拜天公

On the eighth day of every new year (following the chinese calendar), Chinese from the Hokkien group gather to pray to the Emperor of heaven (天公), also known as the Jade emperor of heaven.  Food and fruits will be used as offerings.  Candles will be burnt, fire cracker will be lit.

My wife is Hokkien.  It's a big day for them. It's also quite an ordeal as there are many things that need to be done prior to the prayer.  They fold golden paper into certain shapes, resembling gold nuggets. These will be burnt later on. It is believed that once burnt, these will become gold in heaven, to be used by the Jade emperor.

The plate of red stuff is a plate of hard boil eggs boiled in red pigment. Red stained eggs are common food in chinese tradition, used as prayer offering and also eaten during birthdays.

After the prayer, we lit firecrackers.
 There was a "secret message" at the end of every bar of firecracker, to be retrieved at the end of the fire action.  Ours says "wealth".

Finally, the burning of the paper gold nuggets.

Chinese New Year 2012

I am happy. People tend to be in better mood when they are on holiday. I got my 3 weeks holiday approved, only after i kicked up a bit of a fuss. Lets not get into that since i am in good mood.  It is Chinese new year. It is a big day for celebration for Chinese all around the world.  Most of us will travel a thousand mile to be home with family.

My trip home from Auckland wasn't perfect. My flight with Malaysia Airline got delayed almost an hour due to air conditioning system malfunction on the air craft. After touching down at KLIA, i had to wait 45 minutes before i could collect my luggage, again due to baggage delivery malfunction! I haven't lived in Malaysia for the past 10 years and i have forgotten how appalling Malaysian efficiency is.  Their so called "Malaysia Boleh" (meaning Malaysia can do) attitude is all talk and nothing more.  It seems like anything that falls into the hands of Malaysian government will be ruined in time, sooner or later. I don't think it is their lack of knowledge to run a business that is the problem.  I think it is the overly relax attitude to life and the over-inflated self content that is becoming the tripping stone. Anyway, i have digressed.  This blog post is not intended for venting my dismay.

Chinese new year celebration starts on New year's Eve, where the whole family (immediate or extended) have a massive feast together at dinner time.  Many people stay up for midnight count down and your ears will be deafened by the sound of fire crackers thundering through the night sky.  Fire crackers are banned by Malaysian government. But few people follow the law here when it comes to trivial things like that. Once in a while you get a visit from police officer threatening to charge you with illegal use of a banned flammable item.  You will quickly learn that there are people who will find ways to evade the charge through various means, bribery being the commonest.

Mum's cooking. The soup in the photo is a classic for any big occasion

Chinese new year is all about family gathering and lots of food. The lots of food is the part i like most. I am blessed with a skinny gene. I can eat a lot and still not worry about excessive weight gain. My female friends get pissed off when i tell them that.  We went from door to door visiting relative. It can be quite a tiring task, especially when you have a lot of relatives. On the second day, i drove to my wife's hometown, 90 minutes drive from mine. There was a big crowd there. Lots of happy kids = lots of happy photographs!

Like Xmas, Chinese new year is also a time for exchanging gifts, in a form of hamper

It has been a long day.....

Of course, a true photographer points a camera at just about anything, not just people....

 

I had a blast this new year. Happy Dragon year to all of you. Til my next blog....take care and have a good one.

Model shoot: Rose Halfpenny

 

I like going to the bookstore, flipping through fashion magazine, mostly the girlie sorts. Not because i am  extremely metrosexual but because of what i can learn from the work of professional photographers there. There are crap photos, good photos and then there are great photos.  You won't get to see the crap photos because they get bin by the editor.  Good photos are the one that demonstrate solid technical skills of the photographer, with perfect exposure and good composition. What sets a great photo apart from the good ones is the mood it carries, the message or story it is telling, the emotions it triggers. I love environmental portraits. They usually tell their stories.


I have always wanted to do a model shoot but never really knew how to get started.  When i incidentally came across Graham Meadows photography workshop advertisement i got excited.  I managed to persuade my friend Peter to come along too. Like me, Peter is a long time trigger happy photography enthusiast.  We signed up, paid up and the rest were history.


Our model for the day was Rose Halfpenny, an experienced model in her twenties.  She was very good in front of the camera.  She told us she races car on the dirt track when she is free.  I thought that was pretty cool.


We were hoping to spend half of our workshop outdoor doing shoots with available light.  Sadly, it rained the whole day. We ended up staying in the studio doing shoots with different strobes set up. It was still a good experience since i have never really used strobes before.

The photos above were shot with available light through a window.  To get this exposure i had to use a fairly slow shutter speed and bump my ISO to 800.  I was surprise to see very little noise at such high ISO.  I am only using a D90, not a full frame.  The window was on Rose's left side.  We had a reflector on her right to bounce light onto her right cheek.  The effect was quite pleasant i thought.

Then we started using the strobes.  Two strobes in front the model, both with soft boxes, one elevated on a light stand, the other at ground level.  Such set up lights up the subject's with only shadows behind her as you can see in the next photo.

Props are important in fashion shoots.  Graham gave us a big rug.  The photo below was shot with us standing at the top of a tall ladder shooting straight down.  This was a four lights set up with two extra lights behind the model to give an even lighting.

It was a fun shoot.  We may do it again.  Time to sign up to Model Mayhem i say.

Birdie

I was taking a walk at the Auckland Domain the other day and out of no where a few of these birds plunged from the sky and gathered on the grass started looking for food.  Their colours were so bright and eye catching.  I did a quick lens swap, pulled out my 70-300mm and started following them. I can tell you 70-300mm may sound like a very long lens, but it was still too short for catching Parakeets like these.  Even with my crop factor of 1.5.  They were shy. I had to get low onto the ground and moved inch by inch commando style to get closer.   This was the closest i got to one of them.

Pukekos are easier to get close to.  They tend to be less shy.  There is a wetland across the road from where i stay.  I see Pukekos feeding there everyday.

Auckland Christmas 2011

It is that time of the year again. It is Christmas. We don't get white christmas in this part of the world. We get a warm summer instead, well....if the rain clouds stay away anyway.  The weather on Christmas day has been good this year. Not overly warm but enough sun to keep everyone happy.

I was "lucky" enough to be on call for my department over the christmas weekend. Bummer!  I could not leave town.  I had to stay close to the hospital at all time, in case my on call phone goes off.

There was really not much happening in Auckland. Half the Auckland population left town to join their family elsewhere.  The shops were close. The only restaurants that were open were Asian restaurants.  The streets were exceptionally quiet.  I had a fairly quiet Christmas this year.  As for my on call duty, I only got called once over the weekend for something really trivial, easily sorted.  Lucky.

On Christmas eve, I took a walk down Auckland's famous Franklin road in the trendy suburb of Ponsonby.  Every year the houses and shops on that road will put up all sorts of fancy christmas lights to transform Franklin road into Ponsonby's very own Disneyland.  The few nights leading up to Christmas, Franklin road will be packed with cars trying to get a glimpse at the magical lights.  Me and my friend  Luke decided to go on foot rather than getting stuck in traffic.  Besides, holding a DSLR in one hand while driving won't go down too well anyway. I liked what they have done with the street. The lights were not overdone. They were simple but nice.

Apart from the lack of snow on the street and the absence of Mr Snowman at our doors on Christmas day, there is a sight that is unique to New Zealand....our very own NZ Xmas tree. We call it Pohutukawa tree.  Pohutukawas are hardy coastal plant, shrub-like when young but can grow up to 15 meters tall with time.  Every December when the weather warms up, the tree blooms with crimson red crown shaped flowers. It is quite a magnificent sight.