Category: Expression

A Toy Story

A break from the greenery for now…

This toy stall at the neighbourhood market at Ang Mo Kio Avenue 4 has served as a backdrop for one of my previous shots. I spotted another photo-opportunity during a visit to the area this morning. Although the lighting was flat and uninteresting, I could not help noticing the gaze on the child. Immediately getting a rough idea of the post-processing and manipulation that I would probably need to do when I got home, I sneaked off a shot. The above is the result of some layer/hue/saturation/levels manipulation in Photoshop. Compare this to the unmanipulated, original picture…

Exposure information: Camera – Canon EOS 20D, Lens – Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L, ISO – 400, Shutter speed – 1/640 sec, Aperture – f/4. RAW file processed in CaptureOne 3.7.1 LE with additional manipulation performed in Adobe Photoshop 7.0.

摸不着头脑

More pictures from the archives…

In Chinese phonetics, the title of the above reads as “Mo Bu Zhao Tou Nao”. I think this is the second ever picture I have titled in Chinese. Literally it means: “Unable to feel the brain”. Figuratively, this means being unable to grasp the situation, or unable to make head or tail of the on-goings. Caught this at a Hari Raya Haji prayer session at the Yio Chu Kang stadium more than a year ago. Thought that the scene told a humourous story 🙂

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One of the banes of using zoom-lenses is that of barrel-distortion at wide angles (especially for the cheaper/budget lenses). I came across a link to two interesting free software tools to correct these distortions: RadCor and PTLens (upon which RadCor is based). Digging out a shot that was previously badly affected by barrel-distortion, I tried out RadCor with impressive results. Additional Photoshop tinkering that led to the above image: Channel Mixer tweaking for the monochrome / IR look, followed by adding Noise for a slightly grainy look. Taken more than a year ago outside the ESPRIT shop at Raffles City.