Fireworkz Part II

HAPPY NATIONAL DAY

A gang of us went to the esplanade to welcome in the birthday of our little nation and to w atch the fireworks display that was put on by a team of singaporeans and man oh man it was awesome good job team singapore!

This time we were located on the seaward side of land near Sheares bridge and man oh man didnt every photog in singapore have the same idea, the folks on on the bridge itself were pleniful and those on the river banks with us we even more so. In our band of merry folk ( 9 of us) we had 7 cameras all canon and 1 nikon, almost like a rat pack of photographers. I was of course shooting away while trying to enjoy the great display which by the way popped in a spot which none of us expected! thus causing several hundred photogs to swivel dramtically around to get some pics.

I will readily admit i enjoyed the whole thing, the fact that so many people were enjoying ourselves, doing what we love together with friends and family was fantasic, whoever came up with the idea for this Festival of Fireworkz deserves an award.

As the display was going on people(including me) were cheering and whooping in joy, shouts of well done singapore could be heard and that my friend is as common as an opposition member of parliament around these parts.

Anyhow today is national day so to all Singaporeans who read this (i bet there are only two people reading this and neither of you are TLOML)

HAPPY NATIONAL DAY

SIDEBAR-PICS are resized and cropped.
bugger all the typos. Click on them to get a larger display(not full size)
oh yeah u notice i din comment on my pics? thats because they suck but i dont feel so bad cause there was a guy were a professional rig behind us who didnt get anything either.

MY LAST PIC- Another Hmm shot, looks like some kind of spaceship doesnt it?

Sunday 070805

What a day, woke up late! Was supposed to meet the folks for a little jaunt around seletar at 8 but alas i awoke at 8 and so everything was pushed back.
We went to a lovely little place called "The Animal (something or other" i have been there before but there did some tidying up and the whol place looks better now. We were too early to see dogs so we spent our time taking pics and feeding the animals. There have some nice looking crested cranes and a lovely brown horsey who unfortunately is blind in one eye. The moo and the doo tried to train a fat turkey to hop and get a bit o bread and they succeded but unfortunately it was not captured by me!

After seletar we drove to lim chu kang and discovered a Frog Farm, yes thats right...doesnt it just conjour up images of frogs roaming the fields or being hearded by a collie...anyway they have thousands of american bull frogs all meant for human consumption, mainly for double boiled frog soup. There was needless to say alot of frog lovin..
From there we went to a couple of plant stores, east point and home! TLOML made a beautiful pie for lunch. lurvely.


SIDEBAR- Dont forget if you click on the pic you will get a larger version but it is still smaller than the actual size.

THE last pic today is a "hmmm" shot.enjoy.

assignment-fireworks

Mission- To photograph Fireworks over Marina Bay(yup you know the one that took 400k to decide to retain the name)
Spec Ops Team- The Doo Pilot
- The Moo Chief Intel Officer
- TLOML Eye Candy
- me Grunt
Mission Status - FAILED

Took more then 200 pics tonight, mostly of the fireworks, had a great time treking to our vantage point on a plot of reclaimed land, but the pic...sigh the pics didnt turn out well.

I tried too many settings when i should have just done a couple of test shots and settled for one setting, jumping back and forth i hit everything but the target.

I am only posting a couple of shots tonight and all of them i repeat all of them are seriously flawed.

Its been rather a busy day, went to work in the morning then popped over to my godmothers place to see her new puppy, silky terrier cute bugger they named him OATMEAL (pic below)
then went over to meet the other members of our team and off we went to get the shots we so badly wanted. 15mins of clr then we strolled over to lau pa sat for satay(yummy) thats where i bid adieu to TLOMY and family and moved on to meet the boys.









We walked down to the merlion and across to the esplanade out towards to mouth of the singapore river , under sheares bridge. A seldom visited place, by me anyway and a good spot to try again for the fire works!(i hope)

Forgot

i forgot to add these pics of the same sunbird(sometimes called the olive back sunbird/olive throated sunbird) shown in my earlier post...

Sunset on the day after yesterday

Sidebar-pics are cropped and resized...and typos are not an issue i care to hear about...




Wens..what can i say...was supposed to finish at 5.30 but at 5 i was told i was needed till 8. that sums up my day....this week really sucks!!
took some pics today nothing great ..the clrs were abit off i dunno why. I tried to be creative with a couple of sunset shots, dunno if it worked.


Got my hair cut during lunch..my cleaning supervisor can fo anything, i suppose cutting my hair is not challenge..set the machine to number 1 and let it rip.(no pics)
Got a pic of a fatty olive throated sunbird...the contrast was terrible mind you it was direct sunlight at noon so i was OK with the pic.

Anyhow tom is another day and it can only get better, right niki?


So i wish you a good night and a better tom.

yesterday

yesterday was another barren day in the desert that is sengkang. a dry dull dreary day. and today it looks like more of the same.BORING.

I have come to the sad conclusion that my hard working, long suffering boots are running their last laps.....they have served me well. I have used them almost everyday for the past 2 years and soon it will be time to send them to the happy hunting grounds..i have sent an urgent note to brad in perth with instructions on the replacment pair..i hope he gets em for me.
all good things must come to pass.......sniff sniff

Sunday 310705

What is a picture if it is not looked at.....

Nice day great weather, woke up pretty early today went with TLOML to submit my two pics for the hype exhibition http://www.hypegallery.com.sg/gallery.html . it really is a great idea it allows blur blocks like me to submit stuff and have it hung in an actuall gallery, one of the pics i submitted is in the online gallery just type simon in the search bar and the pic should pop up or u can type pillay for sherwins 2 pics or pereira for my mother in laws pic. good stuff.
Had some great light for photography this morning, i really wasnt expecting it but i guess that was the best bit. This is the fourth time in 3 weeks that i have been lurking in the civi district and i really enjoyed taking pics today and TLOML was there so that was a bonus. The pic with the chick(TLOML) was taken at the exhibition, they have an online exhibit and a studio exhibit.
I think i shall go there again next week, i have some unfinished biz with the area. As i was strolling along i came across a group of photographers hanging around the riverside, not very friendly buggers. i always get disappointed by people like that, it is obvious that we share the same hobby and you would think that a little chit chat would be fine BUT oh no pardon me i am too good to talk to you. Idiots. Nothing like the people at the dog show we went too after lunch at expo, tons of dogs and tons of friendly people real nice folk, with huge huskys and tiny little yorkies, pepper aka fatty didnt like the crowd and we had to carry her around...she is a shy little doggy.

I just had to take a pic of TLOML sitting in the VIP stands in front of city hall! all set for national she is! hehe we wanted to take a pic behind the presidents rostrum but were too shy to ask the guards, cheh shy what the hell is this world coming to.

If you notice i have placed a pic of the UGLIEST BUILDING IN SINGAPORE here as i wanted to shy my disgust with you. I know i have been ranting and raving on this topic but come on man look at it! its a disgrace, so ugly i could only bring myself to upload a small pic of it, i spit on it!(and if i knew how to spell the sound of spitting i would put that down here too).
The last pic as seems to be my custom, just appealed to me. No Rhyme No Reason.

Well sunday is almost over and tom is another monday, back to work..i leave you with good wishes for you and your own .

sidebar
forgive the many typos. i cant spell.
the pics ahve all been resized(smaller)

290705

SIDEBAR-Before your go further, please note that i could care less about my many typos and other errors. The pics have been cropped and resized, and if you click on them you will get a slightly larger pic than the one displayed NOT the full sized picture.

Had a real long walk yesterday, took my half day off, met Sherwin and we went down to old parliament house to see the HYPE exhibition. It was great found out that we can submit our own pics for the show....i cant decide what to send in!!
Anyhow yesterday we covered alot of ground that we have gone over the last couple of weeks, it was variations of a theme almost. i will be posting around 10 to 15 pics in this post now take note its not because they a great shots or even good shots to me they are just interesting shots. My goal is to train my eye and skill as a photographer to take shots of things we are familiar with in an everyday setting and view them from an aspect we are unfamiliar with. That’s not to say that i was successful here, thats just my goal. Of course my other goal is to be a real good nature photographer, a skill that eludes me! My greatest flaw in photography is impatience, and being to lazy to learn about the camera. I hope to improve on those flaws! I took the pic of City Hall in national day deco as i was thinking it would be nice to morph myself behind the Presidents post heheh. The fence pic is from old parliament house but what i found interesting is that they used the exact same design for the new parliament house a nice gesture of respect from the architect and designers of the new building.

The Red Carpeted Staircase is from old parliament house, the odd thing about this place is that you can take pics around the building, but not on the second floor..when i asked security why they were unable to furnish me with an answer, i call this shot elevation 1 (like real).
I found the Hype exhibition rather exciting, the whole idea that anyone could send in their artwork and it would be hung in such an old and venerable building is a thrill, the online exhibition can be found at www.hypegallery.com.sg .
After the exhibition we went down to change alley, and man oh man what a change. I remember walking across the bridge in secondary school and everytime since then that i have walked across the bridge it seems to have lost another shop, only a handfull survive. The best of whats left is a little second/ antique store they have stuff like cameras from the 20's to phonographs to watches from the Soviet block!

We had a friend who owned a little second hand book store there but he seems to have gone as well, change alley indeed..

Clifford Pier, one of the places i want to spend some time photographing before it changes or gets knocked down. I like the idea of all those heliconia flowers infront of what to me looks liek ant art deco style building, not colonial looking at all. I like buildings that have good lines that fit the environment in which they are located, sometimes buildings that clash make a bold statment of advanced technology, sometimes they just surprise us with its look that we take sometime to come around, like the esplanade. One building that will never win a prize for design or architecture is the SRC building on the padang to me it is a building that looks like Phua Chu Kang designed it, i will never understand how that dogs breakfast ever got approval. Another building which i find UGLY is the new supreme court. To me it looks like the spaceship from independence day, one of the guys said that should there be a war people can get into that and fly away. It doesnot compliment the area at all it should be destroyed or used in design school as an example of what not to do. I have another disaster to display later. We took a walk down to the Merlion Park, i always felt that the merlion is abit of a let down up close and is best viewed from a boat or on TV. I took the almost obligatory pics of it..left ..right ..rear and it was this rear shot that i thought looked the best. Just before we got to the merlion both sherwin and i took some shots in the reflection of a building, like i said at the start my goal is to see things from a different perspective and i am just at the start of this learning experience. By this time the sun was bright and hot, and there really is no shade at merlion park so we took cover under the new bridge(whose name i cant remember right now) It really is a nice looking bridge, clean flowing lines, and i think i am not alone in like t cause there were at least 5 people under there taking pics as well. They have a little coffeshop thing going on there it wasnt open but you should see all the cooking devices, might be a nice spot for a bite to eat. We walked past the fullerton twice and boy does it look different in the day, still nice but its the night that makes that building glow. Sherwin was delayed at the al fresco area they have there taking pictures of glassware and bottles, in the mean time i took another staircase, i call it elavation 2(hehe). Staircase are such interesting things to photograph.

We really did the rounds this time, we walked back down towards amoy st with the idea of taking pics at jingle bell lane(which was a BIG disapointment) but on the way we stopped by a very old temple and almost came to blows with the staff that work there, would have been good eh, fighting with temple workers! anyway i came away with several pics but the ones that i like were of the spiral hanging inscense that they use on the temple grounds. We are almost at the end of the journey now, and a long one it has been eh as i type this i am listening to Marvin Gaye. From the temple we met frodo, and walked down to clarke quay where sherwin left our company . At clarke quay i found the disaster i mentioned earlier, some blind designer decided to create an ugly out of place puke looking( insert your own vulgarity here) horrendous god knows what to call it. So what was once a nice clean looking row of colonial buildings which looked great from across the river is now obscured by wat i can only descride as hair salon dryers. God i wish the guy that approved this would let me into his house. its so ugly and it makes the whole area feel cramped and much smaller then it was, i really want to type some pretty nasty things here but i shall not. idiots, idiots , idiots.
Take a look at this lamp they blending old school design with new world technology, is it so hard?

This shot i dunno why i took. the man squatting and using his comp outside the toilet in such a bizarly coloured area was too weird to pass on.
So it ends, the 29th day of july in the 2005th year of our lord.