South Beach Lifestyle Quarter - Aerial View

South Beach Lifestyle Quarter North Tower on the left, South Tower on the right.

Lots of things in the background. From left to right - Centennial Tower, Millenia Tower, North Tower, Suntec Convetion and Exhibition Centre (white sail roof), South Tower, Marina Bay Sands (near the sea), Marina Bay Financial Centre (blue skyscrapers, far right). There's also the Esplanade Theatres and the white column of the World War II Memorial on the right, and part of Raffles Hotel at the bottom right.

View from The Pod at National Library. I was photographing an event there and had plenty of down time.
http://www.nlb.gov.sg/exhibitions/bookstobytes/zone4/thepod.html

Technical information:

• Nikon D600, 28-300mm f3.5-5.6
• At 28mm, f8.0, ISO 100, 1/180 seconds
• Aperture-priority, automatic ISO, center-weighted metering, automatic white balance
• Picasa: Straighten, crop, auto contrast, fill light, highlights, increased color saturation

Had to shoot through the thick glass windows from about a meter because they curve out and there's a guard rail preventing you from getting too close. So I couldn't press the lens up against the window and reduce the effect of the glass. Luckily there were no reflections. Picasa's auto contrast cleared up the image a lot (glass will make the image have a milky film even when there are no obvious reflections). I then had to boost the fill light and highlights to bring out detail in the buildings.

With landscape photos like this, you can usually boost the color saturation to make the colors more intense. It's harder to do when there are people in the photo because then their skin tone will look artificial.  

Toa Payoh Aerial View, Night

View from one of the new 40-storey HDB apartment blocks.

The tall building on the left looks like a private apartment block (the white rectangular strip near the bottom is a swimming pool). The rest of the buildings are mainly HDB government housing. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6 
• At 18mm, f5.6, ISO 100, 8 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, incandescent white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast.

Photo taken with a tripod.

I was with a few other photographers and one of them saw my photo on the camera's LCD display. He was surprised because it looked like HDR (high dynamic range - combining a few photos, taken at different exposures, together on the PC to get a wider exposure range). It's due to Nikon's Active D Lighting setting. I set it on High all the time. Makes a big difference for photos like this. Without it, the walls of most of the buildings would be almost black, the sky too.  

Pasir Panjang Container Port Terminal

The port is run by PSA (Port of Singapore Authority). The port is huge, stretching for a lot further than what you can see here. It is near Sentosa and Vivocity. This view is from Haw Par Villa.

Photos of scenery are usually not technically demanding. You have time to take the shot and there are no fast-moving objects or fleeting expressions to capture. Though sometimes you have problems with high contrast. 

Getting good scenery photos is mainly being in the right place, and being able to recognize a good shot when you see one, even if it is just a small spot in the distance. This is why a telephoto lens is, surprisingly, useful for landscape photography. You can zoom in to interesting scenes in the distance. 

• Nikon D7000, 55-300mm f4.5-5.6 
• At 240mm, f8.6, ISO 800, 1/4000 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast.

Shutter speed is too high. I was chatting with a friend at the time, wasn't paying attention to the settings. Should have used lower ISO and stepped down the aperture a bit. Photo turned out okay anyway.