A Sunday Night at Tanjong Katong

I was covering TP Band performance at Christmas celebrations at Odeon Towers at Tanjong Katong last Sunday. It was my second year covering TP Band at the same event. This time no need to go early and shoot for rehearsal. Wondering how times flied very fast. It has been one year. Last year, I was using Ko Than Htike's camera to shoot. Now, I got my own Canon 400D. This year, I was shooting alone. The arrangements of the show as well as the display of floats looked similar to me.

Last year, I never brought my tripod. This time, I brought mine to give a try to night photography which I was not very good at. As usual, the followings are some shots I have taken. =)

Falling Dark


Bank and Shop


328


Game


Light up and Celebrate




Moonlit Night 1


Moonlit Night 2


Stairway

Happy Christmas

I would like to wish all my friends, blog readers and everyone on earth a Happy Christmas and have a wonderful and joyous time with your loved ones during this holiday season. =)

Shall upload photos of Christmas tree and some activities taken on 20th December at Central Shopping Mall and Singapore River around Clark Quay area.

Christmas Tree at Central





Watched and shot some ice skating activities for kids.

The aritificial ice as a skiing ground.


The two ice-skaters who taught the children how to ski.






Singapore River At Night

Sentosa

Visited to Sentosa on 20th Dec with my parents and my uncle who arrived here from Malaysia. Light Drizzle the whole afternoon. Took Sentosa Express (Monorail) in the afternoon. Went to Underwater World area, Imbiah Lookout, Images of Singapore, Siloso Beach. Cloudy and rainy day. Not a good day to visit outdoor places. After returning from Sentosa, we went to Food Republic and have Chicken Murtak from Indian Stall. Nice and big Murtabak each costing $5. As usual, photos as following:

Peacock


After the rain






With my parents


In front of Images of Singapore Museum

Last Day of Block A, Year 2.2

The following will be some random photos that I took on 13th December which is the last date of Block 'A' of current semester. I brought my Canon to school because of the following two intentions:

1. To shoot some Motherboard shots for my upcoming "Computer" Series
2. To shoot my classmates and may be group photo of the whole class

I haven't fulfill the first one. Because I haven't went to "CARC" lab and shoot the photos.

For second one, I only took some shots of my classmates and not the group photo of the whole class. May be I will try next time.

After the individual presentation to Dr. Nalaka, I shared my knowledge of photography to Ryan, Kaiwen, Gen, Yuan, and Huishan. And also took some shots of printer for my series and some other things. The following is two photos among a numeber of photos I took:

Lollipop for you!


Through the ITAS Lab Window


Then, I went to library and took some shots along the way to library as follows.

At library


Cross with care




Design School


Above


Recently, I am into shooting photos according to a theme or about a subject. I had taken a number of photos about the following:
1. Computers
2. TP Sports Complex
Currently, it is in the process of shooting some remaining photos. Once I finish shooting, I will compile the photos about each of the above topics and upload on my blog!

Photos

Gina has been asking me to update my blog with more photos... Previously, there are delays in uploading my photos due to some busy time doing assignments and my laziness. Now, to fulfil Gina's request, I will upload recent photos (total of 5),one of them was shot about a day ago and the rest were shot today.

Thanks Gina and every one visited to my blog and view the photos I have taken. Critics and Comments about my photos are also welcome.

A short story about how I happened to shoot these photos today. Today, woke up quite late and then went to Microsoft's Walk the Success Lane Seminar at One Marina Boulevard from 1 to 5pm. I took my camera to shoot some bird's eye's view of Marina Bay, the Esplanade, from the 22nd level of NTUC building. But that idea of shooting didn't spur my mind to shoot after the seminar because I had previously taken some shots from the same place. The sky was also cloudy and not a very nice colour and contrast. I did took a few shots but all are just normal shots.

Then, took MRT to Eunos to go back home. While I was walking from the MRT station to bus stop opposite the station, I suddenly got a strong feeling to shoot photos even though I didn't see any interesting thing to shoot. After that, I walked around and look for something to shoot. Then, I saw the 4 public phone booths on one side of the walkway. First idea I got was to shoot them from outside. But after taking, seems like not contrasting and interesting. So, went in to one of the booths and shot the RED phone. Thanks to "Clear" Picture Style setting in my Canon camera, the red colour turn out very vivid and contrasting. The photo "In the Booth" below:


Then look around again to find some subjects to shoot. See the photos below:

Litter


Silent Ride


On Bus


The following photo was taken about 1 day ago:
Full, Empty


I shall end my post with my photo taken by Deb using my just-average handphone camera at Noise Singapore 2007 Showcase. One of my photo "Tiny" was selected to be showcased at the Noise Festival Showcase at Level 5, The Hereen Shops until 20th Dec(11am to 8pm). You can drop by there and view nice artworks (photos, graphic designs, music). Visit the official wesite for more details. Thanks Deb, Serena and Suan Yang for accompanying me to go there. :)

Mixed Entry

Haven't uploaded photos for some time. Let me share some random photos taken some time back ago.

The following three photos are taken on the way to and way back from KFC opposite TP to celebrate Gina's Birthday.

Through the Fence:







The following photo is taken from 22nd level of NTUC building after attending "Walk the Success Lane" seminar organized by Microsoft Singapore. There, I enjoyed good bird eye's view of the Marina Bay area.




VirtualX Competition
Me together with Hanafi and Jeremy in action at VirtualX Competition on 3rd Nov 2007 held at NTU. We need to write Java codes to control the space ships and drones in the game. There were three rounds of matches against other 11 teams from polys and ITEs. During first 2 rounds, we just at around the half of table. At last round, we got third, but overall score, we just got 6th. Gained a great experience. Photos credits go to NTU official VirtualX game website.

Me, typing codes that I had studied and memorized before the competition while Jeremy and Hanafi writing down the codes for our ship's strategy.

Watching the competition in progress

TP Rawks

Haven't updated my blog for nearly a month. Busy with block teaching mode. Assignment submissions one after another every week. Almost everyday stay late to finish assignment.

Left 2 more (one for SWEN and one for EWAD) submissions which will be due in the last week before term break.

Block teaching is face paced and time given for assignments is much shorter than normal semester's teaching. So, time management is really important to finish assignments on time. And the subjects thoughts are more practical. One subject called Enterprise Web Application Development (EWAD), teaches about building web sites/applications using Java, JSP, HTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript, Ajax. I am able to learn interesting web technologies and apply them while doing assignment. Our assignment is to develop an online shopping cart application. This subject leads me to think of underlying business logic behind web sites (such steps involved in check out process). Business logic is very important and we, programmers, must have correct and robust logic before writing any programming codes.

Besides busy schedule of school, I was also enjoyed shooting photos at school events - Viva Art Festival Performances and TP Rawks. TP Rawks was a really big playground for VC event photographers because it was held over 3 days and there are over 800 participants.
Total of 18 VC Event Photographers covered the event. Glad to see interesting photos shot by this year event photographers.

I only shot for last day "Jam & Hop". Coincidently, I also shot only for Jam & Hop at last day of last year TP Rawks. Time flies fast. I still remembered, me, Serena, Deb, Clarissa, Michelle, Gabriel shot for last year and I used my friend, Than's, Fuji camera to shoot. If I am not wrong, last year TP Rawks was my second event covered as VC event photographer. At that time, I was still inexperienced at shooting using flash and low-light photography. Most of my photos turned out blurred. Memories of last year...

This year, numbers of VC event photographers increased and I also had experience of shooting many events. Jam & Hop was held at TCC. Firstly, I just pumped up my ISO to 800 and shoot just normal shots of performance and crowd from behind. These photos are just s0-s0. Most shots turned out blurred or grainy.

Then, near to the end of event, I had discovered a new technique accidentally. While shooting, I accidentally turned my Canon's setting dial to Tv (Time Priority) Mode. And settings at Tv was 1 seconds shutter speed. Then, I took a shot using flash and during review in my LCD. I found interesting shot of motion blur of people jumping and dancing to the rhythm of music. Some parts of the photo was sharp because of the flash exposure and other parts show the motion of people because of long exposure. Cool effect. I can't help but shooting tons of shots testing the effect from different angles. Some shots turned out like a double exposed photos. This year, TP Rawks was a very interesting experience as I can interact with VC event photographers.

The following are some of the shots taken at TP Rawks:





Sleeq




Long exposure photos

Mixed Entry

Hi, lacking entries for about 2 weeks.
First, let me begin with today meeting for assignment.

Went to school at around 12:15 to explain Java to my friend from Engineering. The whole school was quiet because of school holiday - SUNDAY! At 1:40pm, Ryan and Lokman reached school and we started doing EWAD proposal. I did screen flow diagrams while Lokman and Ryan edited the proposal.
At around 4pm, Kaiwen arrived and we change to SWEN assignment. We prepared ppt slides for presentation.

October Intake Orientation
Last week, I was busy because I was in charge of Logistics for our IIT school orientation. The orientation was 2 days (Thursday and Friday). Being in charge of Logistic together with Ryan, we went to Sports Complex and brought many things such as chairs, amplifier, walkie-talkie, so on and so forth. This October Intake, there are two classes/care groups for Diploma in Information Technology and one for Diploma in Mobile & Wireless Computing. This time, there are very few international students. None of them are from Myanmar. I was also taking photos of orientation. The orientation was very first one organized by our IT SIG and MWC SIG. It was a success because of all the efforts from SIG members and especially good planning and arrangement from Yang Lin and Quin Quin.

Canon Photomarathon
Then on Saturday 20th, I took part in Canon Photomarathon. It was my first time joining that kind of big competition. Over 1000 shutter bugs took part and it was Singapore's Biggest Live Photo Contest recorded in Singapore Book of Records. I woke up early, at about 5:30 am in the morning and went to the registration venue which is Suntec Convention Center Lobby. I reached there at about 7:20am. And to my surprise, there were lots of people. The queue for registration was so long. Need to queue for about 45mins to finished registration. Met with Serena, Suan Yang, Marian, Dickson and Noel there. Went up to lvl 3 for briefing and announcement of theme. The first theme was "Passion". When I heard the theme, I was not sure about what to shoot. We all walked around Suntect and thought of what to shoot. Time given was short. We needed to return to Suntect by 12:30. The time was around 10:00am. We thought and thought. Finally we decided to go to shoot at Maxwell Food Center. We took bus and went to Amoy Street. We did not managed to reach Maxwell Food Court. Instead, we took photos at Amoy Street Food Center. We also took photos at Chinese Temple near the food court. Then, we took bus back to Suntec to upload photos. I couldn't took good photo to submit for the competition. The photo I submitted was just so-so.

Then, we reached Suntec at around 12:30pm. The queue for photo uploading was also so looong. Second theme was "Challenge", also a difficult theme to shoot for me. Suan Yang suggested to go to a underpass tunnel near Singapore River to shoot a photo for his idea. At the underpass, he asked Dickson and Noel to jump and kick at each other in the air. The shot was interesting. For the second time, I didn't shoot a photo. Instead, I submitted a photo taken in the morning.

Third theme was "Playtime". We all went to food court first to have late lunch at around 3:30pm. Then, went to top level to shoot children playing near Toy R Us. After that, we went back to Suntec to submit photos and rested and viewed the slideshow of photos submitted by participants. We all were tired after shooting the whole day. At around 8:30, results were announced. We all did't win any prize. SY challenge photo was in Top 10.

I had gained a new experience of walking here and there, travelling and shooting the whole day.
The follow is some of the shots taken during the day.



Week 1 of October Semester
Finally, long awaited semester started on 22nd October, Monday. First lecture started at 12noon. But I went to school at around 1oam to print out lecture/lab notes. After printing, went to Mensa alone, had lunch and attended 2hours of lecture (Software Engineering and Enterprise Web Application Development). After one hour break, attended 3-HOUR LAB. My first taste of block teaching. I got 3-hour long labs everyday from Monday to Thursday.

EWAD is interesting. Teach about how to develop a web application using XTHML, Java, Servlet, JSP and databases. I now will be able to learn how to create a web application as well as database connections.

SWEN is PBL subject. During tutorials and labs, we need to do our own research for assignment part 1 which will due in one week time. Me, Ryan, Lokman and Kaiwen grouped together and did research from different resources such as wikipedia, the Internet as well as some thick books from library.

Block teaching enables me to focus on only two subject which is good for me to concentrate and find out more about these subjects. But one drawback is that, assignments are due in very short time. So, we need to start and do assignments as fast as we can in order to avoid last minute rush to finish them.

End of a long and mixed entry.

Sem Briefing

Today is the briefing for coming semester. Went to school at 10am. Met with all my classmates in the LT. Today, timetable had not come out yet. So, I am not sure whether we, ENT option students, from C133 will be in the same class or not. Wishing to be in the same class as my current classmates. Need to wait until next morning 10am to know the timetable.

There are 2 major changes announced by our course manager, Mr Lim.

1st change is that name of our school. Our school name had been changed from Temasek Information Technology School to Temasek Informatics & Information Technology School. Before the briefing, I was not very sure about the meaning of the word "Informatics". During briefing, CM (course manager) explained that in short Informatics means information technology for people. We are now focusing on solving problems faced by people by using IT. So we must not only know IT but also know other important domain such as business, banking, etc. So that we can apply our knowledge effectively.

Another more important change is that this coming semester we will be in block mode. There will be two blocks "Block A" and "Block B" each 10 weeks (actually 8weeks+2weeks of holidays). During "Block A", two subjects will be taught and 4 will be taught in "Block B". These two subjects are purely 100% CA subjects meaning that there will be no exams. But instead we need to put much effort in assignments and problem packages. And they must be done and submitted within 8 weeks. So, quite short time given for projects compared to last sem.

One of the good thing about block teaching is that we can focus in two subjects. No need to handle 5, 6 subjects at the same time. But we must be focused and quite be fast-paced to catch the fast speed of teaching.

This Thursday and Friday, I will be helping out in October Intake Orientation. Will upload more photos I have shot after the orientation. :)

Disposable Camera

Here, I would like to share my photos taken during VC's latest "Back to Basics" Photo Expedition on 6 October 2007 (Saturday). As the name suggests, all of us were really back-to-basic of photography equipment: Disposable Fim Cameras which were bought by Suan Yang, the organizer of the expedition from Triple D. It is the simplest photographic equipment. No need to load film, no manual control of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, zoom, etc..etc... Just frame the shot through the viewfinder and click the shutter release button. Just Point and Shoot. So, this expedition emphasize on a person's eyes for photography and composition skills, which are vital in photography.

Every body can shoot and showcase their eyes, passion, love, interest in photography without considering or wondering about photographic techniques and jargons which are used commonly in SLR/DSLR cameras. I don't mean you no need to know those stuff in photography. But for a normal person who is interested in photography but using normal digital cameras, this is the first step for the big photography world.

This reminds me of myself when I joined Visual Central last year. At that time, I have very limited knowledge about those photography terms and techniques and I was just using a simple digital camera to shoot photos. All I knew was to shoot photo when I saw something interesting. But after joining Colour/Black and White photo expeditions, I gained invaluable experiences from my seniors in VC through interacting with them and learning from them.

So, in my opinion, this expedition triggered every body's interest to shoot and learn about photography. I had a very nice time interacting with everyone, members and among main comm. It was Fun. I believe all participants also enjoyed the expedition. I also had seen many interesting and nice shots during the critic session. And I belive that VC will have many more interesting and exciting events/expedition in the future. :)

Ok.. let me stop my writings here. I have upload some photos taken during the expedition below.

#1 Reflection 1

#2 Under Construction

#3

#4 Merlion

#5 Entry Denied

#6 Reflection 2

#7 Up

#8 New

#9 Number 9