On a sentimental note ....

This note had been languishing in Kecil's blog draft box for the longest time. It was a true sentiment (and still is!), but just somehow out of place, until I remember this other blog, a much better place to share this. I hope you enjoy it.

Lately, Kecil's been so busy, she fell asleep not too long after Mama tucked her in bed.

But there are also days,
When she went on full steam right to the very last minute,
Jumping, tumbling, screaming, and generally wreaking havoc,
Especially on Mama's already frayed nerves and aching muscles
(She jumped on me, and she's heavy, so yes, frayed nerves and aching muscles I DO have)
And that last minute seem to always be the next, and the next and the next...
And this Mama felt like roaring, sometimes simply ignoring the Kiddo, while longing for the peace I know would happen once this Little One is asleep,
If only it would happen soon ....

Until suddenly ...
All is quiet...
Except for a beautiful sound of a steady breathing ....
And her hand slowly unclenched ...
Releasing the finger she had held so tight, unwilling to let go...

I wrote before of magic that happen once those beautiful eyes closed.
It is still there, the magic.
There was the quiet, the sense of wonder, the awe, the amazement...
A tinge of disbelief, even, that I should have this privilege,
Of such a beautiful creature,
an inquisitive and quick mind,
Fast feet and nimble hands.

And suddenly I am reminded of all the wrongs that I have done against this innocence,
Who had been, after all, simply asking for my time, my attention, my guidance.

And so, as I gently ease my hand away,
I took a deep breath, and made a personal promise,
That I will do better tomorrow,
That we will spend more time together,
That I will listen carefully to all your questions,
And answer them to the best of my ability, rather than simply answering to stop the barrage of questions,
That I will teach and guide you,
So that, hopefully, you'll reach your full potential,
And more.
Oh, so much more.

Sleep tight, and sweet dreams, my child.

Oma

From the moment she was diagnosed with tumour, and, later on, multiple myeloma, I had known that the clock was ticking.
I have always wanted to take a picture of her, my mom.
One good picture, how hard could it be?

Harder than I thought, for sure.
Back in the old house, there wasn't just enough good lighting.
Then there was the clutter, even in the new house (although it sure had some nice light there).
Then there was the unwilling subject.
She was simply not comfortable in front of the camera, and still a student of photography that I am, I would not want to invade her privacy if she does not want to have her picture taken.

Luckily that day I was just trying out, and I got that pic up there.

Not that I really thought it was a gem at first. I did not even look at the pic beyond the quick check on the camera's screen.
Because a mere 2 days after the picture was taken, her condition took a turn for the worse.
And worse and worse and worse.
Until one morning, she was simply gone in her sleep.

I looked in vain for that one good picture for her funeral.
The best was from my wedding ceremony, a good 6 years back, when the two of us was photographed while waiting for the taxi that will take us to the venue.
Hardly the most recent picture of Mom, I'd say.

So it was a good many days after that I finally found the picture above,
With all its beautiful (tinted) light, the clutter, the somewhat awkward smile,
But hey, it was Mom, all right.

Mom at her 'command center' at the new house, where she would sit and enjoy the light,
Away from the flow of the wind blowing into the house,
Close to all the things she needed, her meds, hot water, food, entertainment,
Her stuff populating the glass shelves installed against the window frame behind her,
It was, indeed, the very essence of Mom during those final days.

It would seem, then, that I had indeed gotten that one good picture of her, after all,
Something to remember her by,
Not a picture of someone who was sick, who was helpless,
But Mom who was full of spirit, despite all her sickness, her weakness
Smiling, looking happy....

I'd like to think she would be happy too, to be remembered thus.

Be well, Mom.

I've gotten into the habit of calling Mom 'Oma' since that is what my little girl calls her. It kind of help cleared the confusion since Kecil calls me 'Mama', the very title that I used to call my Mom.

Travelling with the old phone

The old Samsung phone might be almost 6 years old (or more, I'm not too sure anymore), but it's still working.
It does not have a QWERTY keyboard (which makes texting horribly difficult), nor wifi (which kinds of make it a dumb phone), yet whenever I travel overseas, this is the phone that I would bring.
And that shot up there is the reason why.

I am not too sure if Samsung still do this, but when I got this phone, the default 'theme' was this theme, which features the city skyline/famous landmark of the country you are in. I believe the display changes according to the information pulled from the local network. When there is no network available, it will just show a plain field under the blue sky.

Even better, the display also changes according to the time of the day. At night, the sky would turn dark, and the buildings (if there is any) will be lit accordingly.
The wonder does not stop there. Should there be any text message, depending on your settings, it would first vibrate/beep/make the message notification sound. On the display, there might be either an airplane pulling a streamer across the sky (in the afternoon setting) or fireworks (night setting).
I mean, how cool is that?

But of course, the point with bringing the phone overseas has more to do with picture than other whistle and bells.
So Singapore (where I bought the phone) was represented by the Merlion. No surprises, although I could have sworn there used to be the Esplanade building behind as well.
Hong Kong, the Hong Kong island skyline.
Malaysia, KL's Petronas twin towers.
Also no pictured here was Indonesia (Budha statue from Borobudur Temple. Quite an interesting choice given the majority of the population is Muslim), and US (Liberty Statue, what else?).

Then come the last picture...

Any guesses? I did idly wondered about what the picture will be when I was coming here. So... well... I guess they ARE supposedly quite famous for their beaches.
Well... anyway, if you still can't tell, try placing your mouse over the image for the answer.

As for me, I am still wondering how long this phone would last me. After all, I do wonder what kind of pics would they pick to represent so many other countries.

Kangaroos!

This Mama realises that sometimes her brain does not work very well. But sometimes the realisation still comes as a surprise.
Like realising a few days after the fact that she finally saw a real life kangaroo for the first time in her life. Duh.

You might say kangaroos are boring. They are, after all, figuratively everywhere, from the ubiquitous advertisements for the country down under, pop culture, even children stories (Hello, Winnie the Pooh and friends!).
So.. I guess it felt as if I had always 'known' kangaroos.

Still, I guess the brain must still be working, because when the plan to visit the zoo was on the table, I did put the kangaroo feeding on the to-do list. Which brought this Mama to the next picture:

ME! Feeding, touching kangaroos (hungry ones, at that!), muffin tops and all, ha!

There was a token contribution required for the privilege of feeding these guys (figuratively speaking. At least 2 of the bunch were female, one was even a new mama complete with a baby Roo in her pouch), after which I was given a bowl filled with... pellets, just like dog food.
The kangaroos were hungry. Even before feeding time, they were already crossing the barrier, sniffing around for food (see picture above).

I guess somewhere deep inside, there is still a kid within me, one who gets all excited at the prospect of meeting, touching a 'new' animal.
I am very glad for the planning. Special thanks to Kecil's Daddy for 'teaching' (by example) me how to plan. Not only you save money and time, you do get to do great stuff.

Final bonus? A precious precious image of the furry animals:

Walkies

Ah... yes. This exemplifies our daily walkies, indeed: Kecil and the Dog rushing forward to whatever destination they had in mind, while Mama lagging behind to take picture. We actually do this most days, can you believe it?

The Year of Post-processing

While the study of photography continues, I am especially very happy with the very obvious progress in the field of post-processing.
Not that I've reached great heights of any kind, but progress nevertheless.
From playing with black and whites, experimentations with sepia tones, even some real colour manipulations.

Am still of the opinion that the less editing, the better.
Yet, there is that joy in being able to develop an image to (hopefully) its full potential.
And this is really helpful, indeed, especially with the other point & shoot camera,
Whose colour management had given me a fair amount of grief, indeed.

Ah... yes. So much better, indeed. From washed out, to vivid (if slightly tinted) colours.

Me thinks more colour study should be done. If nothing else, I would be able to salvage previously unusable pictures.
Cheers!

Back on the road

With the arrival of the new year (and end to the holiday!), it was time to break out the jogging shoes again and go for morning walks.
Walk, not run. Running for me is simply not a sustainable activity.

Last Saturday, after waking up relatively 'early', and no item yet on the agenda, I slung the camera with the prime lens (lighter!), and went a walking.
It was nice and quiet, just nice for a solitary walk and picture taking of various odds and ends.

... such as this yellow warning sign ...

... cyclists going on a ride ....

... a brightly dressed golfer and his caddy...

... the lone cyclist ...

... a beautiful leaf on the road ...

Taking the camera along might just be the motivation I need for my solo morning walk this year, together with some nice tracks I just uploaded to the player.
Now if I just hide that snooze button on my alarm clock .....
Wish me luck!

Mama's photography journey

Almost 4 days after the fact, having managed some half-decent pictures of the new year's fireworks still feels like a major accomplishment.
It actually feels a bit strange to realise that the DSLR that I took all those pictures with had only been with me for slightly less than 2 years (the battery of which is currently MIA because Mama had a brain fart when she removed the said battery from the charger. Dang! I'd better find it soon. Have a whole list of pics to take.)

The DSLR was really not planned. I was making some noise about not having a proper working camera since my old point and shoot finally died after being thrown by the baby Kecil. Then came the Mr. Husband's birthday, and an invitation to meet up the in-laws in Singapore, and suddenly I got a huge DSLR dumped on my lap. Quite literally.
Not even knowing how to operate the controls, it was really quite a scary piece of technology then. And I'd say the first subject I took pretty much mirrored what I felt then.

(a manyun Kecil. Arr... the current photographer in me totally bemoans the so many things wrong with this pic: lack of focus, colour balance. OMG!)

After a quick glance through the manual (very quick, just to pick up a few, very basic things), the camera was set on auto settings, and we managed some better pics. Good thing the city lent itself well to good pictures.

So the camera came home with Mama, who then started using all kinds of subjects for practice, including the neighbour's kids.

It was certainly something to get used to, a DSLR, a few major things to adjust being the size, the weight, and the bulk of the camera. Mama's hand was almost ready to break after taking the next self portrait:

Still, it was really cool to be able to take pictures at night:

In any case, the experimentation (and learning) continued, with Mama taking in various subjects, including pets and inanimate objects:

The following year, Mama has yet another trip to the Lion City, and visitors to capture:

A new gadget followed to revolutionise the workflow ...

The gadget is the orange one. It simply serves better coffee, I swear. Revolutionary, right? (Also, you do know I'm just joking, right? With the new laptop, I actually got a better photo management software. Hence, the revolution. The coffee did help, though.)

Another trip, this time with the purchase of a new photographic equipment, a new lens:

With which I started seeing the beautiful bokeh I had been gawking from other's pictures:

With the switch to RAW format, Mama learned a thing or two about post-processing:

Also including silhouette in her repertoire:

I've gone quite a bit from the clueless girl holding a huge piece of technology she wasn't quite sure to use. Me thinks she's gone to a girl with a camera. Haha... But there is still so much room for improvement, colour management being an area of particular concern.

For the nth time, this year I am embarking again on a 365 journey, to be documented on the photoblog. At the same time, I am also looking for better organisation of the huge photo library, which means some incorporation of tags (or keyword in my own library). Perhaps once I've made some progress with that, I'll share that here. Here's hoping for a good year with big and small accomplishments towards the bigger goals. Cheers!

New Year with a Bang: How I Shot the Fireworks

About a year ago, we went for Food Festival in Kecil's friend's school. Right at the end, a spectacular show of fireworks finished off the event. Too bad that, as old as the camera was (1 year with me then!), I have yet to learn to take picture of fireworks. Ish! I didn't even know if there was a 'fireworks' mode that I could use on the camera. When I tried taking shots, the camera just refused to co-operate. You know when you press the shoot button and the lens just focus and refocus and the camera simply did not shoot? Sigh....

Fast forward almost a year later, we found out that the two malls that had sprung up in town through the year were going to have some fireworks through the month of December, 4 days in celebration of 1 year anniversary of the mall, the other 4 just for festivities' sake. Way cool! So... armed with still the same camera, a newly inherited tripod (my father-in-law found it in his storage) plus some newly acquired knowledge gained from reading on the net, we set off to shoot me some fireworks.

And I straight away got these. Yeah, right.

Despite the knowledge, the tripod and everything, there are still other things to figure out. But at least I got a few pointers right already:

1. Focus: I used larger f-stops (f8 to f11) since I want larger depth of field. I started by focusing on the top of the building from whence the fireworks was supposed to spring. (It was lit up, lucky me)
2. Exposure: Started from 2s and increase in increment to get a picture that I like. Most of my pictures are shot in 2 to 3 seconds.
3. ISO: Since 2s is a fairly long exposure, I turn down the ISO all the way down to 100. This results in picture with no or less grain.
4. In order to be able to 'play' with point 1 and 2, of course the camera had to be set on Manual mode.

Some of the difficulties I encountered:

• How much to zoom? I liked the idea of having some points of reference, hence I first tried including some landmarks, but as it turned out, I prefer the results when I zoom closer, just far enough to have the whole shape of the blast in the frame. You can see in the top picture, the shape was slightly cropped because I zoomed too near. Which brings us to the next point...
• Which direction? The clearest, best pictures are taken when the camera is still. However, when I zoomed in, some burst would happen outside the frame, and I had to adjust the direction. That's when the following happens:

You see the squigly lines? Light trails, we call them. Remember that you are shooting at a lower shutter speed. So when you move the camera (and the lights remain stationary), you'll have light trails. Indeed, fireworks photography is all about light trails. You just want the light trails from the firework, and not from camera movement.

• Impatience. At one shot, the fireworks actually started later than scheduled, so... I was already inside the store (with the tripod packed in the car) when the fireworks started. I thought I would just watch and not take pics, but my hands got itchy. So...

This one was not bad, but seriously, you really need a tripod. Here's when the movement is worse:

Have to admit, the burst was pretty spectacular, but so was the camera shake. Dang.

All in all, it was a good learning experience. And it was even better because the events actually prepared me for the final big event: New Year! Woohoo! Not to say that I managed to overcome all the difficulties above, but at least I was already aware of those pitfalls. Here are some from the new year:

We love all the big burst, because our selected location was a bit far. We were hoping to catch most of the fireworks happening all over town. But as it turned out, perhaps it was a wee bit too far. Haha...

Twas a great night to start the year, especially when I got to use my new-found knowledge. So cool. Looking forward to learning even more things in the new year. Cheers!