine having to step onto a small stone the size of your thumb end, you’d be hobbling for the next 3 minutes or so with a contorted painful facial expression. However, one would need to remember that such shoes are meant to be a barefoot alternative and the ‘rubber soles’ were only meant to guard against abrasions. While it is very minimal in protection, it offered greatly in ‘feel’ where it was for the very first time, I could feel a full range of motion under my feet while running especially during landing phase where the feet could be felt rolling inwards dispersing all the shocks and the foot arches working in tandem with my Achilles while toeing off. Such feeling is difficult to describe because it ‘tastes’ bittersweet; bitter in the sense that your calves are screaming HELP! while it is so sweet that you could run like a kid without any shoes with all the freedom you’d ever wanted. One word of caution though, you’ve got to have a strong enough calf muscle to run in these shoes and all thoughts of ‘pain is gain’ should be fully erased from your mind because if you push yourself too far, you’re gonna have injuries.

There isn’t much to comment on this shoes with exception that it had great fit and it clamps on your foot without creating excessive pressure. It is good for those whom want to strengthen and to ‘remind’ the body on the correct running posture. As for racing using these shoes, it would definitely take some time and until now, whenever I use them for my 7 – 10k runs, my calves would be sore for at least a day or two but overall, it’s really fun.

With unpredictable weather hammering the southern part of Johor, no sane person would actually venture out during these times with their expensive photography gears. However, from my experience, it is exatly at this peak period of unpredictability that it creates stunning landscapes that photographers can only dream of. Many times throughout my journey that I observe whenever there is a day of hot weather coupled with afternoon thunderstorms, the evening skies are bound to be colour blindingly beautiful ranging from scorching red to serene purple. I had booked this Sunday to be the first day of my photography season and I believe it should last for a month or two before the monsoon takes over the skyline where JB will be a huge slab of grey colour (which is perfect for Black and White photos!).