About allenang photography
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BLACKOUT AT WIKIPEDIA: Increase awareness for the largest online encyclopedia.
Today, Wikipedia is blacked out for a day to increase awareness. You can show your support through social media – Facebook, Google+ or Twitter. Head over to Wikipedia site now.
ECLIPSE: Not exactly a money shot, but that'll do. The moon hid away behind the cloud earlier one when the eclipse started.
Thanks to the tweets, and some posts in FB, I only got to know about the lunar eclipse happening at South East Asia tonight moments ago. When I found out about it, I said to myself, “Why not just take a peek at the moon, and see how it is like?”
So, I went out of the house and looked up. The shy moon was hiding behind the cloud that time, and I saw nothing. Oh, great! I went back in. But, I still managed to catch a bit of the eclipse at 12 midnight. As you could see on the image above, there was still some bit of shadow casting over the moon. Some two hours later, the full moon was clear again.
There you go, that bit of lunar eclipse. My very first experience.
Japan was hit by earthquake and tsunami yesterday (11 March 2011). The earthquake was measured at magnitude of 8.9. You have our prayers.
This video made by FStoppers production made its round on the Internet the day before yesterday. This entry by FStoppers touched on a real case scenario where the worst could have happened to any of us. For photographers, or artists, we sure dream of our work to be published, in magazine, websites, publications.
In this video — The Stolen Scream, Noam Galai talked about how the photos he published on his Flickr account was actually made for sale in several stores around the world. Sounds like a dream come true? Not quite. Despite his scream image was commonly seen in many forms of publications, he was never credited or even asked for permission to use the images, which featured his face.
Click on the video below to hear it from the man himself:
The Stolen Scream: A Story About Noam Galai from FStoppers on Vimeo.
Click here for the original entry by FStoppers’ blog: http://fstoppers.com/fstoppers-original-the-stolen-scream/.
Read more about Noam Galai at his website, TheStolenScream.com.
I stumbled upon this on DigitalRev’s blog.
You may have seen this already, but I thought I should just share it out. I kinda like this animated series on wedding photography. Pay close attention to the questions being asked by the colleague.
Now, what do you think of career as a photographer? Is it just about snapping photographs only? Think again.
Cheers!
About two weeks ago, I had some accidental catch. It was Sunday morning, and I went out to take my regular dose of shutter therapy. Every photographer has to keep their skills fresh every now and then, don’t we? We don’t wanna be rusty when it comes to an actual assignment. 
To my surprise, I managed to get myself some accidental catches that day. I somehow had a chance to shoot bird. Yes, bird photography!
I’ve read so much about how to shoot bird, and what not. I have never tried hands on shooting bird in flight until that day.
First location, was at Lake Park. This blue creature in flight distracted me a while. I then turned my attention to the bird and started observing the bird. Without much hesitation, I quickly switched my lens to the 70-200mm lens. (70-200mm isn’t long enough for shooting bird, it’s still short, even on a APS-C sensor.) The bird was resting on top of a tree.
As soon as the bird took flight again, I panned my lens towards the bird, and hunting it through my view finder. It was tough. I only managed to get a few shot, they were not great shots, but I’m still sharing my experience here in this entry.
I’ve selected a few shots here, and will explain it image by image.
Allen Ang © 2010 www.allenang.com
The image above is of a uncropped image, that’s what you see on the original shot at 200mm on EOS 50D (which is of a 1.6x crop). The bird appears too small in this frame. So, in order to make the bird filling the frame more, I had not choice but to crop it. And, My shooting mode was on Av, and on One Shot AF. My aperture was set as f/4 which is too shallow for this shoot. If you miss the bird, you’ll get the subject all blur. I reckon you to shoot it on smaller aperture. The reason why I shot at f/4 was because I was doing a portrait shooting that morning. And I didn’t further adjust the setting accordingly.
Allen Ang © 2010 www.allenang.com
EOS 50D has only 9 AF points, and I find it rather difficult to track such a small object through my view finder. It would have been better if it’s tracked through a more advanced AF-points.
Allen Ang © 2010 www.allenang.com
As I said before, tracking through 9 points AF system is tough. Therefore, using AI Servo is pretty challenging here as well. If you are a bird shooter out there, please share your experience on how to shoot better bird images, especially when they’re in flight.
Again, the image above is without crop, and below is the cropped one.
Allen Ang © 2010 www.allenang.com
Then, the next catch was caught on my way home.
Allen Ang © 2010 www.allenang.com
The bird in the drainage doesn’t seem to know how to fly. It just ran away when it felt my presence. While it ran off, in attempt to ensure its own safety, its companion/friend, took off and flew away.
Allen Ang © 2010 www.allenang.com
Again, I’m not familiar with bird species, but this white bird, coupled with the clear blue sky would definitely make a good combination. However, due to my lack of experience, and gears’ limitation, those are the best images I could get from that day.
Allen Ang © 2010 www.allenang.com
I’m posting an entry on HDR image on this Sunday. This weekend is a bit too taxing for me. I sat for an exam, which is called Perperiksaan Khas Memasuki Perkhidmatan Gred 41. I actually repeatedly wrote that line over and over again the whole day! This exam is sort of a pre-requisite exam for those who applies for a job in the Government sector. You do the registration online at their website (www.spa.gov.my), I had hard time filling in the form as they only made Bahasa Melayu version available. And, yesterday marked the first time in a decade, easily, since I last wrote an essay in BM. I somehow managed to put in for just about 300 words! Man, it was even tougher than sitting for a Biology paper!
Anyways, back to the HDR image, there isn’t anything fancy here, just a simple method. I took three exposures on three frames, via the AEB (Auto Exposure Bracket) function in the camera. When you’ve set your designed exposure value (EV), you will shoot three frames from the camera. Here, my EV taken are -1ev, -3ev and +1ev. Then I generate the HDR image via Photomatix Pro. You then adjust the setting within Photomatix Pro according to your own preference.
On other notes, the gears I used to shoot this were: EOS 50D + Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6, without tripod. I shot in High-burst (continuous) mode to shoot the three frames continuously. That sort of eliminated the need of a tripod, as the lighting at that time is still sufficient to shoot hand held, even at -3ev.