NUS University Town, Night

Most people take a photo of the Education Resource Centre on the left to represent UTown, so I thought I'd do something different and include the Residence blocks on the right too.

http://utown.nus.edu.sg/

• Nikon D600, 28-300mm f3.5-5.6
• At 28mm, f4, ISO 3200, 1/15 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto White Balance
• Picasa: Straighten, crop, auto contrast, glow. 

Time is 7:36pm, rich color in the sky. A few minutes later and the photos I took had a black sky. I was photographing a school debate and finished just at the right time. 

Singapore Management Universtiy (SMU) Concourse

The Concourse is the basement passage underneath the Singapore Management University, connecting its various faculty buildings. There are study benches, shops, a canteen, and a link to the Bras Basah MRT station. It's open to the public. 

It's a few hundred meters long, covering more than half the distance between the Dhoby Ghaut and City Hall MRT stations. I often walk along the concourse to avoid the sun and rain. You can see students studying, practicing dances, and doing other student things.

• Nikon D7000, Sigma 20mm f1.8
• At 20mm, f2, ISO 800, 1/30 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: No editing

It's the colored posters on the signboards that make the photo work. Other times I was there, the posters weren't that colorful and I wasn't tempted to take a photo.

Still testing out the Sigma at wide open apertures, instead of stopping down like I normally would for a perspective photo like this. Pretty decent depth of field at f2. I'm getting more and more confident with the Sigma. 

Night Festival

Organized by the National Museum with some involvement from SMU (Singapore Management University) and SOTA (School of the Arts). This is the crowd watching the live concert on the SMU campus. Green pattern on the floor is from a projector. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f4-5.6 
• At 18mm, f3.5, ISO 6400, 1/45 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: No editing 

Could have gone down to ISO 1600 or 3200 but I wanted to test the ISO 6400. I usually use manual exposure for night shots due to the uneven lighting, but this scene was relatively evenly lit and I was confident that auto would work.

Student Artwork, SOTA, School of the Arts

Samples of student art, along the external corridor of SOTA. This is along Prinsep Street, where members of the public pass by every day. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 18mm, f5.6, ISO 1600, 1/45 seconds
• Aperture priority, center-weighted meter, auto white balance
• Picasa: Straighten, crop, auto contrast, fill light

Chose aperture priority to stop-down the aperture a bit to f5.6 for greater depth of field.

House of Tan Yeok Nee

Old mansion (1882) in the heart of the city: Clemenceau Avenue and Penang Road, near Orchard Road and the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station. Many people will remember it as the Salvation Army's headquarters. It now houses the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business ( http://www.chicagobooth.edu/visit/singapore/index.aspx ).

The Preservation of Monuments Board has details ( http://www.pmb.sg/?page_id=182 ). The building in the background is the Visioncrest Residence, a private condominium.

• D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 50mm, f5.6, ISO 400, 1/125 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast, shadows (photo was over-exposed, not sure why, scene isn't high contrast)

Had to crop tightly to cut out a lot of distracting junk: traffic light, lamp post, pedestrians. Standard urban problems. Cropping photos is an important part of editing. Lots of photos that I see on Facebook, would be greatly improved by some simple cropping.

When you're taking a photo, you don't want to zoom all the way in, even if you have a zoom lens. Best to leave some margin around the edges. This gives you flexibility to decide the final crop later, when you have time to slowly think about it. With today's DSLR's going above 12 megapixels, you've got megapixels to burn. A standard PC monitor is only about one megapixel, HDTV is two megapixels, digital cinema is two to nine megapixels ( http://cinema.emilanderic.com/digitalprojection.aspx?id=7&mname=Digital%20Projection ).

SOTA, School of The Arts, Singapore

Trunk of the tree is not in the photo. What looks like the trunk is part of the building. The guy sitting there was there when I walked past. I didn't ask him to model for me.

Whenever I see the building, I think of the movie Fame. It's next to the Cathay Cineplex building, where I like to go for movies. It's at the end of Orchard Road, less busy than the rest of Orchard Road. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-200mm f3.5-5.6 
• At 34mm f4.2, ISO 800, 1/125 seconds.
• Center-weighted metering, Program exposure mode, auto white balance

Like most day shots, this is easy because there's lots of light. No tricky yellow light either. Set everything on auto and you'll be fine. It was a bit under-exposed because of all the white. Boosted fill light about two stops using Picasa.