UPDATE (no pics)

Hey ya’ll…

sorry havent been able to update…I have 3 minutes left on this PC before I get times out so gonna make this fast.

I left Australia on 13Dec and headed to Cambodia for 6 days from 17-22DEC. Now I’m in Singapore Changi airport waiting to fly off to London…so thats why I havent been updating…I’ve got so much to write now!

looking at the A380 that Im gonna take in an hour or so! woot! gonna take some pics of it now

will definitely update asap. 1min 30secs left…

Blessed Christmas!

Ok, I’ve finally got around to editing some of the shots I took for Auntie Ivy and Gabriel…only gonna put up five because I’m to lazy to weed out the rest…I’ve got lots more stuff to write on…like I said before…its not my best work so don’t expect much. I hope they’ll still be here when I get back to Australia in Feb 2009 so we can do it again!

Anyway, here are the 6 which are my favourite…(not including the one right at the bottom of the previous post which I love!)

I have a lot more but I need to get this subject out of the way for the next series:

BIG HEAD DAY!

Big head day is when someone decides we’re gonna give a friend a birthday card with all our pictures on it…so I suggested that we use the distortion from the wide angle lens to make big heads! …so here they are!

Ok! I’m glad I got that off my chest…theres a Christmas party but nothing “photography” about it…except the fact that people are wearing funky hats…it was a hybrid  pre-christmas party / Edna’s birthday…(we seem to celebrate things extremely early…remember this is late November…Christmas is end of December and Edna’s bday is 15th December…other than that I have some pretty waterfall pictures I’d like to share…so I say we skip the christmas party…

what say you?

Tags: B&W, ben, distortion, doh ming, edna, elsey, Gabriel, high key, Ivy, Jiaren, patrick, portrait, Sabrina, sigma 10-20, Stephanie, uwa, wide angle, will, wilson

Yes, I will be blogging about my fun time flying around Toowoomba which happened last Saturday…I think.

However, first things first - family priority requires that I respond to my sister’s blog post in which she posted this picture:

According to some absurd cult ritual in the Scottard part of uncivilized UK, November is the month of Movember where you wear a moustache for charity…(I think my dad should be their spokesperson)…anyway, the point is that they wanna see what we ALL look like with moustaches…so…after countless seconds…

VOILA!

@Linzhi, sorry your moustache looks retarded - who ask u not to pose properly…

having said that…lets move on to the next thing on the agenda - Flying.

Before I begin I hope you (whoever reads this) understands that this blog is more of a Plog (word created by yours truly - remember you saw it here first!). This means its a picture-log. What THAT means is that I don’t really care what I write and don’t expect you to read it…its just a way to fill in gaps in between pictures.

Pictures themselves come in two flavours:-

• watermarked
• unsigned

Watermarked ones are those that are worthy of flickr and I actually bothered to put them into photoshop even if I don’t do anything except for adding the watermark, saving a backup of the original and uploading reduced file size version.

Unsigned ones are crap shots/ happy snaps that people in them should enjoy but aren’t something that I’d put up on flickr (eg. group photos).

…glad we got that sorted out.

so where were we…ah! who attended:

• Jiaren
• Aaron
• Yew Meng
• Elena
• Wilson
• Sabrina

can see the guys heads getting distorted from the wide angle…heres a better shot:

Sabrina surprised this on Wilson as a belated birthday present…apparently his dream is to become a pilot…hes achieving that somehow by studying multimedia at USQ…ironic huh?

Aaron and I waited this one out…they went first and we went up for the next flight…

In the meantime we just chit chatted and took photos of random things, and various parts of the plane such as this:

When they landed it was our turn and because we were paying by the hour we couldn’t afford to waste time so I didn’t take any snaps during this transition…

up up and away!

You can see the runway in the above picture…wind was really strong that day and we barely used a quarter for both take off and landing!

This was the second time I’ve been up here but the first time I had my dSLR with me…so a quick tip for wannabe aerial photogs with no experience:

1. First time enjoy the view. Forget the camera because you’ll get air sick and feel like vomitting. Looking through a viewfinder doesn’t make it better.
2. Second time up stick to the telephoto lens. In this case it was a clear day so aperture wasn’t a problem. I used a 70-300mm VR lens which is very flexible.
3. forget the lens hood. It’ll just make it harder to shoot.
4. Hold the lens at its furthest point with a finger extended against the glass to suppress vibration.
5. A monopod may come in handy but I didn’t have one.
6. At that distance everything is infinity. Use manual focus with shutter priority or manual. Most shots taken at 1/4000 so ISO had to be bumped up.
7. Take a picture. Check histogram levels. Adjust accordingly. then take another hundred or so pictures before checking again. DONT waste your time reviewing pictures on the plane. Plenty of time on the ground for that later on.
8. most importantly, HAVE FUN!

Being in an elavated position I figured it was an ideal time to try out some shots for making tilt-shift miniature fakes. Basically what this does is it makes large images appear smaller so that the images produced appear to be a model instead of a real life scene. What do you think? Any comments?

Here’s another one of my university:

The university was probably too big to look good as a miniature but it looked better like this than a regular aerial photography shot so I left it as it is.

After we landed Uncle Yew Meng wanted some pictures and since the sky was so beautiful I took advantage of the wide angle lens:

Done. Next I’ll be blogging about a recent mother son photoshoot I did…I’ll admit its not my best work but I was crap tired that day and it had been a while since my last portraiture session. Either way, they loved the pics and I got to brush up on my photoshoot techniques. Ultimately, it was huge fun both for them and myself - and thats whats important!

sneak preview:

till then…chao!

Tags: Aaron Lim, aerial photography, B&W, cockpit, Elena, family, Gabriel, Ivy, Jiaren Lau, Jiaxen, Khau Tze, Lim Yew Meng, Linzhi, Lycoming, miniature, models, Nai Kwong, piper, portrait, remove before flight, runway, Sabrina, student village, tilt-shift, toowoomba, university of southern queensland, USQ, Wilson Teoh

Hi all,

It’s 3.30am on Saturday morning and I’ve been rolling around in bed…can’t seem to sleep so decided to contribute something to the blog…we’ll see what time this post finishes later…I didn’t quie get to post about the second road trip because I fell asleep writing the previous one..so hopefully this will be short and sweet so that I can move on to some more interesting things…

I made the mistake of starting from events from the beginning of November thinking that it would be boring so at least I could keep myself occupied with posting past adventures but turns out this holiday is pretty darn entertaining and doesn’t look to stop anytime soon!

OK, so this road trip was to the Sunshine Coast…we at USQ (University of Southern Queensland) had finished our exams earlier but Wilson’s girlfriend studies at USC (University of Sunshine Coast) and it was her last day of exam so we went down to pick her up to come back with us to toowoomba…

Edna also came with us…her boyfriend had to work so he didn’t come…but that didn’t stop him from bugging her on the phone about 5 times an hour! (kidding!)

Sunshine Coast for those of you who don’t know is like the Gold Coast but not as commercialized. Having said that its still booming with hotels along the beach but is not nearly as bad as the Gold Coast. We were ready for 2 fun filled days of FUN-IN-THE-SUN…

unfortunately, the weather did not quite agree…

From the moment we left Toowoomba til the moment we arrived it was just grey and miserable! It didn’t stop raining either…so theres no pictures of what would’ve been a beautiful landscape so I’ll just have to bore you with that we did do - SHOPPING…BO-RRRRRRRRIIIIIINNNNG!

We went to the Cuckoo Clock House which was nice…as always…

When we arrived at USC Sabrina just finished her final exam…we waited for her in a gallery in the middle of the Uni coz it was too wet outside…there was a sign that said no photography but thanks to my new Fastpack 350 bag I was able to sneak a few shots without getting caught…

At the ‘Coast we went to a mall there and spent 4 friggin hours there! (the above people really can SHOP!)

After getting bored I took some pictures of the mall…

Needless to say that got old real fast…we finally headed back after everyone was satisfied with their shopping…A darn special mention to the Tahitians who were allowed us to stay overnight in their house. They were exceedingly abundantly hospitable and friendly! …so special thanks to Bob, Perry, and Naomi *hope I got that right* They all have tatoos and I found this one particularly interesting…

They’re technically from Tahiti but they don’t live on the main island itself…they came from another small island which is a French colony…so they all speak French! Their house was beautiful and Edna had some sort of fetish with their toilet…

all in all it wasn’t sunny and we didn’t get to go swimming…but we had fun none-the-less! …and what better way to finish it off with a group photo:

Stay tuned, you won’t believe what I did next…I went flying!!! …and Iet me tell you arial photography is no easy feat! sneak preview:

…and the time now is 4.36am.

Tags: Black Forest Hill, Cabarlah, Cuckoo Clock Centre, Edna Lee, grandfather clocks, Jiaren Lau, Sabrina, Sigma 10-20mm, Sunshine Coast, Tatoo, Tatoos, University of Sunshine Coast, USC, Wilson Teoh

Oh don’t you just looooove road trips! so awesome…usually!

Today I’m gonna blog about two road trips that I went on recently…the first was to Brisbane which was to celebrate Matt’s birthday…you can see his face on the previous post…

His birthday is one the 16th November 2008. He “used” to be staying in Toowoomba until just recently when he was called away from us to go to Canberra and work for Telstra. The story itself is pretty cool…according to what I know it went something like this:

Matt had no plans to leave Toowoomba (regional Queensland for non-Australian exposed peeps)…but he was looking for a job. He sent in his resume to an online website on a Monday (read Day 1) and got an unexpected call within an hour regarding his resume! These sites usually take days if not weeks for applicants to respond but his must have been outstanding! The conversation went something along the lines of this:

“Hey, can you come down for an interview tomorrow?” A little stunned he inquired where the interview would be taking place. “Canberra”, came the reply. “We would like to hold an interview tomorrow if that’s possible”, continued the voice on the other side of the phone. “Erm…”, replied Matt. “I’m now in Toowoomba…in Queensland” (Its a 2 hr flight). The voice said, “oh, what about Wednesday?” Matt thought for a while and agreed to meet for an interview on Wednesday.

(Matt correct me if I’m wrong but thats how it went in my happy head). No, I wasn’t there…So anyway, Matt shelled out just enough money for the flight first thing Wednesday morning. He didn’t have much and was putting everything on the line.

Day 3.

Early morning Wednesday Matt flew to Camberra and back. I don’t know the details but he was exhausted after that. The next morning (Thursday) he got a call saying that he got the job and would be required to start working the following Monday!!! This meant that he would have 3 days to get everything packed up and ready to go as well as say bye to everyone here! He emptied out his room in record time and within 48hrs he was ready to leave Toowoomba…Needless to say we had plenty of flour, eggs and water ready to send him off…unfortunately I was taking pics on the Polaroid so I cant upload them but it was fun!

A couple months later, his birthday arrived and we went down to Brisbane to surprise him…just a few of us: Me, Justin, Derrick, Steph, and Deborah (- his girlfriend)

Dont have a portait pic of deborah coz she was dressing up to pick Matt up from the airport so we went out for dinner in the city…

The original plan was to get a cake and hide in the room then surprise matt when he got there but as you know murphy’s law superseeds plans - “Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong”. First up his flight got delayed by an hour. Bare in mind that Deborah and Matt had a room but the three of us still had to drive back to Toowoomba that night. Nevermind, we thought we’d have more time to go sightseeing…which was true because as we were walking we say some people dancing.

Its pretty cool coz they had ad DJ, choreographer and all that jazz…

Thats the choreographer…can barely see his mic…

Theres Mr. DJ and his supporters…

whoops…and heres Mr blurry cam…you know you need a new prime when the 50mm f/1.8D isn’t fast enough…can’t wait to upgrade to the f/1.4…but gonna wait til the new f/1.4G comes out…

This one:

It looks so much better than its older brother which is trialed and proven.

Kinda wish Nikon would release an f/1.2 though…may be only half a stop faster than a 1.4 and prices would be overkill but why not? Canon has one…

OOPS…OFF TOPIC!

back to the dancing…there were some people really getting into it…

Quite a cool thing they had going there…anyway, we later on found out that Matt’s flight wasn’t delayed…rather the flight before his got cancelled and the people on that one was pushed to his flight which still managed to leave on time! …so they were at the hotel and we weren’t…Of course once we knew we immediately drove off…Deborah managed to get him to go out for a while while we snuck into the room with a 2nd key card to the room…

He was quite surprised although I kinda gave it away by forgetting to turn off the bathroom lights…all in all it was a fun day…plus, we had just finished our exams the day before and it was fun to get out…we had a good chat until about 1.30am in the morning…

When we left we made the mistake for following Derricks no-name-brand GPS which led us to some weird place with no electricity and half the road closed…I had enough when I heard the following instructions:

“Follow the course of the road until further instructions”

We doubled back all the way to the city (which meant we wasted 1+ hour and I took my own way back…the way which was familiar to me.

Tags: brisbane, Cheng Hong, Deborah Cheung, Derrick, Jiaren Lau, Latin Friday Nights, Matthew Bowman, road trip, Stephanie Lua

Ok, first real post.

Its holidays. I’ve got nothing much to do so instead of writing what I did yesterday/today (- by today I mean…nothing) I think I’ll start from early this month. As I said before, this will be the place to offload pictures of people and fun happenings. I’ll slowly catch up to today but in seperate posts as some pretty fun things have made this holiday week EXTREMELY busy! Birthdays, people leaving, road trips have been on and off so theres plenty to blog about…for a while.

First off is Sue!

Sue otherwise known to me as Susu (means milk in Malay but thats not the point) has been back for a little over a month…came back for graduation in September and left in November…Ironically she left during exams so everyone was busy and couldnt really layan her…but in her last week we managed to go to the uni and take some pics anyway…

Meet Susu.

From Penang.

Graduated from USQ in September 2008.

Ambition: TV Presenter

…blue tongue courtesy of Seven-Eleven

We got free Slurpees that day…They have it twice a year: 7th of November and 11th of July (7/11 and 11/7)

It works worldwide…go into any Seven-Eleven store and just wish the guy at the counter a Happy 7-11 day for a free small slurpee!

Ooh lookie lookie here…you can see susu’s BCG thingie…Linzhi should take note…she always says hers is big….thats nothing compared to this behemoth!

I know the above shot is cheesy and lame in so many ways…but I like it! I don’t know why but I do…it might become my trademark shot soon as I’ve taken a few pics like this just out of the blue..as you’ll see further down the line…

Next is Mattie B.

He’s been working in Canberra for a while now and just recently came back for the weekend to celebrate his 21st Birthday with his family..we drove down to  Brisbane to surprise him! This is perhaps not the most flattering photo but he deserves it as you’ll see soon enough! In the meantime I think thats it for this post and will do Matt’s birthday tomorrow…(gives me something to look forward to…)

Till then…out.

In the beginning, Jiaren created the Blog. It was void and without form.

Hey there,
If you read under the “Welcome to my little blog” it’ll pretty much explain what this will be all about. The time now is 3.46am in the morning and I have to go to church at 9am. I’ve been so busy today that this is the only time I can do something…and I can’t bear to leave this site empty for a minute longer!

I’ve been waiting for the domain transfer since Monday (now being Sat) and just spent the last hour selecting a good first theme for the blog. Basically the theme for the blog as you can so obviously see is “In pursuit of the composition”.

To photographers, the composition refers to have the elements in a picture have been placed carefully to draw the maximum amount of interest from the scene itself. On the flipside, composition, as the rest you know refers to words, remblings and blabberings…so here the word, “composition” refers to both these two words of photography and creative written linguistics that harmoniously complement each other.

“Taking life one actuation at a time” is my slogan. Just thought of it…man I’m brilliant, eh?! An actuation is a shot taken…also came to mind for various themes and slogans were:

Themes:

• Composition Proposition
• Pentaprism **something** (couldnt think of anything)

Slogan:

• Freezing life one shot at a time
• Freezing memories frame by frame

Please feel free to drop me a line, comment or whatever…
PS. If you don’t like the theme It’ll only be here for a couple of days/weeks at the most…In the meantime, feel free to checkout my flickr at www.flickr.com/photos/jiaren or click on the picture above.
God bless,

JiarenLau

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