Fungus; some are edible, some are not. The ones in this picture are not, at least not in the way we consume mushrooms.

These are not poisonous though; on the contrary, old people in my tribe would tell you they contain some health properties but only eminent herbalists would be able to say what the properties are. Definitely not aphrodisiac if that’s what you are thinking.

You can tell poisonous fungus by their smell. If they they don’t smell like chemicals, they can’t be poisonous.

Anyway, this was another photo opportunity which I should have explored extensively, like taking much closer shots of the fungus from various angle.

Posted in Fungi Macro, Plant Macro No Comments »

The Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur is arguably the most photographed landmark in Malaysia.

I reckoned that on any day, it would have been photographed no less than a couple of thousand times by tourists and locals alike, who would snap away pictures after pictures as though the building would vanish any moment from public view.

The Twin Towers used to be the tallest building in the world before the Taipei Tower wrested that honour several years back. But it is still the tallest twin towers in the world.

Those holding point-and-cameras with 35mm lens, would lament the fact that they could never get the full picture of the tower at close range.

Posted in Building & Architecture 1 Comment »

This is a continuation of my previous entry, 100-Year-Old Grave Exhumed posted on February 22, 2008, which has attracted considerable attention around the social media.

The grave exhumation was an eye-opener for me, for I had never seen how a grave looked like after it was exhumed. But I was not there from the beginning. When I arrived at the graveyard, the two grave diggers had been digging for about a half-an-hour, and they already reached the coffin, or the remains of it, six feet down.

But there was nothing much to be pictured really; it was all earth, all the way down. In this picture below, the grave diggers had just removed the section of the earth where the coffin had once lain. They are now standing on the base of the grave.

This man is not me, but I had squatted like him besides the pit, curious to see what could have been my resting place had I been born a hundred years ago.

The picture below shows the remains of the wooden coffin after 100 years. Nothing much was left, except for a couple of decaying planks. I had hoped for the coffin to be intact so that the grave diggers could pry it open to find a considerably preserved body inside.

But that was not to be the case. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, remember?

Here are some of the very few bones recovered in the process. Come to think of it, if it were us buried in that wooden coffin, a hundred years down the road, the once great Us, who walked the earth with pride, would have been reduced to just this.

The close encounter with the grave had affected me in a powerful way, in more ways than one, that I had no words to describe how I felt. I guess you would, too, if you had been in my place, sitting there besides that old grave.

I could say I was apprehensive, though. About life, about what life should have been for those who have gone, and for those who will be gone. About everything life-and-death.

And about my own life, and the inevitable shortening of the journey to the grave as the days pass by.

Note: Pictures are taken at the old graveyard site at Jalan Kubor, off Victoria Street in Singapore sometime in 2006.

Posted in Odds and Ends Macro No Comments »

Okay, these are not water spouts; they are just water shooting upward from a small pond on the compound of Malaysia’s National Museum in Kuala Lumpur.

A bit more of shutter speed, something like 1/2500, should be able to do the trick; but alas, such a speed is beyond any point-and-shoot camera.

Posted in Water Macro 3 Comments »

According to Digital Photography Review, the Nikon D300 is the best semi-professional camera that it would be a big problem for Nikon to better this camera the next time around.

Phil Askey, who reviewed the camera, concluded that he found it difficult to find weaknesses in the D300. “My biggest problem writing this conclusion has been picking out the D300’s weak points,” he said.

He managed to find just three weaknesses however; four, if you include the price but he said, “There is price, but sometimes the best products demand a premium and the D300 is no exception.”

“Nikon’s biggest problem now will be bettering the D300; it raises the bar to a new high, and represents the state of the art despite strong competition from the likes of Canon, Sony and Olympus. There’s simply no better semi-professional digital SLR on the market,” he added.

I’ve come up with the 10 best camera review sites with DP Review occupying the top spot. For other camera views of the camera, you might want to check those sites.

Posted in Camera Review No Comments »

It’s not easy to come up with a sharp close up picture of a fish in an aquarium using a point-and-shoot camera.

Many things can go wrong because of the narrow dept of field and even a slight movement of the subject will throw the picture off focus. And fish just won’t stay still. The trick is to take as many shots as possible, varying the focus lock each time.

Once again, taking a single shot of your subject is a big no-no. With DSLR the chance of success will be higher because of the sheer speed of the camera and the ability to shoot at high ISO.

Posted in Fish Macro No Comments »

This is another “When not shooting macro…” post which I regularly post on this blog. I’ve shot probably tons of pictures from the windows of aeroplanes.

Although you’d be tied down with shooting just from one tiny window, there’s still a lot of potential to “plane photography”.

You can shoot the sky, the ever changing clouds, the aircraft’s wing, the weather outside and the window of the plane itself.

One setback is you don’t get to shoot the spectacular views of a city because by then the plane would have already been approaching the runway and all electronic devices must already be switched off.

Posted in Plane Photography No Comments »

Picture taken in Singapore’s Underwater World on Sentosa Island.

Posted in Aquarium Macro, Fish Macro No Comments »

This is a photoblog and while it’s the picture that matters most, no less important is the accompanying article — because if a picture paints a thousand words, a thousand words should be able to describe a picture.

To tell you the truth, I was quite careless with my write-ups in the past, resulting in many grammatical mistakes; some embarrassing, some downright elementary. But from now on, I shall endeavour to minimise them, if that is possible.

By the way, this is a species of fungus my tribe called the “purak mato” or “the white eyes”. Don’t ask me how my progenitors could come up with such a name as they have been describing species in their own less than scientific way.

You know, they even have names for the various phase of the moon!

Posted in Blog, Fungi Macro No Comments »

One of the greatest disservice a photo-taker or photographer can do to a scene is not exploring its photographic potentials extensively.

Like in this photo. I was in this place only once and all that I could do was to take this single photo of the sharp-pointed grass growing by the shore.

I could’ve taken many more, including dozens of macro shots from this vantage alone. Alas, I was inexperienced then. Not that I’m now but I’ve taken tons of photos ever since to know what a huge mess I made out of this photo-shoot opportunity.

I can almost see the photos I’ve missed — eye-piercing close-ups of sharp pointed grass. But I’ve learnt my lesson, and I hope with this blog post, I’ve made you learn yours.

Posted in Plant Macro No Comments »