Vagabond’s Caravan

Sorry for not updating for more than a week, hehe, was quite busy with homeworks (and staying back everyday).

Here’s some of the photos taken 2 weeks ago, on our trip to Wasai-3 with the scouts. It’s a scout activity organized by the scouts, and many of us joined. It was fun and tiring, hehe!

Well, the original plan was to go Tasek Lama for the ‘Flying Fox’ and rock climbing activity, but too bad, Tasek Lama was under renovation or something, so the venue changed last minute (we received notification through sms on the night before the event) to Wasai-3.

We reached the port (the one next to Yayasan, where people get water taxi to Kampong Ayer) at around 7.30am and waited till nearly 9am. Took water taxi to the opposite side of the river, and gathered at a school.

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Since I was hook on with documentaries some 5 years ago (when I got over the all the wrestling craps and cartoons) wildlife photography is always part of my dream. One of my dream career is to work as a wildlife photographer or documentary producer, haha, where as Discovery & NatGeo (National Geographic) are among my dream companies (whom I would love to work with/under).

There’s pros and cons for living in Brunei, the pros is that 80% of our country is covered with dense forest, and there’s SO many things out there in the wildlife, it’s just a matter of courage and passion. The cons is that we don’t even have a decent (don’t talk about the mini zoo, man…) zoo! I miss the zoos in Singapore and Bintulu (absolutely in love with it!). I think when I got a decent collection of gears, I’ll go Temburong or KK or somewhere for some wildlife photography, that would be so cool, man. =D Who wants to come along? =D

Ok, get back to the main point. =) Well, as I mentioned before, CheaXin’s dad borrowed me his Canon EOS 350D, and I had it for almost a week. During the week, I took quite a number of photos in my neighborhood. Took then in the evening, after I came back from school and when it’s not raining. One of the project I was having so much fun (and frustration) doing is - Bird photography.

Bird photography isn’t about taking photos of birds only, it’s about passion & patient and the ability to observe and hold on to opportunities that might be lost within seconds (you would never know when would a bird fly pass you). You need a lot of passion to be able to spend hours observing the birds and you need endless patient to keep on trying, and approaching the birds as slow as possible.

I wasn’t very serious this time, I was just trying to do some snapshots on the birds, and see how close I can get (without the use of lure, feeds, camouflage and etc). I didn’t put it my effort, so yea, I understand why the outcome sucks.

Oh yea, I am very interested in digiscoping, might get myself a spotting scope (and build-up a digiscoping system) after I get my d-SLR, hehe, then go Temburong, wooo, syok! xD Check out this cool bird digiscoping site and the gallery.

Here’s some of my (ugly) bird photographs:

P.S: All photos (except for the last shot) were taken at least 4m away from the subjects. I cropped these photos severely, and none of them is usable (for print).

Bonus photos - My dogs/puppies:

P.S: Try compare these with those I took 2 weeks ago using my *late* compact DC (Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-M1). =)

I had my first sports photography (using d-SLR) experience 2 days ago, at BTC (Brunei Tennis Club). Took more than 700 photos (some 100-300 are taken by KelvinTang & CheaHong), that’s almost 1.5GBs, hehe! Spent 2 hours just to scan through and do some minor correction (1-2 clicks correction), hehe, xD!!

Since this is my FIRST Sports Photography experience, there’s a lot of things that I still gotta improve. I did a lot of mistakes in setting the shutter speed and this resulted in over-exposure (details blown out by too much light) of some 30% of the photos. I set the shutter speed @ 1/200 seconds, but actually we need at least 1/400 seconds to freeze actions. It’s difficult to focus too, too fast…

And I sucks in composing the photos too, I like to do telephoto/candid and tight portraiture too much, that’s why I captured very lil’ actions (Kelvin’s photos compensated this tho). And I took all the photos from the side, Kelvin’s frontal shots are great man! =(

But still, pretty happy with the outcome, since it’s my first time, hehe. Ok! Time to let the photos do the talking~ xD

P.S: Bear in mind that some of the photos are taken by Kelvin, CheaHong or others. =)

Updates: More photos due to strong demand (HAHAHA, not really la). xD