2011

Happy new year to my readers, if there's any.


Have a great year!

Pei Yan

Butterfly hill

Located not far from the NPark's Ubin-HSBC Volunteer Hub is a small hill with lots of plants.
These plants attract different species of butterfly to that hill.
It was my first time shoot butterfly.
I must say that it is not easy to capture them as they hardly stay still.
Furthermore almost all the butterflies will fly away once I get near them.

I was kind of nice chasing after them but soon, I gave up.
I did manage to capture a few of them.

Parantica agleoides agleoides
Dark Glassy Tiger

Lampides boeticus
Pea Blue / Long-tailed Blue

Butterflies are definitely much more difficult to identify the species.
The same family can look so similar, with only one small detail difference to mark a different species.

Shooting butterfly is a new experience for me.

Pei Yan


*Edit: updated with the correct ID of the butterfly.

Mangrove Dwarf @ Chek Jawa

Yay...
I've added another dragonfly shot to my collection.
That makes it 8 true dragonfly species I have out of the many found in Singapore.

Raphismia bispina
Mangrove Dwarf (female)
Uncommon

My friend tells us that the male species is blue and it's too far away from the boardwalk to shoot.


Pei Yan

P.Ubin, Land of Robbers

Don't be alarmed.
P.Ubin is a safe place.

I was referring to the robber fly.
We really saw a lot of robber fly until we lost count of them.
We saw them in all sizes. From tiny ones to big ones.
Every where we turn, we are sure to find a robber fly.

This is how a robber fly looks like.

General public usually call the different species of fly, fly.

This is not just any ordinary fly, this is a robber fly.

Pei Yan

Oriental Pied Hornbills @ Chek Jawa

I heard them, I saw them.
It's the oriental pied hornbills.
I was that Chek Jawa with my photography friends at about 9am plus.
The hornbills were very active today as compared to my other visits to Chek Jawa.

We heard them as we were walking in to Chek Jawa.
Accompanying the sound of the hornbills was a woodpecker pecking at a tree branch right above our shooting location.
I didn't get a picture of it thought. It was covered by some tree ferns.
I saw them flying around at the start of the boardwalk and again at the coconut tree at House No. 1.

Later in the afternoon, I saw another pair at the butterfly hill, not far from the HSBC volunteer's house.

Taken at Butterfly Hill

A pair of hornbills

For some reason, I feel quite excited whenever I see hornbills or talk about their man-made nesting box at Chek Jawa.

I think that hornbills are great birds.

Pei Yan

Sunrise @ Ubin (part 2)

After a great sunrise and island walkabout session at Ubin on Monday, my friends and I are back again today for another round of shooting.
Today's session focuses on sunrise and macro.

The light wasn't as great as Monday's but I got to try my new set of filters.
I also enjoyed the cooling waters and waves hitting as high as my thighs as I placed my setup in the sea.
The light rain did not stop us from shooting.
We carried on despite having rain drops all over our equipment and filters.

It's kind of addictive shooting sunrise and sunsets.
However school is starting soon...

Pei Yan

Ubin sunrise

Today is another crazy sun chasing session.
This time it is in the east.
Woke up at 4.30am, ate breakfast at the market before cabbing down to meet the rest at 6am.
We were lucky that the boat had 2 other passengers, so we paid less.


The rocks there were really beautiful.
It was a pity that I didn't bring extra shoes, otherwise I would very much want to go into the sea to shoot.
My images were not good but the process and experience was fun.

I guessed you know where I went to...

PeiYan

Macro @ Venus Loop

I am back at Venus Drive again for another round of macro session with my friends.
This time round is a day macro session.
Our destination is further in on the left track from where we usually shoot.
Here are some of the images from the trip:

Blue-spotted Flatwing, uncommon

Treehugger

Telephone Sylvan (Male)

Copper-cheeked Frog

Blue-sided Satinwing (Male), uncommon

It was a great day with lots of subjects to shoot and not forgetting a few bashing and getting stuck in mud.
This is my first time getting quite dirty, but not wet.
The water in the stream was so nice and cool.

I want to go back there again someday.

Pei Yan

Sunrise at Upper Peirce Reservoir

For the first time since I took up photography, I actually woke up at 4.30am to catch sunrise with my friends.
We drove down to Upper Peirce Reservoir, walked through dark steep slope before reaching our destination.



The light wasn't very good but I did capture a few streaks of red in the sky.

Catch the sun,
Pei Yan

Macro @ Punggol

It's the school holiday period.
I get more time to go on outings with my friends.
This morning, we went to punggol. One of my friends was looking for a specific species of dragonfly.
The sun was up and shining brightly on us. It was really hot.


There wasn't much subjects to shoot.
The dragonflies were swift in their flight.
The only catch I got was this.

Spine-tufted Skimmer (Male)

There were a few spiders to shoot, but I'm afraid of spiders so I just looked at them.
Amongst the few spiders, one of them is the Singapore Tarantula.
It's really small and gives a nasty bite.

The rest of my images can be found here.

Pei Yan

From Plamp to Plamps

On tuesday, I was on a buying spree.
First the Tamron 180mm macro from a fellow CSer, then I went to Cathay Photo to get the Wimberley Plamp.
Here it is:


On Thursday night, a fellow exposer posted on the exposer thread that someone is selling 4 plamps at a wooping price of $200.
That's $20 cheaper per piece.
Tempting me so much, I texted the seller on Friday night and I had the deal the today.
So now, I have 5 plamps:

That is really a lot of plamps to use.

Plamp-y-fied,
Pei Yan

Night Macro Session 2

Another night macro session with my macro gang.
When we got to our shooting site, we found that the grass by the sides of the path had been trimmed.
There wasn't much insects to be found on the short grass.
However all is not disappointed. We saw some other interesting creatures.

My first subject was found my Michael.
It was the glowing mushroom.

After I finish shooting it, we realised that there are plenty of it in the dense vegetation.
Michael said that these mushrooms grow on rotting wood.
I couldn't get the image of the stalk of the mushroom though.

Next I found a field frog myself.
Actually it was Michael who showed us the area of croaking frogs but... I did spot this frog myself.

This creature was so quite and still, while listening to the smaller fellas make their forested music.
Andrew found this damselfly perched on a hanging twig some distance inwards.
It is a Blue-spotted Flatwing.

Quite disappointing with this shot as I did not realise that I was shooting at iso800.
The image came out grainy when I looked at it at home.
The sad thing was this is my first record of this damsel and it is one of the two "good" image that I had. :(

My next subject was a thorny caterpillar.

My second last catch was the arrowhead flatworm.
It is a Terrestrial Flatworm or Land Planarian.

Bipalium sp.

Another great night macro with new subjects to shoot.

Pei Yan

Meow?!?

Meow :)

New Toy: LED torch

New toy for me.
I bought a LED torch after being poisoned by my shooting company during the night macro session.
The torch has 2 types of lumen (light power) and it comes with a strobe function.
so cool...

The torch can take 1AA by default and there is an extension to fit 2AA.
shiok...

I can't wait to use it officially.

Default setup, 1AA batt

Extended setup, 2AA batt

Shine torchie shine!!!

Pei Yan

Night Macro Session 1

My first try on night macro shooting last night at Venus Drive.
It was the first night after the 7th month.
Leong said that it is going to be very dark as there's no moon tonight.
In the first place, the whole carpark where we met was already dark.
We had to walk along the path for some distance till we reach our shooting site.
Good thing for LED lights and torches, it did lit up the area a bit but it was still dark and I am quite afraid of walking around in dark areas.

It was really scary to shoot alone while the others are at other locations as the surroundings were really dark.
Furthermore we had to scout around for insects to shoot.
Focusing the subject in the dark with a torch was a challenge too.
A few of my subjects were found from my shooting gang.

Here are some of the images from my first session:

Green hopper

Red Hopper

Adult Cockroach

Long legged Centipede

Some wasp?

It was a good session.
With my rain boots on, my feet did not get wet in the puddled and muddy path.
Night macro is fun. When the weather is cool and moist, you actually breathe out "smoke" (whatever it is called).

Pei Yan

Adobe Photoshop CS5: Content-Aware Fill Sneak Peek

Adobe Photoshop is coming up with Creative Suite 5.

Apparently, the new feature in CS5 is Content-aware.

It is a smart function that does the clean up when you want to remove objects from the image.

The software will decide the environment and clean up (or clone) the area for you.

It really helps in the cloning process and makes the image look very smooth and unedited.

Watch the video to find out more.

Are you ready for Photoshop CS5?

Peiyan

Beatuiful Sky

The weather for the past few days has been scorching hot.
I can feel the intense of the heat even when I'm at home.
Outside, it's even worst and standing under the sun for a few seconds feel like getting heatstroke.

However, the bright and sunny weather these few days has brought nice opportunities for pretty sunset shots.
While deciding what to have for dinner with my friends at Jurong Point, I came around this beautiful sun setting sky.

Pretty sunset,
Peiyan

Remember this...

Today,
While packing my room. I came across this set of A3 size magazines in my box.
Actually, I always know it's existence as I can see them through the box.
Now, it's the time to take them out to let them have some fresh air and sunshine.
hahahaha.

It's actually the free editions of the PhotoVideoi magazine.
I still can remember every month, I would take a walk down to my one and only photo developing shop just to get a copy of this free magazine.
Though I do not have every copy of this free magazine, looking at them now still bring up the time where the free magazine was issued.
As the president of the tampines junior collage photographic society at that time, I actually wrote in to have the magazine delivered to collage so that other students who are interested can have a copy.
(actually, it is more of a convenience sake.)

PVi,
Peiyan

Black and White on my LX3

My LX3's mode uses the properties of a film.
I can select the different type of film and set their characteristic.
Today, I decided to try the black and white mode on my camera.

The setting I've use is dynamic black and white.
Then I can choose to change the contrast and a few other settings.
For the following pictures, I tried on 3 different contrast settings from 0 to +2.

Setting 1: 0 contrast


Setting 2: +1 contrast


Setting 3: +2 contrast


Out of the 3 settings, I prefer either setting 2 or 3 as they give the good contrast between black, and white.

There are more features to be explored from my lovely LX3.

It's black and white,
Peiyan

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3

Finally...
I have been looking at this digital camera ever since Gerald told me about it.
Looking through the reviews and user reviews, this camera seems good and useful.
And with the $400 available to claim, how can I not resist buying the camera?

I bought the camera from MS Color, more specifically, from Aunty Florence.
Really nice lady I must say.

The images are from www.dpreview.com


I'm loving my LX3,
Peiyan