Singapore Canal

• Nikon D7000, 18-200mm f3.5-5.6
• At f4.8, 1/2000 seconds, ISO 1600. ISO is too high for day use, but I was testing the D7000's high ISO noise. 
• Aperture priority, auto white balance, center weighted metering.
• Picasa: straighten, boosted fill light one stop, graduated tint for fake blue sky.

Doesn't look like Singapore, but it is. The walls of the canal are grimy by Singapore standards, which is why I thought it would make an interesting photo, especially when balanced by the lush green grass on the right. Took the photo from a bridge on a reasonably major road. Didn't have to sneak around some back alley to find this. 

The whole scene reminds me of a shot from the movie Entrapment (Sean Connery, Catherine Zeta-Jones), where they used special effects to combine a shot of the Malacca river or something, with the Petronas twin towers skyscrapers in the background, making it look like squalor existed side by side with modernity in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysians were quite upset with that. 

Water level is way down. It can go up a few feet after a few hours of heavy rain. You can see the small channel that runs down the center of the canal, that handles low flow days like this, at the bottom left of the photo. Occasionally, you get newspaper reports of kids trying to swim in the canal after the rain, then getting swept away and drowning.

Most of the rivers in Singapore are now concrete canals like this. If you follow the Singapore river up to its source, you eventually hit a canal like this. But then even the mouth of the river is now all concrete anyway.