Pretty Kitty

Not really. I had to use the on-camera flash because I was rushing to take photos and it was dark. That 55-250mm lens doesn't give me great results in my dim apartment. I know it's not supposed to, but that doesn't prevent me from experimenting.

Experimentation led to this:

One eye was lit more by the flash, giving Kazu a "David Bowie-esque" (or, the appearance of two differently-colored eyes) effect.While that was not necessarily unpleasant, her shadow on the wall created an appearance of two extra ears. I couldn't think of anyone famous who had this sort of appearance, so I replaced the background:

 

Kazu tells me that she thinks pastels make her look fat.

Rainy rainforest

This is the view from the bedrooms. It was a tad rainy, creating a nice "Rainforesty mist" over the trees in the park. I tried to capture it, but it just looks hazy and overexposed. I still have much to learn.

 This is from a tree in front of my balcony

 

It's hard to go out and take photos at the moment. My work and PhD are both ramping up and taking up all my time.

Kent Ridge Park

I live right next to Kent Ridge Park; it literally ends just outside my bedroom window. I love living here! I even love the fact that we get all sorts of weird looking insects in our apartment, or the fact that I've encountered a fair number of snakes in the areas surrounding the apartment.

We went to the park and trotted around rather quickly today, but I did manage a few usable photos. I have to thank my wonderful boyfriend Selven for coming along on this "photoshoot" just to give me moral support. I've been too shy to go out with the camera.

This is where I jog. The path is covered by lovely tree canopy.

 

This is also along my jogging route. I tried to get a flare effect from the sun, but I had no idea how to do it. Those strange purple circles are all that I managed.

 

There is a tree top boardwalk that branches (haha) off from my jogging path. I don't jog there, but I like to take a leisurely walk along the boardwalk.

 

Here are some of the plants that I saw at eye-level and above:

 

Here is a photo taken while looking down from the boardwalk:

The park is really nice, I really didn't do it justice. It was a hazy day, otherwise I'd have attempted some landscape shots. Kent Ridge Park is set on a hill, and it has a nice wide view of the city below and the ocean from certain vantage points. Thank goodness Singapore has retained some of it's natural beauty. I only wish that they'd kept the old kampongs as well.

Claymation dalmation

Here, dalmation = blue dog. "Blue dog" just isn't as catchy. Although there's that famous blue dog that appears in paintings....

Anyway, this isn't it.

I decided to revisit one of my old pastimes and made myself a little clay doggie. Yes, I was supposed to be writing a report. Then it cleverly dawned on me (translated: I was looking for a way to procrastinate) that I could make a short claymation video of the dog wagging his tail. So here's the dog:

And here's the video:

I just took a bunch of photos of the little dog, stuck them in windows movie maker and the video was done. More or less, anyway, there wasn't much to it. It wasn't a great procrastination project as it didn't take that long.

Furry and finned creatures

My small cat, Miki. She's seriously tiny. (update: we just weighed her, she's 3 kg)

The next photos are of the fish in my other tank. The zebra danio and the platy are both greedy devourers of other fish's food. That piece of food that they are eating is an algae wafer meant for the clown loach.

Poor clown loach. He's hanging out in his cave, resting against the "window ledge".

Playing with water

I played with water today. With a camera. With an external flash. With a bowl. And with a plastic bag filled with water.

The water was slightly out of focus, but I was generally pleased with the results. I'll be trying this out again in the future!

 

I've got to start bringing that DSLR out with me. I'm still so new to this, I'm embarrassed to be seen outside with a largish camera. But it needs to be done. There are so many interesting things out there; lots of interesting rainforest plants and creatures. I live right next to a park, and there are lovely trees just outside my bedroom window. Ok, I'm just a tad lazy.

Guitary

I've got to think of some better titles.

Here, I attempt to use vignetting on a photo of my beloved guitar to create an effect. What effect, I don't know. A sort of acoustic guitarish effect was what I was aiming for.

I take the effect further and transform the colors by playing with the hue and saturation. I loves me some purple and green!

 

I'll never look at my guitar the same way again.

Light

This was a long exposure taken in a very dark room; it was pitch black in here. The light drawing was done with a rather large flashlight. I bounced the light from the flashlight off the ceiling to illuminate the piano for the first few seconds of the exposure. Then I tried to draw out a note. I failed miserably.

Starless starless night

I made a lame attempt to take a photo of the few stars that are visible in Singapore's night sky from my balcony. The night sky in my area is lit competitively by factory lights, ship lights and street lights. Technique is probably somewhat to blame for the lame attempt as well.

A zoomed-in view:

 

 Just realized there are tons of artifacts. Oops, oh well.

Lazy cat

I wasn't feeling too great today, so I got lazy and didn't try looking for subjects. Luckily, Kazu was sleeping nearby with her paw over her face. Maybe she didn't want me taking any more photos of her face.

Still trying out the new lens

I thought I'd try out zooming in on Kazu's round face today.

I was waiting for birds to appear in the trees outside my apartment and had given up, when this Mynah hopped onto my balcony. Unfortunately, I was sitting inside and not ready for him, so this is the best I managed. So dark and grainy..........

More zoom!

I just bought a second hand lens, it's a Canon EF-S 55-250mm IS. The sun was going down when I tried out the lens, so the images are noisy. Still, I was impressed with what this lens can do!

I took a photo of this cat from the 4th floor. Slightly blurry, but this shot was handheld.

 

This was not only handheld, but also at full zoom and at a ridiculously low shutter speed of 1/15.

Zoom!

I tried out the "zoom effect" for the first time today. This is a photo of my lotus plant; I oversharpened the photo on purpose to get a more artistic effect.

I set up an automatic carbon dioxide injection system for my planted tank today. No more DIY carbon dioxide for me, that weekly mixing of the yeast/sugar water mixture was getting tiresome.

Cat in the dark

I tried getting a nice silhouette of Miki while she was staring at a dragonfly, but it didn't really turn out right.

Rainy

Rain rain go away, I didn't get to go out today. These photos were taken from my balcon-ay.

Birth of a guppy fry

Today's "photo" is a video. One of my guppies gave birth today, and I managed to film her giving birth to a wee wriggly one.

A photo a day

I'm going to try to turn this into a "photo a day" blog. I'm trying this out because I want to improve my (perhaps non-existent) photography skills. The reason why I didn't just go ahead and change the title to "A photo a day" is because I have no idea if I'm ever going to keep to -- a photo a day. I'll probably just put one photo up for all eternity. I won't have to feel guilty because this is supposedly a "random photos and videos" blog!

I have a feeling that this will disintegrate into a blog of photos from random parts of my apartment. Oh lazy, procrastinator, me.

Ok, here's today's photo. It's a ridiculously small photo of the moon.

 I swear, I couldn't do much better than this. It was taken with a 50mm lens -- I need more zoom!

To make up for the puniness of this photo, I'll include a photo taken a few days back.

That's my 3 month old guppy fry in mid swim. He's about an inch long.

Hey, that's 2 photos already! Ok, I cheated.