Sight to Insight

I have selected and uploaded pictures taken during the festive Chinese New Year which falls on Feb 14, which is also Valentine's day, and a Sunday. The CNY lasts for 15 days and will end on Feb 27. This year is year of the Tiger; and very auspicious for me, as this day was the birthday of my wife, who is born on Feb 14. I was told this comes once every 60 years! Anyway, the family had a great celebration at a hotel in Petaling Jaya, which used to be Asia Jaya, many years back. The location brought back good memories, as I spent quite a few years in this location. With the planning as written in my last article, I have focused on using the appropriate lens (18-55mm and 40m f2.8 for close up shorts); while the 50-200mm was used for shots in the shopping malls and on my way to Bentong, which is just about 20 min away from Genting Highland. In my picasa web album, http://picasaweb.google.com/ys.leong under the title "Moods and Foods" - I tried to depict the atmosphere of the

I have examined the photographs that I took during the Chinatown outing and I notice that I missed out the people part of it. I have few photos showing them either buying, price haggling, smiling or tourists being curious about this festival. With this learning, I want to prepare for the upcoming Chinese New Year, where I will be going home to Subang Jaya in Malaysia. What will be the atmosphere be like before, during and after Chinese New Year? What are the key descriptions of the events? What will show that it is Chinese New Year versus a normal day? Based upon these few guiding questions, I will see the following: * My mother and mother in law smiling on seeing their children coming home to celebrate the new year with them. Portraits of them smiling both in color and monochrome could bring out this emotion. The pancake can do the trick or the zoom of 80-200mm; using the 80mm to create the bokeh. * Children are happy receiving ang-pows (red packets) and the act of the out-stretched h

  Hobbies are heart and mind engaging. They provide the fuel to keeping the body going. The fuel to do research, practise and improve to appreciate the end result. Photography has been in my blood for a very long time. The earliest recall is when my father lent me his camera, which then used the 120 roll (if I am not mistaken). The camera was like a big Lumix LX3, except that when you pressed a button, a flap came down 90 degrees with the lens. There was only twelve negatives. I must have been 12 years old or so. Then I went to France, and I had enough money to buy my own Yashica camera, which is like a point and shoot, except it used 35mm film. It was in France that I bought my Canon AE-1 (SLR) from a Japanese adult student who was going home. I had a 50mm lens and I then bought a Tamron zoom as well as a doubler. I bought many filters (50mm) and experimented with Kodak filters; which I could buy and cut the film. My Vivitar 285 is still with me; except it cannot flash; though the tyr