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.