With the amount of photography I’ve been doing lately, I’ve decided to dedicate an entire page on this site to my pictures. You can find old and new portraits here.

Anyway, it was Bank Holiday Monday and since J was away in London for a meeting, I decided to drive into Reading for a casual photowalk. I was hoping to get some really good shots. Unfortunately, everyone was rushing and it wasnt as laid back as I was expecting. I saw some brilliant faces but they went past me in such a speed it was impossible to approach them or stop them without being incredibly rude and terribly inconveniencing them.

However, as I was enjoying my tall-skinny-extra hot-2 pump not 3 vanilla-latte, I was drawn to man feeding his little baby at the table next to me. I soooo badly wanted to take their picture but I know how parents are extremely protective about their kids…but I plucked up my courage and asked and he said yes!!

There is something so surreal and weird (but in a good way) about photographing father and child in Starbucks in the middle of a busy shopping centre…

Check out my gallery for more pics.

I have had a few e-mails from readers asking about my recent trip to Singapore. I have been meaning to blog about it but just haven’t gotten round to it!

If you’ve ever been to Singapore, you would know that the one thing Singaporean are very passionate about is the local Singaporean food.

Whenever I go back, I kinda have a list of local delicacies which I HAVE to eat or else my trip would be in vain. For the sake of those who haven’t been to Singapore, I thought I’d blog about some of the food we ate recently during this trip.

Ice Kacang

A simple, inexpensive desert comprising of nothing more than favourings, food colouring, some ‘chendol’ and crushed ICE. I love popping down into my local hawker centre at 2 in the morning and having a nice cold bowl of ice kacang.

Hainanese Chicken Rice

This has got to be one of my favourite dishes and is arguably one of Singapore’s most loved meal. You will find them everywhere and it’s oh so hugely satisfying. It’s basically a rice dish accompanied with roasted or steamed chicken pieces. The rice is especially fragrant as it’s cooked in chicken stock and the special chicken rice chilli sauce goes amazingly well with a touch of thick black soya sauce. I’m crazing it already!

Teppanyaki?

Now, I don’t know what this is properly categorized as. Japanese? I’m not sure. The stall is called “Teppanyaki” but the term teppanyaki here in the UK means something quite different…so it’s a little confusing. Anyway, I love the minced pork dish they serve and it comes accompanied with some stir-fried beansprouts, green vegetables and the meat generously stirred in their delicious sauce (not sure what the sauce is but it tastes so good!). Everything is cooked right in front of you and you see exactly what goes into your food. Once prepared, it’s served on aluminium foils placed over burners so your meal stays warm longer. A definite must-try!

Prawn Noodles - Dry

Traditional dish. Yellow noodles tossed with prawns and fish cake slices. You can have it dry or soupy. I prefer it dry as it’s much more spicy. As you can see from the picture, I’ve even asked for extra fresh chopped chillies! Believe it or not- this is a very common breakfast dish for me when I was living back in Singapore.

Roti Prata

One of my all-time favourites. A common breakfast dish but what I love about roti prata is the fact you can have it anytime! It’s light and the curry that goes along it, makes it just perfect. I remember having sober-up meals of roti prata house at 3am in the morning after a night of partying. haha

Well! All that food talk’s made me hungry! Those aren’t all though. I still in the process of sorting through my 600+ pics from the trip. So be warned: there will be more food posts in the near future.

I decided to pop into town with my camera to try and see if I could get some portrait shots of random strangers for my photography class next week.

I have to admit: I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who willingly agreed to let me snap away. It was brilliant! Every single person I approached actually didn’t think anything of it.

You can find more of the snaps I got off the streets of Basingstoke this afternoon in my gallery.

I came home feeling a lot more confident – with myself and with my camera. A massive thank-you to everyone who took part in my photowalk and for being such a great sport. It’s been greatly appreciated.

Note: All photos on this site may not be distributed, modified, transmited, reused, reposted, for personal, public or commercial purposes without written permission from the owner (i.e. me). You should assume that everything you see or read on this site is copyrighted unless otherwise noted and may not be used.

Eversince I bought my first SLR camera last year, I’ve been addicted to taking random shots of basically anything. My shots range enormously from a simple leaf on the pavement to huge landscapes. However, I thought it would be a good idea to go for a photography course to basically have first-hand experiences of taking pictures in a studio, understand and learn about lighting, have ‘photowalks’ and field trips with like-minded people and ultimately; get to know my camera a little better.

Last night was my very 1st of 10 lessons with Chris Grout and immediately, I felt quite insecure and intimidated. Everyone else had a more powerful and better camera than my little D40. Everyone knew all about metering, composure, exposure & shutter speeds while I was still trying to get my head around shooting in RAW. We were told to bring in a couple of portrait shots that we were really proud of for an anonymous critique session next week and I knew I had my work cut out for me because I’ve not done much portraiture. Most of my really good work ( or what I think are good) seem to be mostly still-life and landscapes; a far cry from portraits wouldn’t you agree?

To be a really good portrait photographer I think you would need to have a huge variety of portraits. And to get that, you need to approach random strangers on the street to ask them if you could photograph them without scaring them off. Unfortunately, I find that the ‘candidness’ of the shot is lost the moment the subject knows you’re taking their picture. Yet, if you simply start clicking away, it doesn’t feel quite right. I get quite nervous and shy in approaching strangers for my photography.

Sometimes I wonder why the hell I paid extortionates amount of money for a portraiture course and whether of not I’m cut out to be a portrait photographer…

Just a quick note to say that we are back in the UK. The trip was brilliant and I have been on a hiatus over the last couple of weeks. Feeling a little jet-lagged and homesick but as always, it’ll pass.

It was so nice to watch J interact with my family (eventhough most of the time he’s trying to grasp the whole Singlish way of speaking). He did good.

View from my parents flat

The weather was better than I expected. We did catch 2 thunderstorms but nothing too serious to ruin our plans for the day. To be perfectly honest, it got so hot on some days, I was grateful for a few rainy showers to cool the temperature down!

It’s been 24 hours since I’ve landed back in the UK and I miss the food already…

In March last year, J and I went to New York for 10 days. Besides the usual tourisy things we had to do (Empire State, Madison, huge meals, getting fat and drunk every night etc..), I went there aiming to get my very first DSLR.

I had been thinking about it for ages and back then, the exchange rate was working in our favour.

It was such a huge upfront investment and I’m the sort of person who gets quite nervous and thinks twice whenever a shopping bill comes to a three-digit-figure…But after months of contemplating and seeing how I saved a good £100 by getting it in NY, I took out my card and on the 6th day, officially owned my very own Nikon D40!

It was brilliant! Gone were the days I couldn’t work with my photos on a bigger scale because they were either just not sharp or distorted or worst still, ruined by flash. It’s a brilliant camera and worth every penny. Coming back home and reviewing the pictures we took, you could clearly see the difference in quality between the pics we took during the 1st 5 days with my Panasonic, compared to the pics taken on the last 5 days.

My only regret is not getting it sooner…