Central Fire Station, Hill Street

Singapore's oldest fire station, located behind Funan Centre.

The fire station is still operational. I was standing there for half an hour, waiting for the right sky brightness. While I was there, three emergency vehicles deployed, at different times, with flashing lights and sirens: two ambulances and one fire engine. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Fire_Station,_Singapore

• Nikon D7000, Sigma 20mm f1.8
• At 20mm, f2, ISO 200, 1/30 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, incandescent white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast

Critical part of the photo was getting the sky right. The light on the building from the streetlights is fixed, so you expose for that. The brightness of the sky changes, so take a series of photos at different times (every 2 or 3 minutes) until you get one where the brightness of the sky matches the brightness of the building. This photo was taken at 7:40pm.  

Incandescent white balance was used to counteract the yellow street lights. Which also helps deepen the blue of the evening sky.

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. 

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. 

Chinatown Chinese New Year Light-up (Year of the Dragon)

The Chinese New Year light-up is from Chinatown Point (yellow building in the center, now under renovation) to Pagoda street. It's the year of the dragon, the red arches are a dragon (the head is on the left, hidden by the banner across the road).

For a photo like this, you want to cram in as many lights as possible. Which is why I went up to the pedestrian bridge to get both the dragon and the neon lights across the road, into the photo. Well okay, truth is that I just walked around and tried different angles. You can't always plan the best shot, you need to explore.

• Nikon D7000, Sigma 20mm f1.8
• At 20mm, f2, ISO 200, 1/30 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, incandescent white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, fill light

I was testing out the Sigma 20mm f1.8. If not for the large f2 aperture, I'd have to go to ISO 800.

Found out that I wasn't getting clear photos from it because it has a focus offset problem. By setting -4 focus offset in the D7000, the lens is much more usable and I'll be using it more often in the future.

With a wide angle lens, you've got quite a large depth of field, even at f2. For most scenery, you don't have to worry about the depth of field. But for this photo, the neon lights at the bottom of the bottom of the photo are too close and are out of focus. Luckily, that's not very noticeable. 

Christmas Tree, Raffles City

Raffles City is quite consistent: every year they have a Christmas tree at the street corner. The tree is  different, but it's always a tree.

I don't usually choose unusual angles when taking photos. Seems to draw attention to the photographer's technique instead of the subject. But in this case a normal street-level view didn't look good. It was plain and boring.

This upwards angle looked good, but I also wanted the Raffles City sign in. Both to balance the photo and to document the location of the tree. Had to walk around a bit to get the right position.

Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
At 25mm, f4, ISO 800, 1/15 seconds
Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, incandescent white balance
Picasa: Auto contrast, fill light

For night shots like this, you usually set the aperture wide open, shutter speed to as low as you can safely handhold, then increase the ISO until the exposure looks good on the LCD playback.

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.