Martin Liew PhotoBlog

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Men in the Mirror

I have fell in love with this place located in Little India - a "Kopi Tiam" a.k.a. coffee-shop in Chinese Hokkien dialect. I just love the environment and surrounding area, and of cuz the coffee and toasted bread with Kaya spread and butter. While I was enjoying my food, I noticed something interesting...

Photo of the Day - Dog and its Master

Dog and its Master

One morning in November 2009, after having my breakfast at the coffee shop, I made my way to the bus-stop. Just as I was waiting at the traffic light, I saw this cute little dog resting its fore legs on the low wall as seen in the photograph above.

Without hesitation, I took out my mobile phone and make one shot. Just as I was about to snap another shot, an old lady walked out from nowhere, right in-between the dog and its master. Well, my camera phone is slow in focusing. Howsoever, I love the second shot because of its triangular composition formed by the three subjects.

Taking a closer look at the man, his elbows are resting on the low wall behind him, which also form a triangle shape. Well, in contrast with the three pillars on the background, this image is just perfect to me!

Guess I was at the right place, at the right time.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

TLR Street Photography

© Vivian Maier Photography

In a previous blog I talked about street photographer, Vivian Maier's work and how much I got inspired. Well, for the first time since I have had been doing street photography with 35mm rangefinder camera and film SLR, I took my newly repaired Seagull-4A out to the streets today.

I have had this undescribable sensation and it adrenalized me to do more street fotos. I guess I did. Well I did not shoot as many as 10 rolls of medium format film, but just 2 rolls. Previously I got 2 rolls of Ilford FP4+ left and thought I could just use them.

From the experience I got today, I discovered that there are advantages and disadvantages in using a TLR for street photography, which pose challenges. Let me list them out here as you make the jump:

Unchanged Melody series 4 - Master Hong Hanlin, Artisanal Shoemaker 洪汉林 - 手工制鞋匠

Hong Hanlin 洪汉林, 80-year-old is making shoes when I arrived at his tiny shoe shop at Bencoolen Street Food Center. He is one of Singapore's few remaining artisanal shoemakers. His father passed away when he was a child, and his family was poverty-stricken. At the age of 15, he went into shoemaking, and endured a very hard period as an apprentice.

Make the jump to listen to what Master Hong said about his life as a shoemaker.

Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010!!!

Another new year has begun, another chapter of our life just started. Eye é City 2009 just ended and every participant has submitted their photos today. Preliminary fotos selection will be held next week on 9 & 10 January 2010, Saturday & Sunday from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm at Beach Center, Beach Road. I'll be there as one of their facilitators in helping out the participants with their fotos selections. Looking forward to see their work.

It was my 5th year that I took part in this annual event. It was great to meet friends during the Registration night on 30 Dec 2009. On the actual day, weather was awesome; hot, sunny and occasionally windy day. A great day for street photography.

Verticals - upright panorama

Since I purchased my new panorama camera, Horizon Perfekt in October, I have eventually made a few rolls of panorama fotos. As usual, I shoot exclusively on black-n-white film with this new camera. Well, OK I did a couple rolls of Agfa Vista 400. I don't really like the colors produced from these color negatives as they are flat and lacked of contrast. Maybe it was due to the scanning from the foto lab.

What are the great challenges posed when making vertical panorama photographs?

Make the jump to find out more.

Street Photography with a TLR (Twin Lens Reflex) Camera

Recently I came across an article written by Chicago photographer John Maloof, in Flickr's HCSP (Hardcore Street Photography) Discussion column. In the article John said that he had purchased a giant lot of negatives (about 40,000) from a small auction house in Chicago. He discovered the work of French born street photographer, Vivian Maier. who passed away in April 2009. Vivian's body of work mainly featuring daily street scenes from the 1950s - 70s. John is gradually going through all the negatives and publishes Vivian's work in his blog site.

Vivian Maier, self portrait

My Affinity For Panorama

Recently I got hooked on panoramic photography again. I was searching my stuff on a bookshelf and found a photography book on panorama, and it just struck me that I once did a roll of panorama photos back in 2006. Back then, I got the chance to borrow a classic HORIZONT panoramic camera from a friend of mine. It was certainly fun taking photos with it but one main problem with this old Russian-made camera is light leakage, otherwise mechanically it functions well.

So here's one best shot and my favorite shot, out of that roll of FujiFilm Superia 200 I took. I had posted the color version before.

Old and New Laughing Buddha

On Reading...Update

I got back my Eye e City 2008 negatives yesterday afternoon. As I have worked as a volunteer and a facilitator for the Committee, as well as participating in the meaningful event, I was privileged and entitled to get 3 copies of Eye e City 2008. Yes, it came as a pleasant surprise to me.

As I went through my negatives and digital photos on CD, I recalled I did take a shot of a Malay man reading a newspaper under a shed, as shown below...

It was located at the Malay Heritage Center. Without saying, this shot is added to the On Reading project. I will keep looking and shooting for this project and add to the collection. When the time comes to select and edit the best 100 photographs, I will tidy up the gallery on my website.

The End of KODACHROME

Eastman Kodak Company announced on June 22, 2009 that it will discontinue sales of KODACHROME Color Film this year, concluding its 74-year run as a photography icon. Check out their news here.

Personally I have never tried this transparency film before and would love to try out one roll. it's a pity it's coming to tis end and the price per roll is not cheap. I can still get couple of rolls from eBay, Adorama, or B&H. Alternatively, I can use Ektachrome E100VS which produces similar results but not as rich and vivid as Kodachrome.

Monday, June 15, 2009

My Exhibited Work @ Eye e City 2008 Photography Exhibition

Last Saturday I went down to Bras Basah Complex to check out my work @ Eye e City 2008 Photography Exhibition. I took up the Retrospective Challenge for the second time as it came naturally to be the ideal subject when I was really honored and delighted to join Eye e City committee in taking part to document the official closing down of New 7th Storey Hotel on 30 & 31 October 2008. In June 2008, news broke out that one of our oldest budget hotels is going to be demolished and make way for the new Bugis MRT line, Downtown Line One.

Here's the slideshow of the photographs I made. For better viewing, press F11 key for maximum screen display. Eleven out of those photographs are selected for the exhibition. The last shot was taken on the actual day of Eye e City 2008 event as the event terms stated. Therefore I do not have it as I have yet to collect my negatives back from the committee on 27 & 28 June 2009.

On these 2 days, Eye e City 2008 Book will be launched and participants can collect the book and their negatives and/or digital photos.