Life with a prime

I didn’t use a prime (fixed focal length) lens until early year, as my general, everyday use lens. Digital saw me with a 3x zoom on the Nikon 775 compact cam and then a 10x zoom on the Olympus C-750uz ultra zoom, then the 5x zoom on the Kodak P880. When I went digital, I had the two kit lenses on my E-510 and the story continued.

This year, David Williams introduced me to the 20mm f/1.7 Lumix pancake (40mm in old coin, film parlance) and 45mm f/1.8 Zuiko Digital (90mm in old coin). And I fell for these lenses. I wanted a shallower depth of field like in the film days plus more chance to take shots in dimmer light levels.

I fit the 20mm a lot – it allows closer camera distance, in fact, it forces a closer camera distance. And I switch over to the 45mm when I want some distance from the subject, when I have the space to back away or when I want to frame a tighter portrait.

Beginners to photography often gasp and say “What can I do without a zoom? I can’t live without one. Walking backward and forward isn’t an option I want to take or I have”. To that, I have to reply – what is impossible or immutable is only a state of mind, not an actuality of circumstances.

The honest gaze of sincere friend Kuan – we’ve known each other since University and now we’re apart except for the annual visit but we still find lots in common

The cup of Malaysian coffee is very important – after all, it’s a coffee shop. I didn’t develop a taste of habit for any kind of coffee. We used to have those old carved wood stools and marble seats, it’s been plastic chairs and melamine tables for a long while now. You’ve got to give the coffee a good stir of course, with the overflow dripping down the sides of the cup, otherwise it’s not authentic. The mouth expression in anticipation of before the event or savouring the taste afterwards.

The mahjong boys are back in town. Mahjong can be a gambling addiction and also a generational family and community pastime. Players and onlookers gaze in concentration and exclamations of animation abound when some event happens. Notice the half tiled wall (to save costs) and the unburied wire running (used to be stapled onto bulky wood runners, the modernisation brought PVC conduits. But then again, you could just run it along the wall.

The stand fan provides a breeze and if you are attired in a singlet, well that’s tropicalised wear for you.

Life goes way too fast in the concrete city staffed by Twenty-Somethings. It’s all hustle and bustle and winning the rat race except there are huge number of rats in the race.

When you’ve had your day in the sun, what you yearn for a nice tasty bowl of Yong Tau Foo. The slower you stir, the slower time passes, or so it seems. You can almost see some glimpses of past splendour and activity in the ripples and the reflections.

We close with a note to people who make such food happen. The lady below is peeling mengkuang otherwise known as Yam Bean. It’s good eaten raw, crunchy like an apple except that it is a root, not a fruit. It’s also the sweet taste in poh piah and joo hoo char

And, at the end of the day, we need money to survive. To keep the fridge stocked and running.

In the photos above, we’re not talking about action shots, urgent 5 frame per second shooting. These subjects are evocative, story telling. Yes, some of these shots are indeed cropped and a zoom might avoid that. But a zoom would, for the same price be darker, bigger, more clumsy – with these primes, you can make like you’re fiddling with your camera instead of framing up a shot.

Memories of Dad

I’m here in Malaysia, where it all began so many years ago. And where I last saw Dad before his last rush to hospital. We’ve visited his resting place in Nilai a few times and it is peaceful there but that’s not what I preserve in my heart and my mind.
We used to go to Pudu wet market, we did.

Mum used to do all the heavy lifting – trudge into the wet places to buy chicken, eggs, meat and so on. The women of the household still do that. They used to wear local clogs and later on plastic washable sandals and they still do that.

Dad and I would wait in the cleaner areas and indulge in his passion for fruit – he was the gatherer of the fruits. I went to the place where we bought bananas and they still sell bananas there, but I don’t know the people, old or new.

It’s a darker corridor and there are side entrances

There were lots of things inside the dim market but as Mum did all the main shopping, I didn’t see the veil lifted. Shallots, spices and eggs.
There would be fish.
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And meatier stuff – curiosities like Pigs Ears.

If we stepped outside, we’d see all kinds of stuff on sale. Just because it’s a wet market doesn’t mean you only sell bloody meat or things that make you go Eeeuuww.

Flowers in garlands

As we walked back to the fringe, we would pass this Taoist worship ornaments shop

The shops by the road that sell fish are still there

Then Mum would still not have turned up. We would wait some more and see peddlars with fake Rolex watches (Dad always wanted a real one but settled for two Tissot in his life, he was realistic – his had a family to feed and two sons to send oversas to Uni on government officer salary). He would reward my patience with two types of Chinese pancakes – the thick and the thin types.
And sometimes, sometimes, I would catch a glimpse of something potentially scary and intriguing. The slaughter of a big lizard, turtle – often in a manner that might bring the RSPCA. Those days are gone of course, all you can see are frogs

The market is still full of wide eyed kids

and their Dad

And people who take might have the advantage of wide eyed adults

And that, is what memories of Dad and our time together is.

Thanks Robin Wong, Luke Ding, Yeow Chin Liang and all the gang for hosting the walk. And a hello to Mithun

Tired but floating on a cloud

I’ve been meaning to catch Burt Bacharach all these years. His rich music output over all these years covered my early teens through to University and beyond. Part of the nostalgia kick is to listen to Dionne Warwick, Karen Carpenter and all the ones who made it with his songs.
By the way, Burt says Hal David is in hospital and not doing well at all. Take a pause and send some good thoughts his way.
You know the old songs of Burt and Hal, from What The World Needs Now Is Love, Walk On By, Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head – you’ve heard them a thousand times from the hollow sounding microphoned recordings of old through to some chick flick leveraging nostalgia and soft moist tissues. – they’re very much like old film.
A lot of the youngsters have re-discovered the dye colours of film, shirking digital purity. They’ve seen the stuff we used to shoot on Kodakchrome, Ektachhrome, Agfachrome, faded a bit, and they want to shoot the same deal – with sprocket holes. See how many canned effects we have in Instagram, Picasa, Piknik that mock up that. That’s because they didn’t dip their hands in D-76 and the only hypo they know is a syringe reference.
Ok, film, despite the slow demise of Kodak, is not dead and not faded – it’s getting a new lease of arty life. Maybe, maybe you should experience film, just a few rolls, before cost and saving the earth from smelly chemicals and dyes overcome you. For, if you don’t feel the past, feel the current, how do you fashion the future?
Go get an old film camera, it doesn’’t have to be a Leica, it doesn’t have to be a Holga. Shoot it. You’ll never know until you do.

From Ananda's Film Album

From Ananda's Film Album

From 06/04/2012

Oh, and Burt. Bliss like anything. More than just an item on my bucket list. He brought the nostalgia back to me and to the whole audience of grey hairs and balds. We felt like teens and children again, swaying to the spell he cast. But it wasn’t tired, hollow mic-ed music performed competently. It was superb modern arrangements (but still the impeccable timing and precision that you can rely on from Burt), passionately played by his core band (and the Australian ensembles) and sung for all their life with interpretive gusto by Donna Taylor, Josie James and John Pagano. Melbourne still has one day, the 20th April – and tickets should still be available online.

 

The importance of being Earnest

Street Photography isn’t new. It’s as old as the redoubtable Henri Cartier Bresson or even Jacques Henri Lartigue. With Vivien Maier as a standout (who probably never made a cent from her passion) through to the current New Yorkers Joe Wigfall, Jamel Shabazz, Major Deegan. These guys have the magic of establishing relationship pretty fast, almost Yeow-like and Robin-esque. They engage pleasantly and comfortably with their human subjects, producing street portraits that are both impromptu and attractive. Quite the opposite style to in-your-face Bruce Gilden and the young exponent Eric Kim.

Sifu Yeow at work

The most approachable security guard I’ve met

Call me “Porkman”, he said.

How do you maintain a deadpan look of enquiry?

Shots of behinds don’t often work. I rather like this one

For human subjects, it’s particularly important to apply the golfer’s analogy instead of the tennis analogy – one has oneself to beat, not the competition. You’ve got to be comfortable in your skin and with your gear.

Endless debates cover:

• the size of your camera
• the size of your lens
• the focal length to shoot at
• the distance to shoot at
• the risk of equipment loss through theft and mugging
• whether you’re sucking the soul of the sitter through your lens can then selling it to the devil.

Only you can rationalise and emotivise your feelings. Only you can decide what style of human interaction works for you.

While you’re pondering that, take a look at David William’s work

Soaking in the vibe

The thing with most humans is that they want everything, all at once, right now. It’s not an unusual desire but in most cases, it just doesn’t happen. And so with photography as well.

I’m on my annual pilgrimage to the air, sights, smells, sounds and vibe that I grew up with. It’s quite a fascinating return each year if I allow myself the pleasure of enjoying the old and the new. I have old memories and perceptions to catch up on and I have new friends to see – Robin Wong, C.L.Yeow and Ronnie Oh were very quick to extend invites to a specially arranged photowalk and friends at the PEN Lovers group (as well as others) were there to make it a social and fun happening.

Although I have very fond memories of the locale (well, I prefer the fond memories than the gawky, fumnbling youth that I was), my street vibe in Melbourne with Marg is quite different. From the very fundamental thing like preferred exposure – Ev -0.7 in Melbourne’s direct sun vs Ev +0.7 in Kuala Lumpur’s gauzy sky, to the way human subjects react when encountering a dude with a camera, it’s different. Sure most passionate photogs want to step off the plane and get way excellent street shots in any city in the world, in reality, it doesn’t work that way. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

So, I changed pace, soaked in the vibe. It isn’t all about photography as well. It’s human watching, taking in the ultra wide angle view of the scene (which only the human eye can do), interpreting the significance of dress, facial expressions, gestures. For maximum satisfaction, absorb that – it remains with you long after you’ve shown off that travel set of shots for the upteenth time.

The shot above – with a Tamron 28mm manual focus prime lens on the Olympus PEN E-PL1, faded effect courtesy of Picasa desktop client. Coming from a long flight, the atmosphere was lethargic – taxi drivers waiting for work. The guy on the left did not appear to be a taxi driver. And you sit on anything other than the floor – the public floor in the tropical Malaysia isn’t something locals are conditioned to sit on.

This was the neighbourhood wet market – the wet market is well, sorta wet. Old customers come back to favourite stalls and money changes hands, for in this case, freshly slaughtered chicken. That’s the way they do it.

Take a drive amongst tall buildings and you are in a different world – where the locals come to shop, relax, be seen.

Last post for 2011

Well, it’s the last day of 2011, Lovely agapanthus waving in the sun. I just saw a honeyeater perch on a stalk and feed off the agapanthus. Watched in awe until I thought, hey, the Olympus E-620 is near. Missed the shot but hey, it’s such a relaxed state of mind.

Thanks for the good company of Marg and David, I had a lovely time in shirtsleeves, light breeze on the face, peering into the complexion of huge Lotus blossoms at the Blue Lotus. Could’t be more enjoyable.

Looking forward to a new year. May 2012 be blessed and good things to all.

The Art Filter or the Effex filter

Olympus was the first to incorporate in-camera  Art Filters into their DSLR and ILC-M  (Intercheangeable Lens Cameras - Mirrorless). From there they have progressed the their product naming to Magic Filters which may be a more palatable term for conservatives.The branding of the "Art Filter" name is of course to capture the imagination of the public. We all know taking a ready made can of "Art" vs producing a work of Art, aren't the same thing. But I like the idea of having effects filters in the camera - just like you can buy a can of Niks for the computer, why not let the camera have one as well?  And you know when you're onto a Good Thing when the competition flatters you with imitation. So far, several camera brands have responded by incorporating this into their products.

For those who don't "get it", an  Effex filter when implemented in the camera does the following:

• display a result show on the LCD after the shot - in your hand, in situ - if you don't like it, you can shoot again immediately. Even something simple like conversion to black and white helps me visualise the patterns by suppressing the colour during framing and composition.
• show you in Live View before and during the shoot to predict the shot - this allows you to tweak settings, change framing and composition, depth of field - it all becomes tangible and real rather than waiting for some hours later to sit at the computer
• often you can shoot RAW + JPEG. This allows you to the ability of preview and look at your result, yet, you have an untampered copy where the manufacturer's software can render at the computer or avoid the effect altogether.
• for those who shoot movies, it seems really cool to be able to apply live filter effects, in situ.

Anyway, Robin asked today, whether we had any Art Filtered shots to show off. Here are some.