:

Fancy visiting USA? Our Kiwi friends can just pack their bags and go, but if you are Malaysians NZ PR like us; you will have to set up a date with the US Consulate in Auckland for an “interview” to receive (or not) your “none immigration visa”. Oh… be prepared to fork out near to NZ$500 in the process! (If in doubt, please read the break down at the end of story.) Our Singaporean friends are laughing at us because they, like the Kiwis and citizens from 27 other countries, do not need visas to visit Stars and Spangles! Sucks!

That was exactly where I and The General were heading early Friday morning, our flight and our interview went smoothly and by 12 noon we were picked up by our friends Charles Chan and Janet. They also offered to put us up for the weekend, thanks again folks! Its good to catch up with the Chans again, the last time we saw them was at their daughter, Mei’s wedding in Wellington.

Janet, who was driving, told us that we were going to the Auckland Museum; I was a bit skeptical that the Auckland version is better than our Wellington’s Te Papa! What I did not know was that there was a special event of a small group of Gyuto Monks of Tibet doing a “Good Karma Tour of NZ”, and they were offering a six-day cultural programme at the Museum! If you were like me, wanting to learn more about the monks, this site is very informative!

Janet is a staunch Buddhist and she is offering her support to the monks.

Of course the two things that the Gyuto Monks are well known for are their “Harmonic Chanting” and their “Sand Mandala Creation”. Creating the mandala is something you got to see to believe! To quote from the Australian Gyuto site:

“The Sand Mandala is regarded within Tibetan Buddhism as sacred and, until 40 years ago, was rarely seen outside the monasteries. Architectural in structure, their complex and richly coloured designs have remained unchanged for over 500 years, the skills and secret meanings passed faithfully down through the generations from teacher to student.”

I like this shot of the four monks concentrating in their creation. For this trip, I was “traveling light” again… I shot this picture with the Nikon Coolpix 8400 + WC-E75 ultra-wide add-on lens that I like more and more! This combo is near perfect for ultra wide coverage with minimum distortion.

For closer shots, the Canon G7 is my choice; the shot below was a 50% crop! Look at the detail! The built-in IS anti-shake gizmo in the G7 must have worked; this was shot at full zoom and a “slow” 1/30 second. All tiny “point & shoot” cameras are notorious for camera shake!

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February 6 was N.Z.’s Waitangi Day, with that, the Treaty turned 167 years old and yours truly a none wiser 60 years young!

My General suggested that we take a trip to Auckland to celebrate, knowing very well that she meant “Let’s do some serious FULL DAY shopping at Queen Street; I better travel light to save my weary knees!

Instead of my trusty Canon 30D and the two L lenses which can feel like a ton after you are on your feet for 7 hours, I decided to pack the itsy-bitsy Canon G7 and the Nikon Coolpix 8400 with the ultra-wide WC-E75 accessory lens attached. The two “small wonders” are stuffed into a new Case Logic camcorder sling pack that cost me $60.

The Case Logic is perfect for this set up, there is a small partition inside where the G7 sits without knocking into the rather large 8400. Total weight, just over a Kg; 2.5 Lb to be exact. The two cameras gave me a focal length range from 17 - 210 mm! To get that range on a 30D I will have to carry my 15 mm fish-eye, a 17-35L and a heavy 70-200L; all told, a back breaking 7 Kg at least!
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Malaysians and members of the New Zealand Malaysian Society (NZMS) in Wellington celebrated the 49th National Day by having a potluck dinner gathering at the Johnsonville Community Centre tonight (September 2).

Potluck is very popular in New Zealand, according to Wikipedia. A potluck dinner (bring-a-plate) is a gathering of people where each participant is expected to bring a dish of food to be shared with everyone in the group. These gatherings are often organized by community groups since they simplify the meal planning and distribute the costs among the participants. Smaller, more informal get-togethers may also occur in the form of potlucks.

The High Commissioner of Malaysia H.E. Dato Sopian Ahmad giving a speech on the five strategies and challenges faced by Malaysians today.

Members of the Wellington Malaysian Cultural group who belongs to the Malaysian Students Association of Victoria University, Wellington performing traditional Malay dance.
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No, they are NOT walking down the street

After reading “A Blast From The Past”, some of my friends commented my media career must be “glamorous”… “What with photographing pretty models all the time!”

HELLO! Yes, I photographed quite a few pretty women in my work, but I wish it was all the time like my friend Jen Siow, who is the BEST commercial photographer / Photoshop Guru in Malaysia. But I know humble young Jen will beg to differ! Hi Jen!

Jen with a backdrop of the top models that he photographed. I shot Jen with a Canon D30, at ISO 800. Noisy shadow detail! But that was 1999!

Fast forward to 2006, our good friend Bin Goh; the candid was taken with a Canon 30D at a whopping ISO 1,600! Virtually NO NOISE! The lens was a 17-35L at full F2.8. Goes to show CMOS technology came a LONG way! DO NOT try that with a Nikon D200 Are you taking notes Jeff? Ha ha ha…

But where are the pretty women?! I can hear my friends yelling!!
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Way back in November 2005, in a “lost” Photo Blog far far away; I wrote about “My 120 Liaison”. It went like this…

“Legend has it that the great Casanova has more than a hundred romantic liaisons. Well, so have I …. WHAT?! My “General” demand DETAILS… I told her mine was “more mechanical” in nature, of course I am talking about my liaison with 120 cameras. Duh!”

I lamented about the now discontinued Zenza Bronica camera…

“In 1979 I was with the New Straits Times and even though this was the number one paper, the photo dept only have a Bronica S2 120 camera with ONE lens! It was used for SPECIAL project and I used it ONCE.

Rummaging through my press clippings through the years, I found the 1980 NST calendar that I contributed THREE pictures to! One of the shot was done in Penang. The script was a road side market stall, sound simple but the preparation!”

Cathie Khoo, center; the NST Creative Manager arranges the vegetables with her art dept staff for the shoot. Our pretty model was holding an umbrella, sorry I cannot remember your name! Location was a lane beside the Pulau Tikus market in Penang. Look at that car with PG 18 plate!

Miss Khoo did some final touch-up on our model’s face while I adjust the Bronica S2.
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After raining day in day out for nearly twenty days, the sky finally cleared and we were greeted with a beautiful sunny day! Realising the 06 World Press Photo Exhibition (WPP) is on its last days, we headed for Shed 11 at Jervois Quay Wellington Waterfront. Every year, WPP invites press photographers and photojounalists worldwide to take part in the contest, which is the largest international competition in the field of photojournalism.

The 200 prize winning photos are asembled in a travelling exhibition that visits over 40 countries annually. For the fifth time running, the World Press Photo Exhibition was brought to New Zealand by the New Zealand Netherlands Foundation. The Foundation was set up in 1990 to foster and promote the benifits of linkage between the two countries.

There was a pretty long queue outside Shed 11, while waiting, I took this shot with my 30D and the Canon 15 mm fish-eye lens.

I learn that the WPP will not be going to Malaysia, the next nearest venue for Malaysians will be at the Sejong Center, Seoul on August 3. But you know what? Go and visit their excellent web site (http://www.worldpressphoto.nl/) and you will be able to see all the winning pictures! But then, there is nothing like looking at the actual prints!
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On March 15, 90,000 spectators cheered the start of the XVIII Commonwealth Games at the Opening Ceremony in Melbourne, Australia.

My friends asked me if I miss shooting big sports events, I do and I don’t; I do miss all the excitement and the adrenaline rush… I don’t, because physically I cannot handle jobs like this anymore!

I remember fondly that in the 70s and 80s, all you need for covering sporting events were a film SLR and two lenses, the 35-70 and 80-200 zoom! The relatively “slow speed” of f4 was not a problem because of the classic Kodak Tri-X film which we often “push” processed in D-76 soup and raised the ASA (ISO) film speed to over 3,200!

For soccer match in dimly-lit stadium at night, the standard arsenal was the 180 f2.8 and the 105 f2.5 telephotos.

Those were the good old days when we were forever young and cameras and lenses were compact and lightweight, and shooting sports were FUN!

Take a look at what pro sports shooters take with them to cover a major sports event nowadays:

Two unit of EOS 1D digital bodies weighing 3.1 kg. One 70-200 / 2.8 zoom, at 1.5 kg. One 16-35 / 2.8 zoom of 600 g. One 300 / 2.8 tele of 2.6 kg. One 400 / 2.8 tele of 5.4 kg .

That is a whopping total weight of nearly 15 Kg! And adding to that a laptop computer, extra batteries etc etc, you can be lugging 20 Kg! Not only had you got to be young but very fit to do that job well!

That’s yours truly shooting a rugby match at the 1998 Commonwealth Games at Bukit Jalil. Sorry I cannot remember the photog who took this picture of me, but hey…. Thanks!

Follows are some of my better sports shots with comments from net critiques. I hope you enjoy them, I sure enjoyed shooting them !!

The Ability To Focus…

They said that old photographers do not ride into the sunset; they just go OUT OF FOCUS - not anymore! The auto focus mechanism on today’s SLR/lens combo is so accurate and fast that you are virtually guaranteed a pin-sharp picture as long as you can have your subject in your AF target! Make you wonder if we are able to manual focus our camera anymore.
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While Jeff Ooi was splitting hair over the DDOS attack on his server and while the rest of the world was recoiling from the caricature repercussion, Wellington went into her festive summer mood and celebrated life!

It has been very busy weeks indeed, Chris De Burgh and Olivia Newton John, along with the Vector Wellington Orchestra, performed at the Mission Estate Winery Concert in Napier, a pleasant three hours’ drive from here.

Martinborough Fair was on Saturday; we did not go because there was a freezing gale sweeping the city. Some “lucky” tourists experienced what “Windy Wellington” was all about when the ferry from Picton took eight instead of three hours to cross the channel!

The sky did a reprieve on Sunday and it was a glorious sunny Wellington day! There was a festival at Newtown and traffic was unusually busy because they got redirected “in real time” during the day-long Women’s World Cup Cycle Race, where flying Kiwi Sarah Ulmer left her rivals gasping in her wake!

Among all that excitement the 2006 New Zealand International Arts Festival kicks off on 24 February till 19 March.

Eye Candy…

For the photographer, “Earth from Above” is brought into New Zealand by Sky City.

This unique OUTDOOR photo exhibition of giant prints of stunning images taken from a helicopter not only reports on the state of the planet, they also reveal the “human footprint” made in the name of progress.

French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand who is the driving force behind this project shot most of the images with Canon EOS1 film cameras and lenses. After a chopper crash in New Orleans that nearly killed him and resulted in total equipment change, it was then he switched to digital.

I found out that most of the images were shot from a helicopter between an altitudes of 30-3,000 meters. Nearly 4,000 hours were flown and over 100 countries were visited.

For “Earth from Above”, Yann used Canon EOS-1N and 1V with L series zoom of 17 to 400mm range. Shutter speed was between 1/250 and 1/1,000. Most shots were on Fujichrome, Velvia 50. The prints are made on Fujicolor Crystal Archive type DP paper.

The images have to be seen to be believed! Said to have been seen by 50 million people worldwide, and more than 250,000 are expected to show up at the newly open Waitangi Park where the large-scale images are displayed.

I am not sure if the exhibition is going to Malaysia or not, but if it is; DO NOT MISS IT!

Alongside the photos is a giant walk-on map for the children to explore; the map is full of facts and figures.

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I’m in the midst of rebuilding the photoblog.

Just bear with me for a moment please.