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.

An Awakening of the Senses, A Quickening of the Pulse

You know when you have a camera that you will bond with when you hold it in your hands, switch it on, point it around, have a feel of the sounds it makes, the menus and displays, the feel not just of the weight but of the skin texture and so on.

That’s why we often ask “what camera shall I buy” newbies to go to a shop and actually hold the cameras that are on their shortlist. Sometimes they reach an epiphany, sometimes, they come back with a shrug of their shoulders and say  “feels a much of a muchness to me”. That’s just sad, actually not being able to realise that moment.

It gets better when you actually have your first real outing with the camera (aside from pointing it at the ceiling lights in a darkened room and making vroom, vroom sounds (or whatever sounds photogs make).

And in your first outing, you feel at one with the camera, you see, you point, you shoot, you chimp and it feels good. Then there is that bated breath moment when you actually see the images on the screen (or print if you are so inclined) and YESSSSSS, it is as you envisaged at the time you clicked the shutter release).

For some cameras that I have owned, it doesn’t feel like this. Ever.

For the newly discounted (for Mother’s Day 2011 in the US), PEN E-PL1, I get it. The attractiveness of the LCD. The often deprecated buttons that get me to the menus. The sound of the shutter. Oooh. I’ve had several cameras with focal plane shutters. There are only two that I have owned where the sound of the shutter turns me on – the Minolta X-700 (film SLR) and the E-PL1. For some reason, it puts a spring to my step during Shutter Therapy.

And, of course, the results.

Taking photos with whatever you have

I’m glad Robin takes time away from his E-5 to “smell the flowers”, see what else he can do. He had a bit of fun with his phone cam, a Nokia.

My Nokia E-71 as a camera was and is, really hopeless. Really hopeless. It may not may not have good image quality but I would never know. It would emit a loud synthesised audio click but then, much later, when my hand moved away, the camera would actually record the image. There was a macro mode but it didn’t get very macro-ey. In short, that phone cam just refused to perform it’s cam duties properly.

My Samsung Galaxy S can still be recalcitrant, but it more often, does perform as instructed. The only thing is, I must always remember to rub the lens port – somehow it has the habit of collecting every bit of finger grease in its idle time.

I still carry my Kodak V-705 for those wide angle moments and when I remember to, but the convenience and availability of the phone-cam, one that works as a cam, is satisfying.

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Observational vs Expressive Styles

In a recent discussion, a respondent asked what I meant when I said that most beginners start with an Observational Style and progressed to an Expressive Style. My take on this is that when one gets a camera and starts shooting, the scene one captures is what the camera sees, not what one wants to convey. Of course, there are exceptions, people who have what we call, a “natural eye” for the photo but they are exceptions rather than the rule.

That “visualising eye” may indeed be inherent or it may be consciously and explicitly developed. Some “get it” early, some achieve some semblance of it, some work very hard but never “get it” – that side of the brain is so recessive that it appears with difficulty. There’s always hope though, that’s what’s so fascinating about going out with the camera on a purposeful mission – your encounter with the world should bring new, unpredictable, savoured moments – if you feel you’ve “been there, done that”, it’s maybe time to give the hobby or your approach to that hobby a rest or a change.

I often see beginners on the DPR Beginners Forum ask – “which camera, which book, which website, which tutorial DVD” and on. And yes, there are products that will provide information but information is not knowledge and knowledge is not “soul”. You really need to go out, hang out with people who have soul, who have passion, to get some Shutter Therapy otherwise, as much as you read about cameras and menus and settings, it is hard to develop your aesthetic appreciation and artistic skill in a vacuum. Of course, there are exceptions.

On a fresh and upbeat topic, I’ve just met up with a nice bunch of guys and girls – they’re members of the Malaysian Pen Lovers / Zuiko Lovers Group. David Chua is the Olympus product and brand evangelist (he assures us it is part time and he has his own clients as well as a young family) and the fabulous Robin Wong turns up when he can to contribute and lead as well. Robin’s written a blog article of our meetup as well: Robin Wong: Olympus Walkabout in KL

The youthful exuberance and joie de vivre is infectious. You really have to walk in their shoes


Add to that, age old memories of that little hill that hold Stadium Merdeka and downtown Petaling Street and it is a magical journey, a revisit to the past and the dilapidation that is here today.


Robin comes from Sarawak, and he sees Kuala Lumpur with new eyes and new visualisations. I do too, as a visitor now, rather than someone who went to two schools in the city. There are so many offbeat visuals jostled within the life and living today. Many family businesses and even shops have extinguished and torn down, but there is still a lot of grit and texture to see.



It’s not an easy life in the streets, in some respects, the whole world has shaken off its lethargy and it is no slack life anywhere else. The work in KL, however can be demonstratively hard.



As the city develops into more styrofoamed, artificially contrived shopping malls, where the environment and appearances are manipulatively manufactured out of textureless blankness are we merely textureless visually or do we still run lives of challenge and difficulty like we’ve always run?

What people do…

Sometimes, it takes a visitor to see aspects of what one takes as normal and the way living. I’m been away from the Malaysian way of looking at things, so it’s both interesting and absorbing to see the sights with blended native and visiting eyes.

This scene typifies the Malaysia (and South East Asia) that is so vitally intense, engrossing and interesting. As Malaysians obsessively watch Astro (and in this case, Taiwanese Hokkien soaps), they escape (or they see virtualised, abstracted, emphasised versions of their lives and living).

The scene above shows the huge umbrella. It belongs to a street vendor, probably selling food. Obviously, the vendor comes regularly to this spot, so X marks the spot. In the background are double storey shophouses, retailing a melange of goods and services. Not the clean, synthetic, uniformised chain stores that so disenfranchise themselves from being nostalgic tags in the timeline. No doubt, the middle class will remember the good times at KMart in Australia, with a passing parade of staff that service the outlet.

But here, in the Taman Desa suburb of Kuala Lumpur, you can eyeball and see the small business owner. And his wife (maybe) because she runs the non related business upstairs. And their children as they come back from school.

Here, someone’s taking Kodak to the Laundry.

In some capitalist Western societies, being a businessman seems to attract and undesirable trail of ethics, motivational queries. In Malaysia, a fair number of people are in civil service or work as nine to five office workers. But being a business person, particularly a small business person is not a withdrawal from society.

It’s just a place where you can hang your hat.