Jet Lag Comfort Food

One thing I love about Singapore is the food! After a long flight, total travel time of 21 hours, a nice hot bowl of noodles will get you out of your cranky pants funk. Exactly what I needed. My husbands favorite place, and now my favorite too, is Eng's Noodle House on Tanjong Katong Road. We took the circle line mrt to the Dakota stop and walked from there. 

This is it, our new favorite place! 

Here is the menu, my kind of place. Every time we go to a restaurant with a giant menu I always pick the worst dish. Cannot go wrong here! We had the dry wanton mee and the boiled wanton soup. I had lime juice and Geoff had the water chestnut drink. Love that they have a hotline! It has been added to my iPhone!

This is it! Yumtastic noodles with a bit of veg and char siew. Cannot get enough!!! 

This is the best chilli sauce I've had in Singapore so far. It is super hot so I only used a few drops here and there but it gives a ton of flavor. I will definitely visit Eng's more often!

This blog post was an experiment for me as it was written on my iPhone and the photos were taken on my iPhone. I probably won't write many posts this way but I have been wanting to try this since I installed the blogger app. It has been pretty easy so far. Fingers crossed I can publish this post successfully. It could be handy when I'm traveling, we already have our next trip booked to Bhutan in Feb. :)

Happy Friday!

Tamarack Beach

A few shots of the beach I used to walk along in Southern California.

This bird brought a picnic!

No lifeguard on duty, summers over.

Surfers...

Not very busy in October, still pretty nice out but overcast most of the day.

Birds scare me.

They are gathering...

Happy Friday!

Post Production Editing

I have been preparing my photos to turn in for review and part of the process is to edit them. I am not a huge fan of doing a lot of drastic changes to my photos, and really, sometimes I sort of feel like its cheating. My photography teacher says it is absolutely necessary to do something to almost every photo. I have a hard time with this, how much is too much? Some photos I look at and think I don't want to do anything at all. It is nice to crop or straighten out lines, make a few corrections. I have a professional photographer friend who does some editing to almost all of her photos and I wouldn't ever say she was cheating by editing her photos so why do I feel so conflicted? Here are some of my edits, both before and after so you can see what I started with and what I ended up with. Is it cheating?

                                     

The above picture is the original. Nothing wrong with it really, the butterfly is pretty sharp and in focus. The right side of the photo is so bright it is washed out so that is no good.

This is the same photo, cropped and given a border. I feel comfortable with this sort of editing, nothing too drastic was done. I'd have to use a giant lens to get this photo without cropping (or find a way to get the butterfly to sit still while I get incredibly close).

This is the original photo. I shot this thru a trash can with two holes in the lid for the garbage used as the frame. It is uneven because I had to squat down to see through and it was super uncomfortable.

Here it is post editing. I cropped and straightened only. No other changes were made. Now looking at it I wonder if it is straight or if I need to go back and redo. I should have used the grid tool...

Original photo, taken in Copenhagen. Must have been bright afternoon sun because the colors are a little washed out.

I added some color vibrance, not a ton, just a touch, better? Cheating? Maybe.

Editing software can also be used to change your photos to black and white. I haven't used this function yet, just wanted to show the different possibilities. Fun to play with.

Also you can play with the color hues and get a totally different picture.

Original photo, another bright sunny day...

I like this better. Nice greens, bright yellows. Cropped it a bit to get a closer look at the bird. You can increase hue saturation, lighten or darken shadows, so many options! It is easy to spend a few hours going over photos and making changes. Just be careful to keep a copy of the original unedited version.

I liked this viewpoint but the colors are a bit washed out and the Art Science Museum (structure on the right) has dirty lines running down, not so cute. What is that dark spot in the bottom right corner?

I cropped out the dirty stuff and made the sky more blue. This is sooo cheating, but it looks great!

Great shadow, bad composition. I should have zoomed in a bit more to get that bottom line out of the shot.

Fixed!

So I am still not sure about the editing software and if I consider it cheating but I do think it is so fun to play with. I guess not all of it is cheating. Maybe none of it is. You still have to start with a good photo. You can't fix everything. 

Happy Friday!

Bukit Timah Nature Reserve

This week I couldn't decide where I should go to get photos for my blog. My top two locations were the Singapore National Orchid Garden or Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. I haven't been to either one yet and both sounded pretty interesting. I promise to do the Orchid Garden another time, here are my shots from Bukit Timah. I am a park type of person, love trees, love flowers, however I do NOT love monkeys, snakes and lizards. The whole time I was at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve  - all alone - I was scared out of my mind! Needless to say I am in no hurry to return!

I had a minute at the very beginning of peaceful flower time. Then I looked up at the trail and there was a monkey running down the hill. No one else seemed to mind the monkey much so maybe I am just a scaredy cat? YES, YES I AM!

One side was the Hindhede Nature Park and the other side is the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, both sides look exactly the same but the Hindhede side has better views of the quarry. I walked about 5km total, not bad, good workout! Lots of stairs on the trails which was surprising to me.

This is a shot of the Hindhede Quarry and lake. Too bad the cell towers are so ugly.

Cute little turtle swimming in the lake.

I heard a loud something in the trees here and just about screamed! I didn't see anything...

Started whistling so that I could alert the animals that I was coming and not sneak up on them. Maybe that will help?

Some of these leaves are bigger than me!

Cool tree with tiny round thingys on the trunk. Checked at the visitors center, its a Common Yellow Stem Fig tree. 

Stairways that go on forever. It really was a great workout and the cover from the trees kept it nice and cool. Most amazing is that I didn't get even one mosquito bite ;) If it weren't for the fear of a monkey/snake/monitor lizard attack I would go more often. Instead I think I really want to work on my street photography. I'd like more shots of people around town but I hate taking photos of people I don't know. Recently I read a great blog posting about this exact problem, link in case you are interested http://digital-photography-school.com/terrified-street-photography-heres This is a great blog that has been super helpful in learning photography.

Happy Friday!

Back Lighting and Shadows

The effect of back lighting is so pretty and soft. I have always liked how the sunlight filters through the leaves in the late afternoon but never realized it was a popular photography perspective. I shot these in Program mode, ISO 100-400.

The light filtering through the leaves makes beautiful shades of green.

This fern was growing on the side of a palm tree and the sun was shining so brightly it really glowed from behind. Its a super zoom shot to keep the background clean which helps the fern pop.

Its so hot in Singapore this will definitely be a favorite perspective to shoot, shade is a must!

This is usually a much darker leaf... maybe I just learned something about composition. In this photo you cannot immediately see that it is a back lit subject. I guess to show the effect of back lighting it is good to have a larger view to see the change the light makes with the subject. What a smarty pants I am, I just figured that out on my own!

Sun shining through the palm trees.

Love how the sun has totally blown out the left side of the photo here, its even shining through a bit of the butterfly's wings. 

Shadows are another fun subject. When the sun is too bright to photograph the trees and get something other than a washed out picture, try the shadows. 

This was a perfect palm tree shadow. 

This shadow was on a building just before twilight. The building is normally a grey concrete color but with the sun going down the glow was a bit orange and the shadow was excellent. 

Group photo of my photography class in Chinatown. Sometimes I get so focused on the photo I am trying to shoot I don't see outside of the frame. In this case, everyone was  really into the photo and after shooting we realized there was a car patiently waiting for us to get out of the street. Ooops, good thing he wasn't in a hurry!

Use of shadow to create a frame for the main subject. 

Shadow of the roof line of a building across the alley, interesting lines.

Happy Friday!