p a t c h r i s

My friend Mun and I went out for a little walk at the KLCC Suria shopping complex and took a few pictures. He wanted to work on composition of pictures and I laughed a lot when he was lying on the floor of the concourse to shoot some photos. It's nice to have spent a little time just chilling with my friend. Most of the pictures I take these days are in Program mode with the ISO settings at what I think will give sufficient shutter speed. I'm still not much into editing or touching up on the images. Apart from cropping and exporting the images in smaller sizes, there doesn't seem to be much time. Briefly met a German lady from Berlin who was visiting the towers with her husband. Odd that he was walking way ahead not really waiting for her. Welcome to Malaysia! Mun took a nice picture of the Mont Blanc store emblem through the Suria KLCC logo on the glass of an upper floor. Good shot! Went back to KLCC for lunch this afternoon and found that Candy Land has already been taken...

Tanjung Malim in Perak is a town up north from Kuala Lumpur, about an hour by car. Until recently, I had not much knowledge of this education institution located here called Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (Sultan Idris Education University). Above is the Bangunan Canselori (Chancellor Building). I thought the architecture was nice, and below is the view from the ground floor of the Bangunan Canselori, facing the sports field. With 15,000 students, this university has some nice facilities such as a sports field with floodlighting, tennis courts and lots of space in addition to 3 student hostels. Nice puffy nimbus clouds on a bright sunny day in Tanjung Malim.

It was after some rain that I decided to go out for a walk with my camera. I was happy to notice how fresh the flowers appear to be when water drops are present. I really have no idea what these flowers are but they sure are pleasing to the eyes.

This is the 3rd post about the wasp/hornet (please tell me what it is!) nest that's been progressively built at the rear of my home. I tried to get an even closer shot and selected Large, Fine & 2x Telephoto settings on my Sony A330 dSLR. Looks like the details are more pronounced this time around and the nest texture looks simply amazing. I'm sure more could be done with a macro lens (and a higher resolution sensor), but I'll have to settle with what the kit lens has to offer. For uploading to this blog, I'm trying a maximum height of 800 pixels, which matches my laptop's display resolution of 1280 x 800. See if it's a good size to post. Not wanting to encourage further nest building (I've cut them down twice), I resorted to using bug spray on them and totally removed this nest. Will this be the last of them around here for some time?

I have a neighbour who loves gardening. She's got pots and pots of all sorts of plants and she spends time at least twice a day trimming, pruning, watering, fertilizing and caring for her plants in the early morning and evening. For me, I have a patch of grass with some leafy greens near a wall plus a tiny pot of mint plant that's neither growing or dying. It's odd that the grass is a bit spongy, but that seems to be the way it grows. After some time taking pictures in RAW, I think I'll switch to Fine and Small for now, unless it's a special occasion or shot. Even loading the RAW images are taking too long. So, it's iPhoto for now for easy viewing and management of images. It's been said (and I agree) that perhaps blogspot is not the best place to post your pictures as you can't really see close-up details unless you click on the images for the actual size. That's just one click too many.

Days after I used a grass shear to trim this nest off, the stinging bugs (no, they haven't stung me yet) are back at it again at the same site. This time there were four of them and they didn't seem as docile as the other two I shot earlier. Oddly I had been having less and less space available on my 2Gb card although I deleted all the images. I figure it's got something to do with the Apple/Microsoft Fat16 file formatting and I used Disk Utility to wipe the card clean. That was After. However, before that, all I could muster was a Large image setting for Jpeg on the camera in Program mode with ISO800 instead of RAW. I was a little apprehensive about going near the insects as they might have gotten agitated and give me a sting or two. The nest is stuck on a sort of old phone cable and the breeze gives it a little sway from time to time, so that doesn't really help. Makes me hanker for a SAL75300, so I've got to restrain myself. Maybe if there's a good sale going...

Some pictures may be worth a thousand words, but in some cases a picture may lead to many questions. For example: Is the baby a boy or a girl? Is the baby asleep or awake? How old is the baby? What's the baby's name? Does the baby have siblings? Is the baby on formula or mother's milk or both? Did the parents forget to trim the baby's fingernails? Are there any birthmarks on the baby? Who is caring for the baby? The mother, grandmother, a helper? Images may mean different things to different people. The ones to cherish are those which need no words to describe. You just know and feel IT. Ping your blog

If you're not into insects, then the sight of bees, wasps or hornets building a nest in the vicinity of your home might send a chill down your spine. I had to go close in order to take this shot, with the sting of the lower wasp rather visible. I particularly like the detail on the yellow band on the bug. Could have done better with a RAW shot and perhaps a SAL75300, but the latter translates into more investments to this very new Sony A330 dSLR which has been fantastic so far. Needless to say our two friends here were evicted shortly thereafter.

It's a sort of building block cum puzzle kind of plaything. It's a little difficult to describe, but you can call it an Art & Hobby Construction Kit for fun creativity in the genre of 3D puzzles & Lego LaQ does not come cheap, but after spending some time with it you will appreciate the Made-In-Japan quality of the material being used, as well as the brain juice that has gone into developing the system. The people at LaQ provide design sheets for various shapes like spectacles, birds (as pictured above), trains, crowns and so on. Pressing the joints of these vibrantly-coloured pieces together make a clicking sound. Great for younger children for hours of clicking fun! Available at Jigsaw Puzzle World stores.

DVD Player Side Speaker The Tall Boy (I don't mean me) Centre Speaker, where all the voices mainly come from. The Philips HTS 3366 Home Theater System is an affordable out-of-the-box system with a 5.1 surround sound configuration for pleasurable listening. This model and the similar systems within it's range currently retails at approximately RM800/US$228 with the ability to play anything from DVDs and below. At this point, the most affordable Bluray player would still be the Sony Playstation 3 (PS3). In Malaysia, however, Bluray discs are generally too expensive to be for most consumers and DVDs would be the next best option. I like the way the connectors are color-coded and easily designed for quick and simple setup. The system looks sleek and attractive and for a first-time HTS owner, I've learned to appreciate the extra richness of the sound, especially coming from the subwoofer. Boom Boom Boom!

It hasn't been a week since I got my Sony a330 dSLR and I've mostly been taking close up macro shots. I ask myself what makes a good picture and conclude that it's very much dependent on one's preferences. Of course, blurry images and under/overexposed shots don't make good viewing, but a photographer's skill is in being able to make one just pause and admire the beauty that we can find in God's creation.

Exploring macro shots with the Sony a330 dSLR. No regrets getting the model with Live View as it makes it more convenient to take pictures, even from awkward angles. There's lots to learn about shutter speed, aperture priority, ISO settings and the different types of techniques for various environments. The camera has not disappointed so far, although questions will always linger as to why not Nikon or Canon. Fact is, Sony's pretty good as well.