Martin Liew PhotoBlog

Sunday, February 12, 2023

Street Photos – Rainy Sunday

Raining season is here. It has been raining on and off before and during the Chinese Lunar New Year, from day 1 to 15 which fell on the 5th of February, Sunday. Yeah, it was last Sunday. It was nice weather in the morning and a little overcast at noon. I was inspired to do some street photography at Bencoolen Street and Waterloo Street area. As I arrived at the scene, it started to rain and later a big downpour. What a setback!

The same thing happened today. It was sunny in the morning until the stormy clouds arrived in the afternoon. At the time of writing this blog, it was still raining.

Well, back to last Sunday, nothing stopped me from doing street photography in the rain as I looked for some vantage spots to do the "fishing" technique i.e. looking out for interesting subjects like running/walking in the rain drenching, people in raincoats, etc. So, here are some of the street photos I took during that 2 hours plus of walking from one sheltered spot to another.

I hope you enjoy these photos. Have a great week ahead. Cheers!

Follow me on my Instagram and NQN Instagram

View more of my photography work on my website.

Sunday, February 5, 2023

ICM Street Series Vol. 3

Street Photo – Dashing Wheels

Photo info:
Nikon D70s on Tamron 17-35mm f/2.8-4.0

Focal Length @ 35.0mm | f/22.0 | 1/15 second

ISO 200 | Center Weight Metering

NEF (RAW) file post-processed in Adobe Photoshop

Follow me on my Instagram and NQN Instagram

View more of my photography work on my website.

Saturday, December 10, 2022

Street Photo – Chinese Barber

On 15th August 2010, Sunday morning I was roaming around Joo Chiat Road and came across what looked like an antique shop, a Chinese barber at work. I found the whole shop and settings very old-school, especially that old-school barber chair.

I took a quick light reading with my hand-held light meter to determine the "right" exposure and set it accordingly on my Seagull-4A TLR camera. The film used is Ilford HP5 Plus rated at 200. In total, I made two shots and this is the second one. Wanted to go in to have some closer shots but I thought it would be intrusive. Of course, I could ask for their kind permission but I preferred the natural candid style.

Follow me on my Instagram and NQN Instagram

View more of my photography work on my website.

Saturday, December 3, 2022

ICM Street Series Vol. 2

Good morning and welcome back to another ICM street series Volume Two. How time flies! Two months ago, I shared my very first series and so in case some of you have missed it, you can view them here. Today I'm excited to share my new photos with you. There's a mixture of colors and black & white photos. So without further ado, let's jump right in.

Street Photo – Kacang Puteh

Another old street photo I took with a Seagull-4A TLR camera on 23 January 2010 of a Kacang Puteh vendor right at the main entrance of Peace Center. I believe the old man has retired and his son has taken over the stall. The film used is Ilford FP4 Plus. Developed in KODAK D76 and negatives are scanned on EPSON V700. Post-processed in Adobe Photoshop.

Follow me on my Instagram and NQN Instagram

View more of my photography work on my website.

Monday, November 28, 2022

Street Photo – Wood Carving

This photo was taken on 23 January 2010 with a Seagull-4A TLR camera exposed on an Ilford FP4 Plus film rated at 100. Developed in KODAK D76 for 8 mins 50 secs. Negatives were scanned on EPSON V700 and post-processed in Adobe Photoshop.

Follow me on my Instagram and NQN Instagram

View more of my photography work on my website.

Sunday, November 20, 2022

Street Photo – The Anti-Christ?

Photo info:

Follow me on my Instagram and NQN Instagram

View more of my photography work on my website.

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

The Power of Mother Nature

Last weekend, I visited the Singapore Botanic Gardens in search of more ICM subjects to photograph. By the way, ICM stands for Intentional Camera Movement. It is an abstract style of shooting that has no rules – it all comes down to moving your camera over a long exposure to create an artistic or painting-like effect. I got interested and had my first attempt a couple of months ago. If you're keen to find out, I have written and posted a blog on my experience here.

Back on track, the weather on that Sunday morning was awesome with warm sunlight and there were many visitors, be it strolling in the garden, jogging, doing yoga, or with family and friends gathering for picnics or dining at the restaurants, the Garden is a favorite place for nature lovers to relax. Make the jump to read more.

On Reading... New Photos Update

I recently went through my photo archive and found unedited scanned photographs, which I made with different film cameras like Nikon FM10, a Seagull TLR, and a Rangefinder. Oh! And a swing lens panorama camera, Horizon Perfekt.

It dawned on me that I have not updated my website with many of these unedited photographs on this project, an ongoing project titled On Reading, for quite some time. Over the years, I had shot and accumulated many photographs of individuals immersed in the act of reading in a variety of settings.

So here are three photographs made with a Seagull-4A TLR camera. The film used was Kodak Tri-X 400. Self-developed in Kodak D76 and scanned on an Epson V700.

Do check out the rest of the street photographs on my website or simply click on the top image. Hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I love making them. Cheers!

Follow me on my Instagram and NQN Instagram

View more of my photography work on my website.

Sunday, October 23, 2022

ICM Nature In Bloom (A Triptych)

Enter to view each photo in full display size.

Street Photo – Straw Hats

Hi! Welcome to another new photography blog post. As you can see in the photo on top, three black men were spotted wearing straw hats. They got my attention and so I went up behind them and close enough to make this shot. The man in the center with the colored abstract shirt is the main attraction followed by the three straw hats.

I thought it would be better to show the photo in colors, but during the post-process in Photoshop, I converted it to black & white and the result is very satisfying. Check out the comparison below.