BTS Video: Sculpture In The Park

An Enclosure For A Swing

© Martin Liew Photography

Here's a new update on my location scouting where I went to Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park to check out this interesting and unique sculpture, titled An Enclosure For A Swing by artist Kevin Lim Fun Kit. I did a simple and short BTS video clip. Get ready to swing and make the board jump to view the video.

OK here's the video. Pardon me for the video quality. Very amateur style but I'm still learning. Videography is another craft which is totally new to me and many things to learn.

Now I want to talk about HDR photography. I've never fancied HDR photography but somehow I am drawn to its attractive dynamic range from the image results. Well it all started when I came across a photographer's videos on YouTube where he is famous for doing amazing composited photographs. His name is Joel Grimes. Check out his website and see for yourself and be amazed by his lighting skills, HDR landscape images and many other inspiring information. His work truly inspires me in doing HDR photography, which in turn, helps me in achieving the kind of results I wanted for my cinematic portraitures. Here are two composites I experimented recently with HDR backgrounds. Cattleya: Twilight by the Bay and SNIPER: Call of Duty. I guess I need to keep a library of different HDR landscapes so I can use it on my future cinematic portraitures, where one or more are applicable.

Coming back to the sculpture. What you see on the top image is one of my many HDR attempts which I converted to black and white in Photoshop. Yes I know. Showing HDR images in colors makes more sense but personally I find it more appealing in monochrome where tonalities show more details and it's less distracting. Besides the sculpture itself is in black and white. When it comes to make such image, the same principles and techniques for landscape photography are applied here. I used circular polarizer as well as the indispensable ND (neutral density) filters. I also applied hyperfocal distance to maximize the depth of field and sharpness of the foreground as well as the distant background.

A few weeks ago I bought an inexpensive Variable ND filter which has a range of 9-stops neutral density. I didn't get the chance to try it out until my visit to the sculpture. Will cover this in another blog post soon.

An Enclosure For A Swing

© Martin Liew Photography

Here's another composition of the sculpture. The main purpose of this location scouting is to familiarize myself on the exact location via traveling by public transport, the surroundings, the ambience lightings in the day and night, finding the best vantage spots for the photo shoots which in all, is a preparation for my night photography which occurred last weekend. Here's one of the four images I made that night, titled Instillation for a Swing. It's almost the same composition as the top monochrome image except it's in color with additional effects.

For the very first time, a BTS video on my night photography, featuring this sculpture will be showcased. It would be another simple and short video. Just to keep things simple and nothing fanciful. Looking forward to post and share the video with you. Do stay tuned. You can subscribe to my YouTube or Vimeo Channel for the latest updates.