Ice Art 2013/2014

I made a trip to the Ice Art at near Marina Bay Sands. In terms of things to see, or duration you can stay, this ice show is not worth the price on the ticket.

But if you can’t stay long not because of the lack of exhibits but the harsh cold like me, then don’t bother to try the real thing in Harbin (colder & with wind as well). There’s no exit if you want to back out. For more infomation about the Ice Art Event, see http://www.sistic.com.sg/events/ice2014

Do note that the place is cooled down to minus 15 degrees Celcius. I only brought along my rugged compact, Sony Cybershot TX20. I’d rather compromise on image quality than risk damaging my better equipment.

I also did a video on the place. This is a handheld video, so bear with the wobble.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEO81SvtFIY

Fisheye fun at the Marina Bay

Last friday, just before I headed for the Tokyo Auto Salon 2013 at the Marina Bay Sands, I purposely alighted one stop earlier at the Promenade MRT station to take some pictures at the Marina Bay. As my fisheye lens had by this time became my favorite lens to add some twist to otherwise ‘stale’ scenery, I only brought it for this wide angle lens (other than those portrait lens for the models).

The above semi panoramic shot of the helix bridge and the financial centre at the background is actually a crop from a simple, levelled fisheye shot. Before I had my fisheye lens, I’ll usually attempt to take several pictures of such scene and stitched them together using Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE). With fisheye lens, I merely need to crop out the centre.

Louis Vuitton parvillion

This is one of the ‘shot to death’ scenery shot around the Marina Bay ever since MBS came to existence. The fisheye effect merely spruce up the other wise boring image.

Tokyo Auto Salon 2013

True intention

Took  leave on friday just to attend this event. I came specifically for the models. What better chance than a motor show to pay one fee and get to shoot so many of them. And I make no effort to hide my intention and told my wife I took leave today to take pictures of models.

Strange adminstration

But before I can even begin recording a single pixel, some administrative issues right at the beginning almost piss me off. Most of us photographers already anticipated the crowd and bought tickets online. But the peculiar thing is that we need to exchange our online receipt for actual ticket on site. When most of us arrived at 9.30am, there was already a long queue to collect our tickets. There were about 6 booths for tickets, 3 for internet booking and 3 for on site ticket purchase. There was no queue for the latter! At 10am, one could easily had paid and got ticket on site and head straight in, while online ‘ticket’ holders had to queue and had our ‘vouchers’ verified against our identity and transaction record in their system, making ticket collection even more frustrating. This is friday, I wonder how the situation will be like over the weekend, when most of the crowd are expected to arrive.

Let’s begin

Anyhow, I didn’t waste my time queuing as I was able to finish reading Straitstimes online by the time I collect my ticket… and finally I can begin taking pictures. The first model I encountered was one of the J-girls. She was ‘off limits’ though, as only press photographers can take pictures of her within a cordon and I’m not so keen to fight with the crowd of photographers outside the cordon to take a good shot. So make do with this to complete my ‘set’ of pictures today.

More of them appeared onstage later, together with the Japanese group, AKB48.

More models

There were many models at various stations, posing besides cars or as promoters in booths distributing pamphlets once the bunch of crazy photographers like me had taken enough pictures. After attending a few roadshows or our photoshoots such as those organised my SAFRA photography club, I saw many familiar faces.

Other typical models, special attendance by the J-girls and AKB48, there was also some stage events. One was a drum performance during the opening ceremony and the other was a cheer leading performance, by the Magnum Force Cheerleader.

 

Lessons learnt

I rarely had a chance to do portrait photography with models and since my wife ban flash photography with my kids, I learnt a great deal about flash photography today.

1. Don’t save on batteries. After perhaps more a few hundred flashes, the recharge cycle for my flash slow so much that cost me many shooting opportunities. I’ll try getting the Energizer lithium batteries next time
2. Getting a bigger flash. I’m using a 2-battery FL36R, for the next event that I’ll attend, I might want to get a bigger flash, perhaps the 4-battery FL50R.