Dusk is one of the most amazing moment for photography and to get a good picture at this moment is pretty easy if you know your basic.  First you’ll need a steady tripod, then make sure you are familiar with your camera &  system, the more you know the better your chance at getting beautiful photos as dawn fade away very fast, especially the best duration of ‘golden hour‘ is only about 10minutes at most;  You really do not want to be wasting your time finding a feature or setting of our camera.  So,  study your manual and understand your camera before you go out and shoot!

Generally, your will be shooting with a relatively long shutter speed to get the nice colors from the horizon.  In order to get the longer shutter speed we preferred,  we will be using low ISO together with a small aperture.  In this series of photos,  I used mainly Nikon 24-120VR, Nikon 18-35 and Nikon 50 f/1.4 on a Nikon D700.  Generally I used aperture smaller than f/5.6 to f/22 on some cases.   I’ve adjusted the ISO from 100 – 1600 depend on my subjects and the motion blur effects I wanted to archive.

Attached here with some of the photos I shot from a local theme park at Queensbay, Penang, there are edited with Adobe Lightroom 3.  Please feel free to comment or share them to your friends.

&. btw,  I am planning for an intensive class of Adobe Lightroom 3 for intermediate users,  do send me an email if you are interested.

&.&. btw,  if you are looking to turn your hobby into profession, please check this out.

Finally I have the time and idea to edit this set of photos, which was taken a long time ago, back during Chinese New Year this year.  Anthony was a schoolmate of me who happened to be working in Shanghai and met his soul-mate, Stephanie there in a land far far away.

They had a simple buy fun wedding in Anthony’s home town, which is pretty nearby to my neighborhood - Setia Pearl Island!

The wedding kicked off in the morning with fetching the bride, gate crashing and tea ceremony session at Sungai Ara, followed a church solemnization.  The reception is held at EQ ballroom.

I shot all these photos mainly with a 50mm, on a Nikon D700.  Some shots are taken with 18-35, and the rest with 70-200.  I picked and edited these photos on Adobe Lightroom 3.

Feel free to share them if you like, and of course, I am always open for wedding assignments.

I came to know this place, Wat Charok Padang from my buddy, Joo Liang.  It is an interesting place, a Buddhist temple built with a lot of glass bottles.  Located in Sik, Kedah, the temple is about 100km away from Penang Island, and is easily reachable using North-south Expressway.

It is frequently visited by many in the morning exspecially during Chinese New Year holidays.  As it was a casual family trip for me, I arrived very late in the afternoon and voila, an almost empty temple!  I did a few quick shots around the temple under the killing hot-sun before I continue my journey to Sg Petani to visit some relatives.

>> Click this to view more photos from the trip <<

The whole set of photos is taken with a Nikon D700 DSLR, my favourite 50mm f/1.4 and an ultra wide 18-35mm.

If you are interested to pay a visit to this temple,  the exact location for GPS is at 5°47.782N, 100°42.635E or view in google maps here.

Thanks to Freezed.asia, I had a chance to share on Time Lapse photography with the members on 19th Nov 2010.
It was a short sharing session, and I managed to pull it through with some slides and time-lapse videos I liked.

Many thanks to all that come and support and I hope you learn something from the session.

Please check this one of the best Time Lapse video I found and shared during the sharing session,

Want to do your own time lapse but have no idea where to start?
Download my PDF guide of Time lapse photography and have a read and feel free to comment.

The club members will also be having an outing on 30th Nov 2010 for a time-lapse try out at Fly ver bridge near Komtar Penang.  For now, enjoy and stay tuned!

Updates:
The outing with the club members is a big success! I can see many videos floating in from the participants already in facebook.

This is one of my commercial photography assignment done earlier for ATI College Penang, With only 1 and 1/2 day time slot for the assignment, I managed to cover the main campus, Penang International Airport and a few of Penang’s tourism hot spot.  It was truly a unique experience for me, as I get to shoot difference subjects in such a short time!

The above shots was done very quickly as everyone is complaining about the hot baking sun, the shot was shot right in front of the college main entrance!

A few shots from the kitchen, where the future chefs learned their basic here…

A few shots for student’s activities in campus.

The last shooting ground was a real life heavy traffic International Airport Penang,  as we only have permission for a really short session there, I quickly executed a few shots inside the airport with the helps of Air Asia Crews (former students of ATIC) and a shot on Firefly Air Plane just happen to land at the time.

I hope you enjoy these photos and do write me a comment!

For Penangnites,  if you pass by Burmah road from Komtar,  look to the right and you should be able to see the new campus for ATIC, they have printed some banners with my photos. 

If you are interested, here’s the ATIC’s corporate video done by a friend of mine.  The video was shot with mainly a D90 and a slider.

You can also get more info on what courses are available from ATIC by visiting their official website or facebook page.

Jeremy & Wynnie was a cheerful couple living in Perth; They have came back to Penang, to officially celebrate their wedding with friends & relatives from the hometown in Penang and to introduce their lovely daughter!

I’ve got to know Jeremy & Wynnie thru their wedding planner, Beatrice of Touching Heart.  They have chosen to have their ceremony in the G-Hotel, a wedding by the pool deck!

I had a great time shooting there as coincidently, one of my friend Darius is actually Wynnie’s god-brother!

During the ceremony, Jeremy & Wynnie introduced their lovely daughter to the guests as well.

We then had a great photo session with all the guest before the dinner, arranged by G Hotel in the ball room.

The dinner was a blast and everyone is having great fun!

Like these lovely photos?  Click here to view more moments captured from Jeremy & Wynnie wedding!

I took a short 2D1N trip to Cameron Highland with family last weekend.  As titled, I had a ‘bowlful’ of strawberries there!   Sadly though it was raining cats & dogs over there, so I din’t get the chance to go capture some regular tea-farm scenic; instead, I visited a few indoor farms and had fun shooting/eating/hanging there!

We stayed at Titiwangsa Hotel,  a twin king-sized bed at a super duper low price of RM 218 a night!  And best of all, the price includes a buffet breakfast & a steamboat dinner for everyone!  A step into the room, we were amazed by how spacious it is for such a good deal!  Will I be visiting the same hotel again?  Definitely yes!

A look of the delicious steamboat!  A treat for the freezing night!  After the great meal, we went for a traditional body massage right at the main entrance of the hotel for a cost of RM 60 an hour.  The massage was so-so and you can forget about it if you wish.

I’ve selected 80photos to share with you, for your convenience, the exposure info is included this round so that you have a rough idea on how I captured those.
Please feel free to comments and ask if you need further details!

>> Please click here for the flash album <<

For your info, the photos were captured with a Nikon D700, I swap between a 18-35 ultra wide angle, a 50mm, and a 135mm short tele lens.  The photos were then edited with Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta.

I received quite a lot of inquiries on how to create the above photo montage.  The original idea came from another article off the net, which I can’t remember which one to credit to at the moment. So, I’ve created my version on how to create this montage in a few minutes time with minimum efforts.

To do this, you will need the following items (Click on the name to download them respectively)

- Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (LR2)
- Adobe Photoshop (PS)
- PanosFX.com Big Pictures action script plug-in (Free Edtion)
- AlbertYap.com Template for exporting original file in Lightroom 2

Notes:
I assumed you already know how to import action script for PS, and also template for LR2, if you do not know how to do this, please do a Google search or contact me.  You are also assumed to be able to understand PS & LR2 basics such as running an action, exporting picture in LR2 and etc.

Instructions:
1. Select and prepare 25 landscape photos in LR2, vertical oriented photos does not work very well in this montage.  Arrange them in the way you preferred after adjustments.

2. Once you have selected the 25 photos to be included in the final output, go to LR2’s Print module. As illustrated above, by using the attached template (Star 1). You get to preview the output similar to the above screenshot.  Here, you can click and move the small individual picture a little bit to the left or right for better composition.

3. When you are ready for the next step, click “Print To File” on bottom right (Star 2) and save the photo montage as a JPEG file.

4. You will then have a newly created JPEG file similar to the above, without my watermark of course, if you are not happy with the arrangement on the small pictures, you can always go back to step 2 and rearrange them in LR2.  When you are ready and happy with the result, proceed to close LR2, and execute PS for the final effects.

5. I am using Photoshop CS4 for this tutorial, so it might have a difference user interface as your Photoshop especially older versions.  Nonetheless, they are all the same, download the correct version of action scrip from PanosFX.com for your Photoshop and we are ready for the next step.

6. There are 2 actions included in the current edition from PanosFX.com, one is called “Big Picture flat actions”, and another one is “Big Picture curled actions”.  I am using “Big Picture curled actions” for this tutorial sample,  you can try either one of them as they work the same way, just produce difference results.

7. By executing the action, you will be requested to open up a landscape picture, if you already opened the file you saved earlier, just close the open dialog and it will then automatically proceed with plenty of recorded actions and once they are done, you will get a few results, pick one and save a copy and then your are done!

Thanks you for reading this tutorial and enjoy creating your very own photo montage!
Please do leave a comment if you find this tutorial useful and please share them with your friends.  I will be sharing more in the future and if you are interested, you are recommended to bookmark this blog and visit me regularly.