Travel Photo - Kelong

Went for a short trip last weekend to Kukup Malaysia, a fishing village about 40 kilometres southwest of Johor Bahru, in the district of Pontian, Johor, on the Strait of Malacca in Malaysia. It was my third trip since last August.

I woke up the next morning to a wonderful cool scenery of this kelong and swallows flying around, which I was fortunate to capture one that flew by in this photograph. It was captured by accident with my Apple iPhone 6 Plus on Chrome mode. Converted to black and white with other tonality adjustments in my all-time favorite mobile photo editing app, Snapseed. Cropped in 16x9 panorama aspect ratio for that cinematic effect.

Street Photo - Light & Shadows

Saw this chiaroscuro scene this morning and compelled to make this shot with my Apple iPhone 6 Plus on Chrome mode. Post-processed in Snapseed for a dramatic black and white.

Street Photo - Red Man Red Car Red on Reading

All red came into place at the right time with my Apple iPhone 6 Plus on default mode. Post-processed in Snapseed.

Street Photo - Blue White Reflection

Water reflection of a newly painted heritage house, made possible with my Apple iPhone 6 Plus on Chrome mode and post-processed in Snapseed.

Untitled Street Photo

Gloomy sky looming over a building. Captured with my Apple iPhone 6 Plus on Chrome mode and post-processed in Snapseed.

Cheers for Beer! (A Cinemagraph)

Click to enlarge

Lately I got interested in cinemagraphs and this is my third attempt. Though not ideally the kind of result I wanted but I'm still quite pleased with the overall effect.

Well initially I wanted to include the flowing beer inside the bottle as it pours out into the beer glass. But that requires some handiwork which is to cut the beer bottle bottom half and clamp it sturdily on a light stand. Actually it's sort of like a funnel. Once the bottle is positioned above the beer glass, the video recording is running and I would pour another bottle of beer which is out of the frame, steadily at a moderate speed through the cut bottle and out pours the beer into the beer glass.

There are more room for improvements and with proper planning I believe I can produce better cinemagraphs.

Street Photo - Babysitting Is Not A Crime!

Apple iPhone 6 Plus on Chrome mode and post-processed in Snapseed.

Street Photo - Night Reading

Night Reading

Apple iPhone 6 Plus on Noir mode Square format and post-processed in Snapseed 2.3 without crop.

TLR Street Photo - On Reading...

Seagull 4A on Ilford FP4 Plus
Developed in 1:1 Kodak D76 for 8 mins 50 secs
Post in Photoshop and scanned on Epson V700

Stewords Riverboat in Retrospect

Came across this old photograph I made twelve years ago while I was tidying up my photo archives. If I recall correctly I was using Nikon FM10 with a 35–70mm standard zoom lens on a color negative film. This boat restaurant was anchored at a harbor in old Sentosa before it sailed away for new development into Resort World Sentosa (RWS) today. The boat restaurant serves American (Santa Fe) Tex-Mex Grill Food and currently located at Marina South Pier.

TLR Street Photo - Great TV Sale

Seagull 4A on Ilford FP4 Plus
Developed in 1:1 Kodak D76 for 8 mins 50 secs
Post in Photoshop & scanned on Epson V700

GREAT NEWS! Google's Nik Collection Is Now FREE For Download!

On 24 March 2016 Thursday, Google announced that its desktop photo editing software, Nik Collection (worth USD$150), is now 100% FREE for download. What an awesome great news!

I got to know about Nik Softwares (originally known as) back in 2007 or 2008 and it was acquired by Google in late 2012, along with Nik's popular mobile photo editing app, Snapseed. Here's what Google wrote about this news.

“Today we’re making the Nik Collection available to everyone, for free. 

Photo enthusiasts all over the world use the Nik Collection to get the best out of their images every day. As we continue to focus our long-term investments in building incredible photo editing tools for mobile, including Google Photos and Snapseed, we’ve decided to make the Nik Collection desktop suite available for free, so that now anyone can use it. 

The Nik Collection is comprised of seven desktop plug-ins that provide a powerful range of photo editing capabilities -- from filter applications that improve color correction, to retouching and creative effects, to image sharpening that brings out all the hidden details, to the ability to make adjustments to the color and tonality of images.

Starting March 24, 2016, the latest Nik Collection will be freely available to download: Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine. If you purchased the Nik Collection in 2016, you will receive a full refund, which we’ll automatically issue back to you in the coming days. We’re excited to bring the powerful photo editing tools once only used by professionals to even more people now. ”

My all-time favourite of Nik Collection is Silver Efex Pro which has a bunch of black and white presets to choose from and I can even tweak settings to achieve the results I wanted. Most often I use this plug-in for all of my color digital photographs, selectively, as some look great after B&W conversion. As for B&W film after I got them on high resolution scan, I would use Silver Efex Pro for further enhancement on tonalities.

Below are a few photos using Silver Efex Pro alone. I've yet to try out the other 6 plug-ins. All photos here are made with my Nikon D70s on wide angle and prime lens respectively.

OK! That's about it! Go get your FREE copy of Nik Collection plug-ins for Photoshop and Lightroom now! Keep shooting and tweaking to your heart's content.