Dry seeds waiting to disperse in the wind…

Posted in Plant Macro No Comments »

The sensitive plant, or scientifically known as Mimosa pudica L., can be found in abundant in Tropical areas.

According to Wikipedia, Mimosa pudica L. is a creeping annual or perennial herb often grown for its curiosity value: the compound leaves fold inward and droop when touched, re-opening within minutes.

In my place though, the plant is considered a nuisance plant and therefore, is not grown.

But according to older people in my village, you can actually boil the root and drink the water to treat indigestion. Not scientifically proven though, so I don’t recommend you try it. It’s not poisonous though, so you can drink the water from the boil root just for the heck of it.

Posted in Plant Macro 3 Comments »

This plant is known in my tribe as lidah buaya, or literally “The Tongue of Crocodile”, not sure why though, perhaps this one does resemble the shape of the reptile’s tongue.

Anyway, this is a type of succulent plant that thrives on wet and shaded ground. I found this at the back of our house in KL. This is one plant you can grow many others simply by throwing the leave on the ground.

Posted in Plant Macro 2 Comments »

Noun. A plant with a weak stem that derives support from climbing, twining, or creeping along a surface…

In good hands, vines can be a very good macro photography subject. I was just playing with the camera when I took this picture, only to realise later that there were many other shooting possibilities I should have explored. But not to worry, vines are everywhere. I can always go to the bushes and have a field day shooting vines.

Posted in Plant Macro No Comments »

[UPDATE: Goodness gracious me! I need an editor. This is an updated version with some of the grammatical error corrected]

October is over and November is here.

When I started this blog last October 11, I made a small promise to keep on updating this blog every day, or if that is not physically possible, to post an average of one entry a day for six months.

I’ve kept close to that promise so far but November is here.

Just yesterday, I receive received official notification that I’m to move out of Singapore, and back to Malaysia, this month. My term in Singapore is coming to an end and during the transition period, I might not able to update this blog for about two weeks.

I shall try tough though to arrange for several posts to go live on certain days during the transition period but I doubt I’d be able to come up with enough stockpiles of pictures. So, I’m going home. Not sure though which pastures is greener.

Posted in Plant Macro No Comments »

Dead leaves, dying leaves, fresh leaves. We don’t normally pay attention to these things. They are there around us — and will always be there for us — that we tend to take their existence for granted.

I too ignore them most of the time, except when I had a camera with me.

I was trekking inside Singapore’s MacRitchie Nature Reserve recently, and with a camera in hand, I tend to be more observant of my surroundings. This is one of the pictures I took from such an observation, thinking at that time to just fool around with the camera and see how it would turn out.

The picture turned out okay, I guess. From this picture on, I made it a point to be always on the lookout for things unusual that might be a good subject for macro photography.

Posted in Plant Macro No Comments »

I was wandering almost aimlessly at the Singapore National Orchid Garden when I spotted a tree with rather unusual bark.

On closer inspection however, I found out that it was not the bark, but rather what has been done to the bark. I wanted to carve my own name on the tree branches to mark my presence, but thought that the tree had suffered enough.

Posted in Plant Macro No Comments »

The pictures below are among of the many flower shots I’ve taken over the years of shooting in macro. Flowers are relatively “easy” to shoot because unlike insects or other living things, the just stay where they are, giving you ample time to compose your shots.

But even then, this does not mean you can take it for granted. You still need to consider several other issues such as setting the right aperture to get the most desired results.

To put it in simple term, if you want everything about the subject to be in focus, choose the smallest aperture, or largest aperture if you want only certain part of the subject to be in focus.

Okay, I admit it’s not as simple as that — because you still need think about shutter speed and manual focus, if your point-and-shot camera has a setting for manual focus. However, varying the depth of field of a subject, is already a good concept to start experimenting with.

Posted in Flower Macro, Plant Macro No Comments »

When everything else fails — or when you think you have photographed everything — look under the shrubs.

That’s what I do when I go for an outing, when I thought there was nothing more to photograph and it was time to go home.

But this doesn’t mean you have to deliberately rummaged into the shrubs or turn stones over just to have a look what was beneath them so that we can take their pictures. That would be counter-productive.

I hold the view that as a photographer — taking pictures of nature at their natural setting, or any other subjects for that matter — it is our job to try and minimise disturbance to the subjects which have given us the pictures.

Here’s an example of life under the shrubs. I took this last week at the Memorial Park, Singapore, just opposite Swissotel The Stamford, the tallest hotel in Southeast Asia.

Posted in Insect Macro, Plant Macro No Comments »

One of the subjects that delights me most is the lalang grass or scientifically known as Imperata cylindrica.

Farmers hate the grass and treat it as nuisance. They can grow real fast and are very difficult to eliminate. You don’t just cut the lalang grass to kill them, as they would grow again the next day. What the farmers always do is to either burn the whole field or spray them with weedkiller.

But imagine for a moment standing among the field of lalang grass with their fresh flower clusters swaying in the wind, and you should be able to see beyond its reputation as a nuisance.

You’ll begin to see the potential for a very nice panoramic picture, depending on the landscape of the surrounding area.

Lalang dispersal can also be a nice subject for macro photography but you’d better pray the wind stop blowing while you frame the shot because just a slight drift would cause you to lose the focus.

Posted in Plant Macro No Comments »