Black & white

We had to do pin-hole photography for our AEP SIA in Sec 2, and these are my shots!

This was my final photograph I decided to submit:

Write-up for this photograph:

This photograph of the school clock tower is taken from the view of the field. We usually have out PE lessons there and we run around the track to warm-up or have our 2.4km run. For those who hate PE lessons, they would look at the clock tower once in awhile to check the time as they can't wait for the lessons to be over.

I think I could have made the image a little clearer and sharper if I had not shook the pin-hole camera. Not only that, I could have been more careful when cutting the papers, to prevent less fingerprints. I could have aimed and place the camera at a stable place, or stick them with tape.

Through this activity, I've learnt how to be patient. It was tiring to stay in the darkroom and wait for chemicals to react.

Reflections:

I enjoyed doing pinhole photography and have learnt the simplest version of taking a photo. It was tiring walking in and out of the dark room, capturing images of our school with out tin can. I even tried to take an image of the school from the overhead bridge, but it was not successful. If I had the chance, I would definitely try it again. It was interesting to look out for special scenes around the school and try to create a unique perspective. Although taking just a photo and developing it would take such a long time, it was definitely worth it. I liked the moment when I see an image slowly appearing on the photographic paper in the developing chemical.

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After the pin-hole activity, Mr Lim let us use his film camera to take some photos. We only had black & white film!

After going through this 2 activities, I realised it was pretty difficult to do black and white photography. Before that, I was not exposed to b&w photography. I thought the challenging part about b&w photography is that, it is not easy to capture the essence of the subject matter without colours because what we see with our eyes are colours. So it would take a lot of skill and experience to take a good b&w photograph that can show viewers what the photographer is trying to tell! Also, I feel that b&w photography makes things a little more dull and vintage..... and reminds me of times when there were only b&w televisions.

Little things

Some digital photographs I took in Paris:

flowers

the sky between two different buildings

Once again, my obsession with skies! Two sky photographs below as well!

I kind of like it when things are symmetrical, which explains the photograph above. Taken at Monet's garden. I don't like to crop or edit my photographs so I usually try to take the 'perfect' and right photograph on my camera, then I would not have to edit them when I get home. I like how it's dark and it gets brighter at the end of the walkway.

Isn't this butterfly beautiful? And it's on the tiny little flowers! I like to take photos of insects too because I think they always have unique features/patterns on their bodies, so it's interesting to look at them.

Everyone walking towards the direction of the little house, and also, the beautiful sky and clouds.

I feel that one of the important things about photography is to capture little things around our lives, it might not necessarily be something massive, it can be just something simple we see in our lives. I think these are the little things that makes our life beautiful and worth capturing down.

Cat at school

I love the cats around school! They are always roaming around the school compound freely, how cute! Here are some photos of the cats sleeping/licking themselves:

cat licking it's body

This is one of my favourites from the set of photographs I took of the cat! I like how there are only mainly colours like red that comes from the track, green from the grass, white, black and pinkish tones from the cat. Also, the track sort of extends out into the background, and it places focus on the sleeping cat.

cat sleeping

When I was taking the two photographs above, I was kind of scared that the cat would wake up suddenly and scratch my camera lens. I had to squat down and place the camera right in front of the cat just to capture the facial features of the cat. I think it is amazing to be able to capture details of the beautiful cat. At the end, I thought that, if I want to be able to capture the images, I would have to pick up a little courage to try it out so that I can achieve the results I want to, which I did eventually :-)

London

Photographs I took in London with a colorsplash lomo camera! I chose not to use the colour flashes because I wanted to capture the original image/scene.

I took the 2 photos above at one of the art galleries because I thought the architecture was very pretty and unique.

at Trafalgar Square

I thought this photo turned out interesting as I captured many movements/moments are going on at the same time. The man taking a photograph of his family, the pigeon flying, the waterfall, two people having a conversation at the bottom right hand corner of the photograph.

This set of photos mean a lot to me because it was taken during a very memorable trip. Also, these are taken in film. This means that when I take a photo, I can't see it on the screen immediately and then decide if I want to retake it. Most of the time I will only take the photo once and move on to another scene/object to take because I will waste film if I were to keep taking the same thing. That's what makes film interesting and challenging at the same time. At times, I don't know if I've captured the right image I want to. So I have to be more careful whenever I take a photo. However, at the same time I do not want to be too restricted so I sometimes keep the mindset of "don't think, just shoot" and take photos of whatever I want to right at the moment and not think too much. I think I still need much more improvement on film photography for sure, but I think it really takes time, practice, patience and lastly, money for film and developing!!!

I like how the colours turned out to be more natural and toned down, unlike normal digital photographs that are usually very sharp and have bright colours.

The most rewarding part the process of doing film photography would have to be seeing your roll of film developed into photographs, held in your hands. I enjoy holding on to photographs on my hand because it feels much more realistic and closer to me, unlike digital photographs seen on screens.

Skies

I've always liked taking photographs around school because I like to capture moments of school life and what I always see around school. I like to stare at the sky and look at clouds moving. Usually, before morning assembly starts, I would look up at the sky. I'm always amazed by how beautiful the sky looks!

taken with Olympus E-510

I like how this photograph shows the complicated clouds confined within the building structure.

Other sky photographs I took (some are not in school) with my blackberry:

I really like taking photographs of the sky because the sky will never be the same, the clouds will always change in their shape and patterns because of the wind or weather. It's like a canvas painted in a different way every single day and time of the day. It gives much variety, which I enjoy capturing in photographs. I think that it is not easy to do photography sometimes because it takes a lot of patience, effort and you have to be quick in order to capture the right moment.

There were many times I was too lazy to get my camera out to take certain photos at that particular timing and missed the great moment. For example, taking photos of the sunset. I quickly captured the photos of the sky after the sunset, with my phone because I knew if I were to go back in to the house to get my camera, the colours of the sky would have changed. It takes a lot of practice to slowly get used to the idea of capturing things quickly if you want to and I'm still trying to learn that.