Plaza Singapura Christmas Tree 2012

This is the first Christmas since the major renovation that was completed this year. You can see the new facade of Plaza Singapura in the background. Their Christmas tree is usually placed further to the right, but there is now a plastic pop art sculpture in that location. 

• Nikon D600, 28-300mm f3.5-5.6
• At 52mm, f4.5, ISO 1600, 1/15 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: No editing

It's good to get a sign or something showing the name of the place, into the photo. It's not just for informational purposes. The sign often adds an interesting visual element to the photo.

Take a few minutes and walk around a bit, look at the Christmas tree (or fountain or statue or whatever) from a few different angles and distances. You get better photos, enjoy your photography more, and train your observational skills.  

Orchard Road Christmas Light Up 2012

The traditional Christmas decorations along Orchard Road. This year's lights are red, last year's were blue. Maybe next year's will be green.

I don't know what the bird is. Maybe a partridge (in a pear tree), turtle dove or French hen.

Photo of the 2011 Light up is at
http://sgsnaps.blogspot.sg/2011/11/orchard-road-christmas-light-up.html

• Nikon D600, 28-300mm f3.5-5.6
• At 300mm, f5.6, ISO 3200, 1/60 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Straighten

Aside from the exposure (use manual exposure, check the LCD) and focal length (zoom in to collapse the lights together), the thing to watch out for is the cars on the road. Chances are that if you take one photo at random, the cars will look messy and will be distracting to the viewer. Take a few photos until you get one where the cars are neatly lined up and don't draw attention to themselves.

Backpackers' Inn Chinatown

I've come across small backpacker hotels before, but none as colorful as this one. Nicely integrates simple and effective advertising with a striking design.

It's in a row of old two-storey shophouses, located opposite Chinatown Point, in the heart of Chinatown.

Note the old-style electric fan at the top left, and the classic red letter box on the right.

http://www.backpackersinn.com.sg

• Nikon D600, 28-300mm f3.5-5.6
• At 28mm, f5.6, ISO 1600, 1/180 seconds
• Aperture priority, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Straighten, crop

Main difficulty with this photo was cropping out distracting details at the edges. I wanted to crop out the table and ashtray at the bottom but that would have cut off too much of the sign on the door. But I did manage to get rid of a lot of junk at the sides.

Back in the film days, you had to crop in-camera because cropping during printing wasn't practical unless you had your own darkroom. With digital photos and PC editing, it's better to zoom out a bit and give yourself some margin to crop later at your leisure.

Cropping is the number one way to improve your photos. Most of the photos that I see on Facebook would be improved with some simple cropping. Remove distracting details. It's simple.

One Raffles Quay

New high rise office building in the middle of the financial district. There are two towers (North and South), connected by a plaza. The towers are placed at an angle to each other, which makes for an interesting photo. The north tower on the left, is 50 storeys high. The south tower on the right is 29 storeys high.  

This was at 8pm on a weekday night. Looks like people here work too hard. Orange spot at the bottom right is an out-of-focus raindrop on the lens, catching light from a streetlamp. 

http://www.orq.com.sg/

• Nikon D600, 28-300mm f3.5-5.6
• At 28mm, f4, ISO 1600, 1/15 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Fill light

Manual exposure for easy control, set maximum aperture and slowest safe shutter speed, then increase ISO until the exposure is correct (check on the LCD playback). This way you get highest image quality by using the lowest possible ISO. Use Picasa's fill light feature to brighten up the dark walls a bit.

Stairs to Imbiah Point, Sentosa

Located next to the Beach monorail station, these beautifully lit stairs go up to a garden (with crazy ceramic mini waterfalls) that leads to Imbiah Point. I thought it was an old fort or a restaurant, but no, they're just stairs (actually a ramp). The small domes at the top are part of the garden.  

The "Sky Loft" sign is for a rooftop bar and restaurant at the top of the iFly indoor skydiving (vertical wind tunnel) building on the left (beyond the edge of the photo).

• Nikon D600, 24mm f1.4
• At 24mm, f5.6, ISO 1600, 1/30 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, straighten

The extreme bright and dark areas means that it is easier to use manual exposure (moving the camera a bit, would change the automatic exposure by a lot).

The lights are LEDs that change color, so I waited and took photos every few seconds to get the different colors. Decided later that the yellow lights looked the best. 

Reflections at Keppel Bay

New condominium near Vivocity. Elegant curvy design, one of the most beautiful condos I've seen. I was lucky to get the sun in this position, where it reflected off the glass and brought out their texture. Half an hour later the reflections were gone.

Sentosa cable cars are in front of the building. I waited a few minutes to get an interesting pattern of cars. The red and yellow cars are Angry Bird cars.

http://reflectionsatkeppel.com/

• Nikon D7000, 55-300mm f4.5-5.6
• At 165mm, f11, ISO 100, 1/500 seconds
• Aperture priority, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast, fill light

Picasa's auto contrast helped a lot in incresing the "punch" of the light. The long distance and water vapour from the sea, created a gray veil over the photo.

Aerial View of Redhill

This is the view looking east, towards the city center. You can actually see part of the Marina Bay Sands hotel, about 1/4 of the way from the right of the photo (behind the vertical red and white construction crane), and two Shenton Way skyscrapers peeping out at the top right hand corner.

The trees at the bottom nicely balances out the photo. Canal at the bottom is the Alexandra Canal.

There are beautiful views all over Singapore. You just need to look for them. Better than photographing the same old famous landmarks that everyone else has photographed.

• Nikon D600, 28-300mm f3.5-5.6
• At 180mm, f8, ISO 100, 1/750 seconds
• Aperture priority, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, straighten

Set ISO 100 because of the bright daylight, stop the lens down a bit to f8 for depth of field, use auto exposure because the scene is quite evenly lit. Exposure is easy when you have lots of light to play with.

Color of the sky isn't the best but I didn't have time to hang around and wait for sunset. You take what you can get.