While processing more of the Tokyo Spring 2010 photos recently, I became more aware of my style of composition or the objects I take. Me shall highlight a few here. I’m more for shooting horizontal photos. Those vertical compositions are quite narrow for me to be comfortable with. But I have to start somewhere eh?

The one above is one of my classic travel shots. Just sitting on the ground somewhere, just me and the good pair of walking shoes that had travelled with me for almost every trip overseas. Let’s call this the “Walking the World”

Something like that!

Next up, landscape shots. Essential for travel photography, best taken with wide angle lens. Since I haven’t got my hands on one yet. The 24mm of the lens I’m using would do this job fine. Landscape shots tells how magnificent or awesome a place is. I play around with the colours of the photo to give a certain feel that portrays the story of this place. B+W ones have their own appeal. But I mix them around depending on the feel, or it is too gloomy to get a good ambience.

The one-thirds composition is greatly used here for scenery shots.

Shooting structures or places of interest! It’s basically why you are travelling to that place. Hence, let the camera spam! So the same thing for me here, I was trying out some effects to give increase that special feeling of each place. More time is spend on this area to create the correct balance and not to over exaggerate things.

People are what makes up the cities. Most of the time, I travel to big cities. A big major change from my old ODAC days where it’s jungles, animals and bugs and mud and mosses for company. Busy cities are great subjects for cultural diversity. Lots of pictures to take. But, most of the time, I’m quite reluctant to take frontal photos of people. Still working on how to approach people to take their photos. So taking them from the distance now.

Or from the back.

The friends you travel with makes it all even more wonderful! That depends on how playful your group is lol!

From friends, to YOU! Cam whoring with DLSRs is > cam whoring with cameraphones!

Another craze is food photography! It’s customary to take a shot of what you have in front of you when you’re overseas. Well, I know that some are quite offended with this action. Some restaurants don’t allow it. Just be aware of this! Otherwise, it’s great advertisement for the restaurants! They might give you a discount if you blog about them ^^

This shoot was shot at The Pinnacle@duxton. As the usual guy to recon for places to shoot. this place is almost perfect. It gave a strong sense of that heavy urban atmosphere, dark corners and corridors. And a backup indoor shoot area, just in case. Well, it rained most of the time when we were shooting. Most of the stuff were shot indoors.

The character was Rami Aikawa, cosplayed by Geri, an officer of the special unit in the manga Dolls. Cosplayers are quite easy to shoot. That’s because they have poses for reference from their respective manga or anime. That’s lots of posing material and artistic conceptual information to review before going into a shoot. A note to self: look around more often and take note of ulu places for those perfect last minute photoshoots. Keep a mapped notebook even.

Set the date and time. Then we are all set! One of the few things we have learnt is to be flexible. Really flexible. Things changes, this fails, that cannot. Try to adapt. What went wrong. Find a better way to do it, and rejoice!? Models have to adapt, change their ways to fit into the concept. Photographers have to think ahead and plan and shoot what’s next. Planning is important >.< Yet, we still do most of the stuff impromptu >.<

Personally, I would prefer to do landscape shots than portrait shots. It’s just me. It feels right just at home when I go for horizontal composition. Gotta go work on those portrait shots some day. On the other hand, MJ can really do great portrait shots. We sort of balance the shooting styles somehow.

If you need to jam something for a photoshoot, do it and get away with it.

Posing at the lift.

The rest are here!

Smuggled back from Akihabara at escalated prices, this is like the last piece on display there. It’s cost twice as much as the initial pre-order launch. Learnt lesson from this. If you find something damn nice and it’s like coming back into your head periodically, freaking pre-order it!

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She’s pretty isn’t she? She’s the most awesome looking figurine I have collected so far. Great build quality from GSC.

Front

Side

Back

Another view from the side

Same as the katana version, the flaming blue eye looks mystical.

One thing to note, the piece of rock below is made of PVC “rock” >.>

The blaster version and the sword version side by side for comparison. Do check out here for the Blade version.

The setup i use for shooting the figurine is pretty simple. Make a windowed box out of cardboard with tracing paper covering the windows. Remember! windows must be cut out from all sides. Attach white paper or other colored paper/ cloth for the backdrop, place a lamp on either side or top of the windows. This would create a mini-studio with diffused lighting. Over here, I connected the USB to the camera and MacBook Pro to get a clearer view of the sharpness of the figurines on the bigger screen. Use a tripod! Viola!

This is pretty much how I did the shoots for all my previous posted figurine photos.

Look what came in the mail today! This beautiful piece of figurine was preordered in March from 1999.co.jp! This is the black blade version, the 2nd release from Good Smile Company for the Black Rock Shooter series. When unboxing the figurine, I’m still impressed with the Japanese way of packaging stuff to ensure the figurine get protected from all the trauma during transportation.

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Beautiful isn’t she? So hawt! lol! Very detailed model features in every aspect of the figurine. Awesome quality work from GSC.

Details details! Every aspect ^^

A different angle. Check out her hair. Every long haired anime character figurine will have dramatic hairwork. Awesome.

Front view

a little oblique

side

Back view.

From a low angle.

That’s the blue flaming eye version. You gotta use a lighter to light it up.

A top-down view. Looks a little evil here..

She can dualwield 2 swords! Anime girls must dualwield 2 swords!!!?

Next, up would be the Blaster version that was the first release of the BRS series. Will upload as soon as it’s processed. heh!

More on the blade version over here!

After a 3 month gruesome no life study retreat, the exams are finally over! It’s a great time to celebrate with a nice relaxing photoshoot of the Helix bridge. Mr Seah came along to learn about night shoots. But basically, it’s just use tripod, up exposure time, a little bit ISO and your aperture to 22 for the starburst effect and close eyes to shoot. That’s how you do night shoots. Basically. The rest is up to your composition and eyes for creativity.

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I wasn’t really confident of the way I completed the paper. So many things forgotten. I have a bad memory, but a decent heuristic memory space to look at things to refer back and remember. So the memorise and vomit kind of exams are quite harsh on me. I’m more for applying knowledge and gaining it through experience. Wish I had a photographic memory, sometimes

The Helix was erected a few months back to connect the Marina Bay area to the Resort World IR. It takes the form of the DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid. Bored with nothing to do, I scouted around for good places to shoot before meeting up with mr Seah. Awesome architecture design. Aim of the day, my first photo shoot must produce awesome and majestic photos to portray the magnificence of this bridge.

MJ and JM decided to drop by!

Have a look at the set here!