ION Orchard Basement Escalator

This is the escalator leading down to the basement food court of ION Orchard. The bright colors are really something. Simple but effective design - ridged curved ceiling lit by colored lights. 

Wall-sized advertisements are stuck onto the light panels that form the walls (the blue rectangles are video screens, also displaying advertisements). On this day, the walls are displaying a Fancl cosmetics advertisement.

• Nikon V1, 10-30mm f3.5-5.6
• At 10mm, f3.5, ISO 400, 1/60 seconds
• Auto-everything
• Picasa: Straighten, crop, auto contrast, fill light.

Took the photo on my second trip down the escalator. On my first trip, there was someone wearing a red baseball cap in front of me. It was too distracting, changing the focus of the photo. So I went back up and down again.

Light Panels, ION Orchard

An entire backlit wall. It's used for large advertisements, but was empty on this day. The bare texture is still interesting enough on its own. Girl with the phone happened to be there and is the final piece of the puzzle. Photo would have been too plain without her in it. It's a common trick, having someone in the photo to add interest, but it works. 

Orchard MRT station is only a few meters to the right.

• Nikon V1, 10-30mm f3.5-5.6
• At 21mm, f5, ISO 1200, 1/160 seconds
• Auto-everything
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast, auto color, glow

The actual scene was brighter, the camera was fooled by the bright light. I think it looks better this way, so I left it alone except for some minor tweaking in Picasa.

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.

Orchard Central Shopping Centre

Orchard Central is located opposite Centrepoint. It's built over the old Specialists' Shopping Centre ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialists%27_Shopping_Centre ).

Saw the bright colorful lights and just had to take a photo. Main difficulty is getting a good angle and avoiding streetlights. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 18mm, f5.6, ISO 6400, 1/30 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast

Automatic exposure would probably have worked but it's easier to make exposure adjustments with manual exposure. Could have used ISO 1600 with f4 and 1/15 seconds but I was testing out ISO 6400 to see the noise performance. 

Cathay Cineleisure Orchard

Famous cinema multiplex off Orchard road. Mandarin Orchard hotel is in the background on the right.

I have some hazy memories of the old Cathay cinema that was torn down years ago, to make way for this modern cineplex. I'm a bit of a movie buff, so I hang out at theaters a lot.

The bright colors makes it easy to create an interesting photograph. The challenge lies in cropping out distracting details from the edge of the frame, to create a neat composition. I zoomed out a bit to give me some margin to play with, and edited the exact crop later on the PC. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 52mm, f8, ISO 100, 1/250 seconds
• Aperture priority, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, crop, shadows

The D7000 has an unfortunate tendency to over-expose in bright sunlight. This has been pointed out in a number of online reviews. I had to use Picasa's shadow function to reduce exposure one stop.

Flower Dragon, Mandarin Gallery

The Dragon year is the most auspicious year in the Chinese calendar. More babies are born in Dragon years compared to other years. Photographically, the Dragon year is good because dragons look cooler than the other zodiac animals.

Chinese/Lunar New Year decorations aren't as fancy or widespread as Christmas decorations. I'd say less than 20 percent of the shopping centers along Orchard Road have decorations outside. Most however do have some decorations in their atrium.  

It's not so clear at this picture size, but there are flowers all over the dragon. I actually saw workmen sticking artificial flowers onto the dragon, a few days ago. It's the Water Dragon year this year (the animals cycle in a series of 5 elements), but I guess a flower dragon looks prettier. 

• Nikon D7000, Sigma 20mm f1.8
• At 20mm, f2, ISO 200, 1/30 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: No editing

I chose this angle to squeeze both the chinese words on the left and the whole dragon, into the picture. I tried a flat side-on angle first but it didn't look too good, especially with distracting colored lights in the background. This angle closes up the spaces between the dragon and blocks more of the lights. 

I would normally use f5.6 or smaller but I'm testing out the Sigma wide open, getting a feel for the lens sharpness and depth of field. Even at f2, the depth of field is surprisingly deep. The building in the background is only slightly blurred. This would not be the case with the 35mm f1.8. 

Christmas Decorations, Mandarin Gallery

The red lanterns are the Christmas decorations. They are LED lights that change color. I waited for the colors to cycle through one complete sequence, and decided that red was the best. I also took a few "safety" shots of the other colors just in case.

This side of Orchard Road (Ngee Ann City, etc.) is more fun to walk along (and take photos) because the pedestrian walkway is wider, compared to the other (Lucky Plaza, etc.) side. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 18mm, f4, ISO 400, 1/60 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, sunlight (neutral) white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, fill light, straighten, crop

The critical element in the photo is the red lanterns. So I exposed the photo for them, made them glow but not so much that the color was washed out.

This made the floor unattractively dark, so I increased the fill light later with Picasa on my PC. Fill light works great most of the time because it adjusts the mid brightness areas, but doesn't affect the very dark or very bright areas much; unlike the brightness or contrast adjustment in simpler photo editors.

Tangs Christmas Decoration

The sign is about 10 to 20 feet high and is on the front of the Tangs building.

It's good to see a bible quote used as a Christmas decoration. I'm not religious but I'm all for not losing sight of where Christmas comes from (yes I know, Christmas is not really from the bible, but still). 

The businessman who started Tangs was a staunch Christian. Tangs was well known for being one of the few shopping centres that did not open on Sunday. The policy was changed after his children took over the running of the business. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 38mm, f5.6, ISO 100, 1/4 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, incandescent white balance
• Picasa: Straighten, crop, warmify

Photo was taken with the camera on a tripod. With so much light, I could have boosted the ISO to 400, shutter speed to 1/15 seconds, and taken the photo handheld.

I set the color balance to incandescent because without it, the photo came out a stange-looking dark orange. But that corrected the color too much, made it colorless, so I used Picasa's warmify function to add back in some yellow.

Orchard Road Christmas Light-up 2011

The spiral decorations remind me of Tim Burton's movie, The Nightmare before Christmas.

I haven't bothered with photographing the Orchard Road light-up for years. Seemed too touristy and tacky. But I happened to be at Central and their Christmas display was pretty cool (see previous photo), so I thought I'd give the whole thing another go.

I think Singaporeans have gotten tired of images of Santa and reindeer too. Decorations are more abstract this year, which seems less tacky to me. 

The 2012 Light Up is at
http://sgsnaps.blogspot.sg/2012/12/orchard-road-christmas-light-up-2012.html

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 105mm, f5.6, ISO 800, 1/60 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, sunny (neutral) white balance
• Picasa: Straighten

For most night scenes, setting incandescent (tungsten) white balance works best. It's like putting a blue filter over the lens, to counteract the too-yellow light in most night scenes.

The lights here are blue and are bright enough to neutralize a lot of the yellow light (from the sodium streetlights). I tried setting incandescent white balance and the photo looked artificially blue.

For this kind of photo, you want to collapse the overhead lights together to get a solid mass of them. This means zooming in with a telephoto focal length. Natural reaction is to place the cars in the center of the photo. You need to force yourself to tilt the camera up, so that you don't get a lot of boring empty road in the foreground of the photo.

Didn't need 1/60 seconds. Could have gone down to 1/30 seconds and ISO 400 (maybe blurred the cars a bit, but less ISO noise), but this is fine anyway.

Exposure is done by checking the LCD playback. You want to have some light from the cars and road, but without over-exposing the lights until they lose their color. In the old film days I would have metered off the road.

Istana Grounds

The Istana ("palace" in Malay) is the official residence of the President of Singapore. It is located at the end of Orchard Road, near Dhoby Ghaut MRT station. The grounds and part of the main building are open to the public on most public holidays. 

This is the view looking back towards the main gate, and Dhoby Ghaut MRT station. Plaza Singapura is out of sight, hidden behind the trees on the left. The grounds are huge, this is less than half of it. Note the blue shade at the bottom left. That's for the policeman standing guard.

Photo was taken during the recent Hari Raya public holiday.  This is at about 10am. There were a lot more people later.

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 105mm, f5.6, ISO 100, 1/350 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, -1 exposure compensation, auto white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast

I don't usually use exposure compensation, but the camera consistently over-exposes when metering grass or trees. 

The couple on the right is important for adding balance and interest to the photo. The rest of the people are too small to be interesting.

Mandarin Gallery, Orchard Road

High-end shopping centre. Opposite The Heeren, near Cineleisure. There's no big entrance in the front, no fast food restaurants. Think that all malls are the same, with the same chain stores? Take a look inside. You'll find a lot of specialty shops that you've never seen before. 

I find it easiest to get in through the escalator in the front, and get out the same way. I've tried getting out through the ground floor and have gotten lost. 

• D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 18mm, f4, ISO 800, 1/15 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, fill light.

At 18mm, the image stabilization of the kit lens allows you to handhold at 1/15 seconds, probably down to 1/8 too. But it doesn't help with movement in the scene. You can see that the pedestrians are a bit blurred out.

There are very bright and very dark areas in the photo. Difficult for the camera to know what to expose for. This is why manual exposure is best for night shots. Set manual exposure, maximum aperture, slowest shutter speed you can handhold safely, then increase ISO until the photo in the LCD playback looks okay. As a starting point for the exposure, meter off the floor. 

I would have preferred to shift the photo more to the left to get more of the trees into the photo, but there's a lot of clutter on the ground that would have been distracting.

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 ).

Amphitheatre, Dhoby Ghaut Green

Located behind the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station (Park Mall side), this partly-sunken aluminum structure is easy to miss unless you walk behind the MRT station. It's designed around overlapping curves. There's a stage and seats and everything, available for rent from National Parks, for outdoor performances and private functions.

Developed by the URA (Urban Redevelopment Authority), it was designed by Mr Chan Soo Khian of SCDA Architects Pte Ltd ( http://www.mnd.gov.sg/mndlink/2010/2010_Jan/URA_article.htm ).

You can see the School of the Arts (SOTA) in the left background, and the Rendezvous Hotel in the middle background. 

• D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 30mm, f5.6, ISO 400, 1/125 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast

Not much color in the photo. I'd normally wait for a blue sky or evening lights, but I think that the curved structure is interesting enough to stand on its own, without needing color to make it interesting.
 
I've started to use the kit zoom lens as my main lens. With the superb high-ISO performance of today's DSLRs, and the optical quality of consumer zooms, you rarely need a large-aperture prime lens, let alone an f2.8 "professional" zoom. And the Nikon 17-55mm f2.8 isn't stabilized (Canon's is).

You need a prime lens more at the telephoto end, so put a 50mm f1.4 or 85mm f1.4 on a second body, and you're set for most indoor situations, with 4x the light sensitivity of a f2.8 zoom.

Istana Changing of the Guards Ceremony

The Istana ("palace" in Malay) is the President of Singapore's official residence. It's next to Plaza Singapura, at the end of Orchard Road.

The whole ceremony seems to be handled by the Military Police Command. Even the traffic control was by MPs on motorbikes. However some policemen in blue uniforms were around to look after security. Based on information provided, the band here is either the SAF Central Band or SAF Band A.

It's on the first Sunday of every month, at 6pm, but not in July or August ( http://www.istana.gov.sg/content/istana/presidentsoffice/ceremonialguards.html ). 

• D7000, 70-210mm f4-5.6
• At 210mm, f11, ISO 6400, 1/1000 seconds
• Aperture priority exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Straighten, auto contrast

Took a chance and stationed myself on the other side of the road, to avoid the crowd. Photo was taken at the end of the ceremony. Band is marching out towards Cathay Cineplex, where they disperse. Policemen had just cleared the crowd to make way for the band, so I had a clear shot. You can see the gate of the Istana in the background. The gate might not be a main part of the photo, but it's important for establishing the location, giving the photo a unique look.

1/1000 seconds is too fast, should have reduced ISO. But needed the high ISO earlier for when the band was in the shade, didn't have time to switch. Should have used auto ISO. Needed small aperture because depth of field at telephoto focal lengths is small. Which means that a super expensive f2.8 70-200mm isn't necessarily worth it because many times, you can't use f2.8.

Old Terrace Houses, Emerald Hill Road

Quite a few pre-WWII shophouses in Singapore, but old residences are harder to find. These are in Emerald Hill, famous Peranakan (Straits Chinese) area, off Orchard Road. Had to crop off the bottom of the photo. Large green trash cans in front of each house. Totally spoils the picture.  

• Nikon D80, 12-24mm f4
• At 24mm, f8, ISO 100, 1/125 seconds
• Aperture priority, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, crop, graduated tint fake blue sky

Went to manual exposure because a lot of the photos I took along the road were backlit by the sky. Didn't want to bother with exposure lock. Not so much sky in this photo, but no point changing exposure mode once you've got manual exposure nicely dialed in.

Don't need f8 for this photo, but then don't need high shutter speeds either, and I'm still at ISO 100. For outdoor daylight photos, exposure is easy. You've got light to burn. It's the indoor shots that are a pain, and where you really need a DSLR. You could get a high quality image of the above scene with a compact camera. 

Youth Park, *Scape

The Youth Park is part of the irritatingly-named *Scape ( http://www.scape.com.sg/venue_os.asp ) area near Orchard Road, set aside for youth facilities and activities. Note that the website domain name is scape.com, because you can't put a "*" in a domain name. Nice going guys, good job confusing people. 

The bus is a real derelict, as far as I can tell. I remember a cafe being inside, but that doesn't seem to have worked out. "Graffiti" on the benches are commissioned and officially sanctioned. I mean, this is Singapore. Before you start romanticizing about real graffiti, read Heather Mac Donald's article, Radical Graffiti Chic ( http://city-journal.org/2011/21_2_vandalism.html ).

• Nikon D7000, 35mm f1.8
• At 35mm, f4, ISO 1600, 1/60 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, crop, straighten

I increased ISO until the Program mode set aperture to f4. Wanted at least f4 to get both the bus and the benches in focus. The benches are important to add interest to the photo. If it's just the bus, the photo wouldn't be as interesting. I didn't think of using the benches at first. It's only after walking 360 degrees around the bus that I saw that the benches would work.

Bao Today, Chinese Cafe

Bao Today is a franchise chain ( http://www.baotoday.com/ ). This one is outside the 313 building, Orchard Road, next to the Somerset MRT station.

Local restaurants and cafes don't use Chinese lanterns. Those that do, look touristy. I'm not saying that the food is not authentic. I'm just saying that the decor isn't local, but it sure makes for a pretty picture.

I've tried the porridge a few times. It's quite good: Catonese-style watery and boiled until the rice disintegrates.

• Nikon D7000, 35mm f1.8
• At 35mm, f2.8, ISO 100, 1/60 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast

Pan Pacific Serviced Suites

The Pan Pacific Serviced Suites are on the right ( http://www.panpacific.com/pan_pacific_service_suites_singapore/ ). Building on the left is the Orchard Building (blocking Cineleisure Orchard from sight). Building behind that is the Mandarin Orchard Hotel, with its distinctive canoe top.

Near Somerset Station, behind Orchard Road. The serviced suites have a cool-looking design, but I'm wondering what the curved bottom few levels, without windows, are. That's the recurring issue with architecture. The most efficient design is a rectangular block, but that's boring. More interesting designs always end up wasting space. 

Serviced suites (also called serviced apartments) are a cross between a hotel and an apartment. They are short-term rental apartments or long-term rental hotels (weeks or months). They are furnished and cleaned by staff like a hotel, and have a kitchen like an apartment.

• Nikon D7000, 35mm f1.8
• At 35mm, f4.8, ISO 100, 1/90 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, crop, fill light, color temperature

Bars or Cafes Along Emerald Hill Road

Next to Centrepoint, off Orchard Road, just after Peranakan Place. The road here is still closed off to vehicular traffic. Right after this is the start of the residential part of Emerald Hill. 

Most of the buildings here were built before World War II, some before World War I. Red unit on the left is now a shop. Don't ask me about the dinosaur on the roof. I don't know what that is.

• Nikon D80, 12-24mm f4
• At 12mm, f5.6, ISO 100, 1/125 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, crop, fill light