Denise and Kelvin are young entrepreneurs with a passion for books. Being in their mid 20s they are too young to secure a loan from the Singapore Government but they decided to start their own business anyway and now provide books to many schools across Singapore. The way they talk about literature with such knowledge and passion it's not surprising to see that their business www.closetfulofbooks.com is growing really quickly. Good luck Kelvin and Denise!
A selection of photos of bikes and motorbikes from China.
I was lucky enough to spend New Year's Eve in Auckland, New Zealand. Auckland is the first major city to see in the New Year so it was great to be there and witness the firework display. The fireworks are launched from one of the city's best known landmarks, the Sky Tower. The tower is 328metres (1,076 feet) high making it the tallest building in the southern hemisphere.
I've not really photographed fireworks before so it was a little experimental. I decided to set the camera's shutter to 'bulb' release which meant I could control exactly how long the shutter was open for once I had opened it. After some experimentation before the display it looked like an 8 second exposure would expose the scene pretty well. When it came to the display itself I opened the shutter when a new burst of fireworks was launched and then closed it after about 8 seconds, though this varied according to each burst of fireworks. Inevitably this led to some overexposure where the fireworks were brightest but generally the rest of the scene looked pretty well exposed.
The image below on the left is the original unedited photo and the one on the right is the image I have edited in Adobe Lightroom. The dynamic range of the D800 means that the detail is still recorded in the overexposed areas which really helps.
Settings: Nikon D800, 16-35mm lens at 35mm. Manual exposure. f10. 10sec. Cable release. Tripod. Pre-focused on tower and then set to manual focus.
Some recent portraits of Singapore swimmer Lukas Menkhoff.
Shot with Nikon D800 and 70-200mm lens on a tripod.
Great day today at Tanglin Trust School where the Liverpool Masters team visited to train some of the students. Amongst others, Robbie Fowler, Emile Heskey & Steve McManaman took part and were fantastic with the students. I was lucky enough to take some photos for the school...
This weekend I took some photos of some lovely friends Elaine, Alex, Benji and Baby Orla. We didn't have long as the sun was going down and we needed to get to dinner/beers, so I popped up an umbrella in a spot where the sun light was coming in nicely behind the family creating a rim light. It all worked really well with a simple one flash set up shooting through the umbrella.
Alex standing behind me trying to make everyone laugh.
I recently wanted to test out my new #Lastolite Ezybox II Switch. My Nephew and Niece were kind enough to model for me. I used the light in the narrow strip light setting and it seems a really great solution. Very portable and easy to set up and the light from it looks great. Thanks Lastolite, another great product. As with a lot of my gear I bought this at Wex in the UK who always give great advice.
I'm just packing up for my first school shoot of the academic year. Tomorrow I'll be shooting two events at Tanglin Trust School here in Singapore. Both the schools that use me have booked me in for plenty of shoots so it should be nice and busy for the next few months.
During the City to Surf Marathon on Sunday in Perth we passed this lovely old boat shed. I decided, rather ambitiously, to head back there the next morning to take some photos as the morning light looked lovely at 6.30am as we ran past.
So I creaked out of bed at 6am and then hobbled for an hour before I reached the boat shed. I hadn't realised it was going to be quite so far and I missed the sunrise. Anyway I set up my tripod on the rocks and soon realised that a) the shot didn't work there and b) I was in danger of falling and breaking an ankle I was so unsteady on my feet after the previous day's 42km.
So I shifted to the end of the walkway and tried a few high and low angles. The wind was blowing a lot and it was pretty chilly sitting there timing the long exposures on my iPhone. I was using a Lee Big Stopper filter to try and ensure the sea was as smooth as possible despite the wind. This filter pushed the exposures out to between 40 to 120 seconds, which did the trick.
Anyway, here are my best two shots with shooting info. I especially like the cloud movement in the B&W shot.
48 seconds at f22 ISO100 16-35mm lens at 16mm Nikon D800 Lee Filters Big Stopper filter
120 seconds at f22 ISO50 16-35mm lens at 16mm Nikon D800 Lee Filters Big Stopper filter
I still need to master the Lee Filter system as I seem to get a magenta haze across parts of the image on some exposures. I also really struggled to use the Big Stopper with the graduated filter. If I had managed to use the graduated filter I would have got a lot more detail in the sky which would have been nice. Always more to learn....
Anyway, it was great to get out there and take some post-marathon shots.
