Singapore Botanic Gardens, Tanglin Gate

There are quite a few entrances to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The Tanglin Gate is at the south-east corner, the opposite end from the Botanic Gardens MRT station. The two side gates are for pedestrians, and are open until midnight.

There's an inscription on the gate that reads, "Connecting Plants & People since 1859."

• Nikon D7000, 24mm f1.4
• At 24mm, f2, ISO 1600, 1/15 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, incandescent white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, straighten.

This was taken at 8pm, so there's still a bit of blue in the sky (helped by setting incandescent white balance on the camera). The puffy white clouds are a happy accident.

The trees have different colors because those on the sides are lit by sodium-vapor streetlights, while the large tree in the middle is lit by spotlights inside the Botanic Gardens (I'm guessing quartz halogen). Together with the white gate, blue sky and white clouds, it all adds up to a pleasant mix of colors.

Water Taxis Docking at Marina Bay

Financial district skyscrapers are in the background, Marina Bay Sands is behind the camera. This was on a Saturday night, so photographers were out in force. You can see two at the bottom left of the photo. 

In real life, the actual scene looks about 4x or 8x darker. That's one of the attractions of night photography: you get to make the scene look better than real life. 

• Nikon D7000, 24mm f1.4
• At 24mm, f1.4, ISO 800, 1/30 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, incandescent white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, fill light.

Photo was taken handheld. With an f1.4 lens and today's high ISO DSLRs, you don't need a tripod. 

Lion Dance

Sar Kong Mun San Fook Tuck Chee lion dance troupe.
http://www.sarkong.org/

Lots of lion dance troupes in Singapore. You see them performing at shops and riding around in trucks with colorful banners, especially during Chinese New Year. Head towards the sound of drums, that's the best way to find them.

• Nikon D7000, 85mm f1.4
• At 85mm, f1.4, ISO 100, 1/1000 seconds
• Aperture priority, center-weighted metering, sunlight white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, fill light.

Set maximum aperture to blur out the spectators in the background.

The orange uniforms are fluorescent in real life. Couldn't capture that properly with the digital camera.

SuperStar Virgo Cruise Liner, at Harbourfront Cruise Centre

This ship is huge, bigger than most hotels and shopping malls. I couldn't believe how big it looked in real life. I'm sure that it's way bigger than any Singapore navy ship. 

Dark blob on the left is Sentosa island.

http://www.starcruises.com/newweb/our_fleets/cruise_ssv.aspx

• Nikon D7000, 70-200mm f2.8
• At 70mm, f2.8, ISO 1600, 1/30 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, sunlight white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, fill light.

Resorts World Sentosa, Night View from the Sea

 

View of the famous Resorts World Sentosa complex of buildings.

The long building in the front is the Maritime Xperiential Museum. It looks like a private museum, owned by RWS, not the government. In the background from left to right are hotels: The Michael, Crockford's Tower, Festive Hotel. Universal Studios is to the left, outside the frame.

• Nikon D7000, 70-200mm f2.8
• At 105mm, f2.8, ISO 1600, 1/30 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, sunlight white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, fill light.

For uneven lighting like this, it's usually best to switch to manual exposure and check the exposure from the LCD playback. I see many night photos that are too dark, the light meter thrown off by the bright lights. You want to get sufficient exposure for the walls of the buildings, which means over-exposing the lights.  

I normally set auto or incandescent white balance, but in this instance the auto white balance over-corrected with too much blue so I forced it to sunlight white balance.

Raintree, Bukit Brown Cemetery

This photo shows the large raintree at the roundabout just inside the Bukit Brown Cemetery's gates. It's a popular meeting point for tours. It is located before the main blocks of graves, has room for parking cars, and is easily recognizable.

There has been renewed interest in Bukit Brown Cemetery ever since the government announced plans to slice off a corner to make way for a highway.

I joined one of the night tours conducted by a group dedicated to saving Bukit Brown from the highway ( http://bukitbrown.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/groups/bukitbrown/ ).

• Nikon D7000, 24mm f1.4
• At 24mm, f1.4, ISO 6400, 1/8 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, automatic white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast

Photo was taken at 7:50pm. You can see from the settings that it was already quite dark (you can just make out the yellow glow on some people, from chemical glow sticks). It doesn't look dark in the photo because, well, that's what cameras can do.

Later in the evening, I had to go down to 1/4 seconds and ISO 25600. Luckily I brought along a monopod.