Corrective Lenses

This was from a book that I was reading called "The Explosive Child" by Ross Greene, which is related to my work with autistic children right now. I happened to have my camera (with 50 f/1.8) with me and the title of the chapter was the first thing that struck me, so this happened.

It's a very good read (from the 75% of the book I've read so far), so for those who are interested in autism you may want to consider reading this. ^_^

Tango America

Nothing beats spending the whole day at home doing the things you like and wanted to do the whole week - playing computer games, editing photos, even going for a swim, and I am so glad I took today so slowly before I dive headfirst into the rush that is the week-before-Chinese-New-Year.

In Buenos Aires, I went to watch a tango show at this place called Tango Porteno (details of location and stuff can be found on the website itself) and I must say I enjoyed watching tango more than samba. I guess it's personal preference but tango seemed a lot more smooth and elegant.



Dinner was great actually - according to the menu I had:

1) San Telmo
Yo soy de San Telmo – Tango – 1943 – Arturo Galucci.
Traditional Argentine turnovers filled with knife-cut Angus beef, egg and green olives

2)Parque Patricios
Parque Patricios – Tango – 1940 – Oscar Arona.
Grilled Angus baby with a side of rustic potatoes and warm cherry tomatoes sautéed with olive oil and fresh
herbs.

and this for dessert!



3) Tango Porteño
Los cien barrios porteños – Vals – 1946 – Carlos A. Petit/ Rodolfo Sciammarella.
Assortment of traditional Porteño desserts…
Flan with caramel homemade craft, cheese and sweet trilogy, caramel ice cream on crispy cocoa and orange

The portions were a bit large for me especially with the free flow of red wine and carbonated water, but after slowly and patiently going through the yummy food I finished it all haha.

Besides dinner, there was also a live orchestra and singers once in a while in between the dances to allow the dancers to prepare for the next act.



(Whoops a lot of head movement while she was hitting the high note, so it ended up like this D:)

The dance itself was characterised by a lot of kicking and movement across the stage, and there was this different kind of intensity to it that the dancers sometimes didn't smile at all and looked like they were in an extreme state of focus, or that they were totally immersing themselves in the dance.















I just had to catch him while he was blinking haha oh well.

These were the photos that I managed to expose "properly" there and then, but there was this other group of underexposed photos that I came back with because there was so much less available light there. It was either a lot of motion blur (with longer exposure times) or underexposure, so I picked what I felt was the lesser evil and see what I could do with it at home.

In the end, I had to resort to boosting the exposure by quite a fair bit, and the high ISO also added a fair amount of grain to the photo. They remind me of those arthouse photos and I really like how it looks a bit like film, so I'm hoping you'd like it too!











The next dancer is the only one who performed without a partner for the entire duration of the show - she wore a coat on the right side and played two characters, which was incredibly hard! She was dancing with herself and did an impressive job of it, like groping herself with her right hand, pushing her right hand away with her left and pretending to be surprised...







The last two pictures feature Juan Carlos Copes with his daughter Johana. When I was watching the show, I only knew he was famous, but not this level of famous...

The weekend is coming to an end, till then!

Samba America

My short stay in Rio de Janeiro involved a samba show put up at this place called Plataforma and while enjoying the show, I also set about the task of using my new telephoto and see what I could do with it! I wasn't expecting much, so I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this entry-level piece of glass. (Most of the shots below are taken with the 55-200 - EXIF data available on Flickr)

Basically the gist of the show was about the history of Brazil with the Portuguese and stuff like that, so without further ado...

























You'd notice that they look like they are really enjoying themselves while performing and it's like more than a job to them. The normal working class can save up to a few months' pay just to get themselves a dress (that can weigh up to 20kg) for the samba festival every year, after which they will throw the dress away. It is a waste but they pride themselves on having a new costume every year so you can see how much they love this - it's like a national craze no one can wean themselves off (not that it's a bad thing for them and the tourists!).

The Brazilians are easy-going people and you can see this in the fluid and sometimes exaggerated movements on the stage, and they can go from one extreme (fully clothed) to another extreme (almost wearing nothing) as you can see from the different attires. They also flirt very openly and Brazil's a country with the male to female ratio skewed heavily towards the females, so nights of passion are very very common.

Hope you enjoyed this - I'll be doing up the tango photos take I took in Buenos Aires when I get the time to start on them... Been very busy with work but it's fulfilling so I'll try to make it back here as soon as I can spare the time to!

Have a great weekend ahead! (or whatever's left of it at least haha)

New Year, New Beginning!

While on my way to a friend's house for a countdown party, it was nearing sunset and there was this odd barren tree near Jalan Kayu that stood out amongst all the greenery. It reminded me of what I did about half a year ago at Bukit Brown, and it really looks like it was taken right out of a painting.

I do have boring composition though ):


June 2011, Bukit Brown Cemetary


December 31 2011, near Jalan Kayu

Everyone needs a good shot to round off the year, or so I believe haha; glad I got mine without really going out of my way to get it! Hope the new year will bring in lots of opportunities and I'll continue to upload more work and continue improving =p

Still working on the South American photos though so many of them ):