My photography assignment for Bangkok

Mighty Big

At approximately five in the morning tomorrow, I will be loading my luggage onto a cab and be heading off to LCCT. Why will I be going to the airport? To go on a short four days trip to Bangkok. I am planning a photography assignment for myself whilst I am there for that short period of time.

The theme and the aim? To capture the hearts of the locals and the aftermath of the infamous riots between the 'Red shirts' supporters of the ousted ex-prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra and the government that has left dozens dead after deadly clashes with government troops. I don't expect this self-assignment to be easy, but it'll definitely be interesting and a good way to learn more. This is the first serious photographic assignment I have made for myself, and I am planning to stick to it throughout the whole trip instead of my usual walking around aimlessly while shooting shots without much idea of what I want to take until I see a potential shot. At least now I have an idea in my mind of what I want to capture through the lens. So wish me luck, and don't forget to check back for the photos and updates on my activities over there. Happy holidays!

A taste of wild life photography

That bold, magnificent bird

I visited the KL Bird Park last Sunday armed with my 55-250mm IS and 90mm macro along with my enthusiasm, I decided to try my hand at some wild life photography. After that day, I can safely say that wild life photography has become one of my most favourite type of subject to shoot. Hopefully in the future i'll be able to specialize more in it, but let's keep that for another post. Anyway, I managed to get quite a few good shots and I am certainly very satisfied with it. The lighting for some shots though weren't that great so I had to boost the ISO to up to 1600 which made some of my shots pretty noisy. However I managed to minimize that problem through noise reduction during the post-processing. Also, for shooting through the fences or cage, I used the widest aperture I could get and went up close as possible to the fence. The shallow depth of field will then render the fence almost invisible though at some instance I had problems due to the reflection of the sun light on the fence.Shooting shots of birds in an open aviary technically isn't really 'wild life photography' but it does give you a taste of it as the open aviary was very big and there are quite a few birds that are free to fly anywhere. Considering that its in the middle of a city, the KL bird park is a good place to try shooting birds if you're new to it. The whole day went well except for the fact that my tripod was stolen after I left it unattended for a while. I was too absorbed by the almost 'other worldly' state that I was in while shooting the birds that I forgot about it. Its a real pity that it got stolen as I really need a tripod at the moment, but I think it just adds to the experience of being a photographer though god forbid, hopefully something like that would never happen again. All in all I certainly recommend the KL Bird Park for photographers interested in getting a taste of what its like to shoot wild life, particularly birds. ;)