Self Portrait

Out of Time

This is a self portrait, taken with a strip lightbank above me and two rectangle blackcard to block the excessive light bouncing in my bedroom. And of course I painted my face with black facepaint. It was shoot digitally and cropped to a square format. Although I'm very much against cropping a photo, self portraiture in this case, didn't quite allow me not to do so. I got to shoot blindly using a remote without any idea how it will look like. I can only rely at the digital display each time I took a shot, which I probably shot about 20 of the painted face.

Scanner

I took this photograph of myself from the scanner.

Luck or Fate?

During the evening jogs lately, I couldn't help but to notice certain types of people walking on the streets - the handicaps, the ultra fats, the ultra big bellies, the ones with clutches. My eyes are fixed on their phyiscal condition as I ran past them, and the thoughts of becoming one of them started to frighten me.

I guess that's the reason I always insist to work out lately. It's not like I wanted to me 10 years ago, to show of my muscular physique with a ultra tight top. But it is the thought of becoming one of them. It frightens me to think of the day when I need a clutch or wheels. So for now...I will maintain a good regular exercise routine.

Yes when I see this article, I see Kenneth. You can zoom in by double clicking the article. This guy who was resucitated had arteries blockage when he collasped and I think he is damn lucky to stay alive, as I've learnt that CPR is only useful for ventricular fibrillation. There are 2 types of cardiac arrest - VF and arteries blockage. VF is a condition in which there is uncoordinated contraction of the cardiac muscle of the ventricles in the heart. As a result the heart fails to adequately pump blood and hypoxia will occur followed by unconsciousness within 20 - 30 seconds. However, CPR is hardly useful for arteries blockages.

I wonder if Kenneth would be alive if he had met folks like these when he collasped? I still can't believe that people were just watching him helplessly when he collasped that day. No help was rendered, except for removing his shoes and his personal belongings from his feet and clothes. The colleague whom helped to removed Kenneth's shoes from his feet was so engrossed with his story of "shoes removal process" during the aftemath. I wonder if he knew what was more important at that juncture? Or did he simply refused to do a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? After all, the salivary exchange with another guy wasn't a pleasant affair. I'm not sure if it is saving instinct or out-of- gulit of not being able to resuscitate him, I enrolled myself for a CPR course with the RED CROSS at the end of this month. And I'm determined to educate my colleagues of the importance of CPR and emergency procedures. Not just standing there.

Personal Projects

Exam scripts marking is done. Examiners report is done. Time for 2 months of semester holidays soon! But i'll be teaching some part-time courses during these 2 months, so its not going to be a long break but at least i'm paid extra $$$ for that!

I usually spent lots of time with Mom and princess Fiona during my break. And of course lots of time on taking photographs too! That's the time that really belongs to me. Oh damn...got a new module to develop for next semester...so that woud take up extra time during my break...Gee..

Been thinking alot about my personal projects. I'm primarily interested to document human relationships like lately Ivy Singh-Lim forging a special bond with her employee from Bollywood Veggies. Not only did she not blame her employee for faking immigration passes, she also adopted him as a son and pay for all the litigation fees... I wanna do a portrait of her and her adopted son. And I'm gonna call her tomorrow for permission. I pray she would allow me to do so, coz she doesn't know me.

The next project which I wanna do is a series of portraits of my colleagues in the office. Like a tribute to lecturers. Many have been lecturing for a long long time. My colleague Poh Tee always teased me - "When I started teaching, you are still wearing diapers"....She is fantastic. She doesn't give a damn to the promotion. Her only real love and concern are for her students. And to advance in ones career in the education institution, one ought to do all the extra CCA. But not Poh Tee. She is really interesting and I would like to take a nice portrait of her. She's been lecturing for the past 18 years. There are so many of them.

Well that's what I would like to do. Other projects would be portraits of inter-racial couples in Singapore coz there are so many of them recently! But that would means approaching strangers on the street and I would be doing such lousy job with approaching strangers. I always imagine people looking me like a freak when I take photographs publicly!

This is a world where lives and relationships are so fragile, where we become so oblivious with our neighbours, colleagues, man on the streets, where we continue to damage our Mother Earth despite knowing the magnitude of destruction human had caused to the Earth. We are the best and worst species on Earth. And I like to document the way I view this world as much as possible before I die. For most of us will take along something with us when we die - Our Dreams

Arts does cost $$$$

Photography items bought this August

1. Mamiya RZ67 Pro II - $2500
2. Mamiya Sekor Lens 150mm - $900
3. Photek Softlighter - $200
4. Epson V700 - $915
5. Dry Cabin - $185
6. Manfrotto Magic Arm - $210
7. Films & Development - $100

Total - $5010

Saving a Life

After Kenneth's sudden death, I've enrolled myself with Red Cross for a proper CPR course in September. I hope I will never see another tragic like this again. But given the median age of my office is around 50, there is a higher statistical probability of recurrence. In the next few months, I will introduce noticeboards with CPR procedure, emergencies number and first aid courses to my office. Anyone with some lifesaving knowledge may just saved another person's life. If you are reading this and have no prior CPR training, you may also save someone's life just by keeping this CPR diagram and watch the CPR video : http://depts.washington.edu/learncpr/videodemo/adult-cpr-video.html

Closer

Great song and nice MTV featuring Ben Stiller!

Imitation Work

Vanity Fair

Bought an almost brand new Mamiya RZ67 recently and order a Photek Softlighter from Adorama.
Did some test shots with the Mamiya and the new light bank. Will be developing the films tomorrow and see how the results are. But, here's a preview shot which I used my 5D to test the light setup. The idea was to test out the light setup used by Annie Leibovitz in the July issue of Vanity Fair. I used the same lightbank and setup (or close enough hehe). Then I decided to have some fun by making it into a Vanity Fair cover too!

Death

Today my boss collasped in the office and was dead shortly after arriving hospital. When I got back to the office after my meeting, Audrey told me Kenneth has collasped as I walked past. I hurried towards his cubicle, there were already people surrounding it, watching him. The paramedics has not arrived yet but I noticed Eng Kiat and Matthew were attending to him. It was almost silent when I broke out and asked what happened. Just then, April interrupted and asked if I know CPR. It was then I realised that no one was actually providing any medical assistance. Eng Kiat and Matthew were also just watching but squatting beside him. I hesitated by giving the excuse of that it has been more than 10 years since I learnt CPR in the army. "But you may just save his life if you try!" retorted April. Somthing just quickly got into me. In an instant I was down on my keens and my instinct had prompted me to detect possible heartbeat and pulse. But there were none. The office was so quiet that I was absolutely sure I could hear none. In the next 5 seconds, I tried recalling how to perform CPR but as I recall, my palms were already on his chest. I soon realised the seriousness of the situation. My palms pushed harder and harder on his chest as I quickly got used to the rythmn. After about 5 pushes, I had his mouth open while his nose pinched, as I blew hard into his throat. There were some rumbling but I figured that was my breath pushing into lungs. As I repeated the resuscitation, I mumbled to myself "Come on Kenneth". But I noticed that he had pee on his pants and his face were already purpish black. I knew I had lost him. I could feel it.

Just then, Paul arrived, volunteering to pump his chest, while I continued resuscitating by blowing thru his airway. I didn't had time to think and gave some space to Paul. Then we carried on till the paramedics arrived. The paramedics performed CPR with defibrillator for about 15mins before evacuating him to the nearest hospital. Some colleagues helped to lift him up to the ambulance along the way.

Shortly after the ambulance sped off, the crowd broke into smaller group, spreading to other cubicles around Kenneth's. Some were consoling others who were traumatized by the event - Lai Leng and Poh Tee were crying. April broke the silence as she was cheering up others with optimism, since the paramedics had successfully arrived in less than 20mins and CPR was rendered on him. He should have a good chance. She even observed that he looked better and seem to be breathing a little.

I went to the restroom to rinse my mouth, after all the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Then I returned to my desk and attempted to recollect what just happened. Everything happened so fast that I was only reacting to my instinct. I could hear Poh Tee and Lai Leng's sob, as I tried to recall Kenneth's the condition - his face, his body, my CPR method..every single details...

Eventually other recollections started to surface. He was my reporting officer since I started worked (3.5 years) and I had been really miserable under him - bullied and verbally abused on many occassions. I disliked, detested him all these while. Our interactions were extremely superficial. I was always polite with my replies but vuglarities in my mind soon follow. I hated the superficial relationship. I hated how he dump work onto you without helping. I hated how he expects updates. I hated how he puts the blame on you when mistakes are made. I hated how he used me as scrapgoat when things gone wrong.

Then I recalled that very moment as I stared down at him, just before I performed the CPR. Here's a man I detest. A man who had wrong footings with many colleagues in the office. A man that perhaps not worthy of my help.

My thoughts drifted to a recent incident which he had conveniently turned accusations on me. Last week I was so upset by his accusation as he shouted "If you made a mistake, please admit it", among the director and senior manager. He was mad that a mistake was discovered and so I had to take the blame, probably because he had been making major boo boo lately. The management knew it and has requested me to write a factual statement of the incident and what other discoveries that I may have made along the way. It was revenge time I thought.

It was probably at this point when my mind gone blank. So I tried to return to marking assignments but the words from the assignments just didn't register. Soon tears started to flow and I broke down. I wasn't sure why. Was it because I was pessimistic that he might not lived? Or was it because I shouldn't have plotted against him with all the statements I was beginning to write?

If there are colleagues who are traumatized by the incident, shouldn't it be me???

About 30 mins past and the colleagues besides me were already whispering of his death. I could hear April voices, as my head were on my desk. She quickly killed the rumour by retorting that we need to hear it officially and should stop the rumour now. In the next few minutes, more sobbings came, no one else speaks.....and I knew it was real.

My heart sank deeper as I couldn't hold on to my tears any longer. I thought I might have saved his life, just like what April predicted. And he probably appreciate my kindess when he learnt how I tried saving him, when no one else dared. But he didn't give me the chance, not even a chance to write a statement to clear my innocence.

He's gone now and I'm terribly sadden by the sudden departure. But why? Because I couldn't save him? Because I feel sorry for him when I saw he lying helplessly on the floor? Or am I feeling guilty trying to plot against him? There are so much questions left unanswered, without Kenneth.

Mom

This is my mom and I love her very much.

Harmony

Everytime when I looked into this photograph, I thought I had captured a moment, where gloomness and calmness looked as though they are in harmony.

Here is a sticklike old man toiling up a trolley fully-loaded with paper carton, probably heavier than his own weight. But yet, his facial expression reveals a sense of calmness. It looked as though he didn't mind the gruelling task under the scorching hot sun. What was he thinking? Was he happy because of he collected so much paper carton and it's going fetch him more money than the usual?

Ironically, my sadness was comforted by his calmness of his face, as though he is comforting me. In retrospect, what right do I have to freeze the moment of an old man's life like this one?

Time Machine

This photograph of a man, probably the owner of a repair shop for clockes and watches was taken more than a year back in Malacca.

It's a pity that I couldn't find him around, when I was there in June this year. One way or another, photographs always take on a new meaning when one reminisces the past.

Evolution

A glimpse of the history of American photography and its photographers are far more profound than any photography techniques I've ever learnt. For techniques are useless without a vision. At times, techniques kills the creative mind. Techniques are guilty of all the beautiful images ever created, all in a similar way. Now I understand why one has to break all rules onces it has been learnt.

I do not proclaim to know the photography history well. I can only say that photographers like Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand who are both dead now (Diane committed suicide in 70s while Garry died of cancer in 80s), had given the world a different photographic view during 1950s to 1970s. Their images so intriguing and controversial that drew much sceptism during their time. But of course their work are used in the photography textbooks now.

Arbus is known for her work in photographing freaks and turning ordinary citizens in poses and settings conveying a disturbing uncanniness. In her own quote "Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats"

Winogrand, on the other hand has been described by Leo Rubenfien as a photographer largely misunderstood by many photographers. His friendship and encounters with Winogrand has shed a different light of Winogrand's work. Winogrand's well-known declaration "I photograph to find out what things look like, photographed" baffled many people.

A glimspe of the works of Winogrand and Arbus has beginning to make me re-think what is a good photograph.

Accomplishment w/o Achievements

Accomplishment without a sense of achievement. Another day of feeling goddamn drained by work. I've completed so much at work that I ought to feel proud of myself. But instead, I'm totally drained - mentally and physically. There are many stuff which I want to do incorporate into my personal life after work - jogging, working out, photo experiment, networking.... However approximately 90% of my energy are utilized at work and the remaining pathetic 10% are left for driving home, dinner and watching tv. (btw, jogging and gym was part of my regular routine years ago).

Are these signs of the aging process or am I simply getting lazier? Can't I simply put on my pair of adidas and dash out of the house, irregardless of my energy level? Everytime, when I wanna do that, the devil in me would convince me otherwise. So for sometime now, I've been blaming it on work. I feel alienated by work, pondering if I gonna live my life like this in eternity. Well, there are definitely better days when I feel energized and would really put on my adidas. But not today.

Today, I wonder if I can live a more fulfilling life by doing things that I like (which is photography), and not feeling drained by work? But how? I do not have the means of making a decent living out of photography. It is definitely a safer route to take with a full time job. Oh... and the endless bills too - house, car, insurance, taxes, new gadgets, utilities bills....

I hate to admit, but there are too much at stake to forgo my job.

Daily Objects

These are some of my favourite stuff at home.

1. Terracotta with a broken head
2. Supplement powder which I take every morning
3. Nike Sneakers (I love it so much that I bought a same pair with a different colour in HK this year)

Footsteps

Meeting

It was great bumping into Chee Pin and Jason again last night (and of course their friends like Kex and Alice too). It was also great to catchup with Sharon for dinner, since we haven't met each other for many months. I had 2 pints of Guinness, 2 bottles of Heineken in Bala before leaving the place at 12.30am. I figured that I might struggle to get out of bed this morning for a goddamn meeting at 9am, hence I decided not to join them at St. James. Speaking of which, I have 2 other meaningless meetings at 1pm and 3pm as well. There are 2 types of meetings in my dictionary:

1. When one is absolutely clueless with a task at hand, a meeting known as "Brainstorming Session" will be called to seek ideas from another bunch of clueless people.

2. When one has too many tasks at hand, a meeting disguised in different names like - weekly meeting, committee meeting, management meeting, department meeting etc. will be called upon. Needless to say, you know the real agenda of such meetings :)

This photo of myself is a self-portrait taken with a 50mm canon lens on tripod, placed at the far end of the table. I had one light source thrown from the top right. The reflection of myself is real on the marble dining table. I used a remote to trigger the camera timer and did a few poses. The cups and bowls were subsequently shot individually with the same light source and then I photoshop them. The reflection of the cups and bowls were also created in photoshop by an easy vertical and horizontal flipping of the images and reducing the opacity to create reflection. Actually, the process wasn't complicated but a rather tedious one. Without a subject, one has to deal with issues like pre-composition, light and focus. All these are done without a dummy subject. There was a lot of trial & error, before I could get the focusing & lighting right. Nevertheless, I think the process of self-portraiture has forced me to previsualize on the image and setup harder and at the same time learn to work systematically.

p/s: As I'm writing this blog, I found that the damn meeting at 1pm has been postponed, because the chairperson is a confused soul, swarmed by too many MEETINGS. *Yawn*

Genre

Can one become a photographer who is versatile but yet also good in various genre of photography?

Recently, I read a photography article which contains a notion of something like - 'a photographer must specialize in something he likes and not tempted to follow the market trend as it would mean suicidal'. While I agree to the latter part of the notion, I'm more inclined to be versatile because that's what make photography exciting! I love capturing moments in wedding, scenes on the streets, landscape, sports, wildlife, portraiture, fashion, product, commericial. I love working with and also without strobes. I love elaborated as well as simple setup, both indoor and outdoor!

I simply love the fact that photography has so much to offer! Specializing in a single genre is like giving up the entire forest for a single tree! Perhaps being good in all genre is impossible, especially when different genre calls for a different skill set. A photojournalist operates in a ridicuously fast pace - capturing moments, while a landscape photographer is slow and steady, often working with perfect depth of field and well thought compositions. Hmm...there are so much to ponder over photography.

At the moment, I'm simply following my heart on what I like to do and experiment. After all, not relying photography for a living is a real advantage of an 'In-Between'. We can afford to experiment and horn our skills in various genre and most importantly enjoy it too!

Purple Dance

My experiment of freezing poster colour ended up with this image. Each drop of purple paint was shot individually and I simply stitched them up together with Photoshop (PS). The layering job was easy as the background was black in colour. This made feather selection easy for copy and paste. I didn't even have to use the extract filter in PS2 to extract the droplets. Then it was just a matter of placing the droplets to my liking on a 645 format.

The image ended up looking like super-sperm cells dancing luminously in water! And if you click on the image, you will notice the amazing twisting and turning of each cell. This was all captured on camera! No other filter effect was apply, except of the stitching, sharpening and pumping up the colour saturation.

Lately, I received a photography job to shoot for a corporate event which I happily rejected. Well, firstly, the client sounded really cocky on the phone and photographers definitely deserved better respect than that. Secondly, shooting a corporate event is the most degrading type of photography job to me. It is definitely a no-brainer. Anyone with a camera could shoot a prize giving, group photos, and a speech! And sometimes you get order around like a waiter by nasty client! Once I shot a banking conference organized by Financial Times during IMF in 2006, the editor-in-chief ordered me around like I'm lousy waiter! But I tolerated, since he was paying me $1000 for a 2 hours no-brainer job.

Thirdly, she can't pay my charges of $250 per hour which I had charged for several corporate events. Honestly, I felt that there is really no need to undercut anyone to get such a degrading job.

Fourthly, I wanted a real commercial job like product or portraiture. Just like the recent Banyan Tree job that I did, I really like it as it horned my skills and at the same time, I got more respect and pay! Fifthly, I'm lecturing full time, which means I'm not desperate for $$$.

Well, the reasons are endless when I don't wanna do something which I dislike :)

In or Out?

Is this watch jumping in or out of the water? Funny how our perception can trick us sometimes. Is this how visual artists manipulate with perceptions?

Well, this is how I did it. After my little experiment with splashing water the other night,...I decided to get bolder this time and had a little fish tank which I borrowed from my brother Roy.

I filled it up with water and setup the same lighting as the perfume bottle. But this time, I placed the fish tank on top of an old CD rack from Ikea, so that the height is high enough for me to stand comfortably. Then I tried threwing different objects into the tank to see how it works- listerine bottle, apple, plum, grapes, bottle caps. Then I finally used my Nike watch, since the bright yellow strap with the splashing water would stand out from the dark nicely.

I just kept dropping the watch while pressing the remote simultaneously. I must had shot about 50 photographs before I managed to get this one. 50? Not bad at all! Some would have shot a few hundreds before getting one right. Becoming systematic as an 'In-Between' is something which I learnt after countless of shoot and the tedious setting up of lighting equipment and camera. But the efficiency level just kicks in after I become more systematic.

This is how I work : First I had an ideal, then I experiment with the idea. Only after experimenting and feeling that it may just work, then will the lightings, camera and everything else be setup. Before this, I just jumped from step 1 to step 3, without thinking there could be a small possibility that my briliant idea might not work. And that was just plain stupid. It is no small feat to set up the studio equipment all by yourself and then shooting it. So since I'm my own assistant as well as the photographer, I need to be clever in doing things. In case you are trying out studio photography, take this advice seriously!

Back to the watch, I rotated the photo 180 degrees in Photoshop, and this is how it looks after that. I also colour corrected it and enhanced the dynamic range by adjusting the curve and sharpening it. The image is definitely cropped, as the 35mm format of a DSLR simply sucks in product shoot. Unfortunately, the focal plane shutter also couldn't freeze the watch completely and there are some blur, if you examine it carefully.

Euphoria

An hour after my first blog and finally I got a hang of the functions within blogger.com! I got the feeling that the site doesn't run well on Safari. It was kinda slow in loading the pages and photos. Well, at least I can get up to speed with the posting now that I become more familiar with the features.

As my disastrous idea of freezing motions continues, I became more ambitious with the idea of freezing water.Since it was terribly difficult to do a self-portrait (probably pressing the camera remote and splashing a bucket of water on myself at the same time!), I turned to splashing water on objects instead. First, I used a wine glass, but it turned out ugly after 20 shots. No matter how I composed it, the glass just didn't gel with the background and lightings. So I used a perfume bottle instead and tried several composition, before I decided to face it flat towards the camera.

Next I single-handed poured water from a used 1.5L of Pokka bottle onto the perfume, while the other hand was busy with the wired remote as I poured. It was night time, so I could take out ambient light completely. After 50 shots, I previewed it with Lightroom and I kinda like this shot most. With the selected photo, I removed the water flowing on top of the perfume bottle with Photoshop. Then I colour corrected it using the techniques prescribed by Lee Varis from his book - SKIN. (Yeah I know, the technique is meant to correct skin tone, but it works in this case too!)

As for lighting the bottle, I placed one strobe right above the bottle and surrounded white cards on the side and front. Since I am using a strip lightbox, I had to cut off excessive lights by placing black cards on the lightbox.

The speed of the water flow in this photo is definitely slower than my mom's spray! And I guess the motion is better 'frozen' this time, though it ain't perfect.

Hmm... what objects should I try using next?

Welcome to My Blog

Hello! Welcome to my newly setup blog.

Tonight, I'm supposed to catchup with a new friend whom I met during a photography trip to Malacca in June. Well, he stood me up, so now...I got no one to go out with! I was pretty excited when we finally managed set a date to meet up, as you will find out that I'm a lone photographer, without friends of the same passion. Most of the time its just me and my camera.... and well, my profoto strobes too. So getting to know a photographer friend is a BIG DEAL to me!

Out of boredom, I decided to create a new blog. I had a blog on yahoo but blogger.com is definitely more impressive.

My expression on the photograph above would tell you how I'm feeling after being stood up right now. And yes, this is me. This photo is taken by myself. Spraying water on my face with one hand and triggering the camera remote with the other. Double click on the photo and you can see every single details of the water droplets on my face and earlobes.

I have a ritual of doing self portraits at night. And something struck me to experiment stopping motions with strobes lately. So I started to test with my mother's spray, which she uses for ironing clothes! After spraying myself about 200 times, the water droplets still seem blurrish on the photos, I can't seem to freeze such high-speed motion with a focal plane shutter and the flash duration of the B2 (profoto battery-packed strobes) are probably not fast enough too.

Although the experiment wasn't a real success, I thought the water droplets on my face was fantastic. The strong side light picked up the details of evey single droplets. And I was kinda happy with it. Now it becomes a wallpaper on my mac!