Kuala Lumpur International Airport - KLIA

How unpredictable, here I am, in KLIA. Got an urgent call from the manager yesterday at around 2.30pm, requesting me to attend to a customer site in Bintulu Malaysia ASAP, which the site was unable to startup the unit.

So, I got to the earliest flight from Kuala Lumpur to Bintulu (East Malaysia) on Malaysia Airlines (seems like it is the only flight to Bintulu today). Believe it or not, this will be my first time to East Malaysia.

Saw this rather unique view in the airport just now after finishing my McD breakfast. So, I quickly took out my camera with the 10-22mm ultra wide angle lens, took some bracketed shots and converted them to a HDR picture.

KLIA Departure Hall

Wish me luck for this assignment. Hope that I can help the customer to startup the unit as early as possible and return home.

Winter in Gunma - Part 2

This is the second part of my first snow experience in Gunma, Japan. To read the first part of this trip, which includes some of my Winter Photography tips, click here. 

After having our car stuck in the middle of a blizzard, we walked down hill and looked for help. Finally, we got ourselves into Minakami Okutone Skiing Zone.

Minakami Okutone Skiing Zone

Kids around the Skiing Zone

Winter Photography in Gunma 群馬, Japan

Winter Photography

With the end of the winter season in the northern hemisphere regions, I am sharing my first experience with snow as well as some tips for Winter Photography. Although it may sound strange to some that my first contact with snow was when I was 26 years old, it is absolutely normal to people who lives near the equator, in hot and humid countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. Snow is a big deal to us!! A lot of people here live their entire life not seeing snow except in TV. So, I consider myself very lucky.

My first contact was in January 17, 2010. It happened in Minakami Okutone of Gunma Prefecture, Japan. It was a last minute call when my Japanese colleague invited me to join them for a skiing trip to the famous skiing resorts in Niigata Prefecture of Japan. He said he will be driving and an American colleague is going together. I made my intention clear, that I am there for my first contact with snow and to photograph winter!!

Winter Photography

So, how did we ended up half way in Gunma instead of Niigata? (A little bit of Geography lesson here. Gunma Prefecture is located north of Tokyo, in between Tokyo and Niigata Prefecture)

Find me in Framework Magazine

Framework Magazine is a new movie review magazine in Malaysia. I have been invited to write short articles for the magazine's photography section. My New York City article is now up in the magazine's 03 issue.

If you are a movie lover, I would recommend this magazine to you. To learn more about Framework Magazine and to subscribe, visit their website at http://www.frameworkmagazine.com/.

To read about my New York City article in this blog, click here.

How I HDR-ed my friends and family

Two years ago, I was in Dubai and I remember asking an Indian customer at site to wish me Happy Chinese New Year. Last year, I was lucky enough to have my re-union dinner with the family and have left for Japan in the morning of the first day of Chinese New Year. This year is the luckiest year of my field engineer career so far, being able to have a complete Chinese New Year celebration with the family, and of course not forgetting to attend several old friends reunion sessions.

I took the opportunity to take several snaps of my long lost friends in a reunion session 3 days ago. I couldn't resist HDR-ing my friends.

Old school friends HDR-ed

Fireworks Photography

Fireworks Photography

With the Chinese New Year just around the corner, I am posting this article to fire up your festival celebration mood. Wishing everyone Gong Xi Fa Cai and a very prosperous Rabbit Lunar New Year!!

Although it is not very common to see fireworks display during the Chinese New Year, at least not in Malaysia where most of the people leave the big cities and celebrate the festival in their hometown, there will still be opportunity to photograph fireworks display. In this article, I would like to share with you a few tips of Fireworks Photography.

Everybody loves fireworks. It is so beautiful and spectacular that it often evokes emotions in people and is best to fire up a festive atmosphere. Many assumed photographing fireworks to be tough. Well, I would say give it a try and you will find that it is not as tough as you thought. But of course, you will need some preparation if you want to photograph a fireworks display successfully. Although a DSLR camera provides more options and controls when photographing fireworks, a compact camera can do a decent job too. The two pictures below were captured with my Canon IXUS860IS compact camera back in year 2009, which was also my first attempt in Fireworks Photography.

Fireworks captured with my Canon IXUS860IS Compact Camera

Fireworks Captured with my Canon IXUS860IS Compact Camera

Tip #1: Use a Tripod
As you can see from the above pictures captured with my compact camera, all you need is a tripod to hold your camera firm when photographing fireworks because you would like to have a slower shutter speed to allow the movement of the lights from the fireworks to paint onto your picture, forming beautiful patterns as a result of the fireworks explosion. Estimate which part of the sky will the fireworks be, focus your camera towards that section and lock it with your tripod. Set your camera to slow shutter speed settings and get ready to push the shutter button when the fireworks display starts.