Travel, Interior Decoration, Photography and Food

Busy colours in black and white Capturing image in black and white is much more challenging than in full colour as the variation in colours will only be captured with different levels of grayscale. The following colour combinations will be difficult to differentiate: white and yellow, white and light blue, green and red. As such, textures of the cloud and sky, flower and foliage, sun, sky and cloud at sunset, lips and skin tones will not show any distinct contrast in a black and white format. Yellow filter to enhance different tones of white To further highlight these contrasts, filters are available for this purpose. For the old SLR cameras which using 35 mm film, filter can be screwed in-front of the lens to achieve this. For current DSLR cameras, these filters are available in the monochrome adjustment. The filters pre-set are available in yellow, orange, red and green. Yellow filter is used to make the blue sky looks more natural and the white cloud looks crisper. Orange

Celebrate!!!! Birthdays are good for you. Research has shown that the more you have, the longer you live.

Some of us simply pick colours for our home interior from tiny sample printed in the paint sample book or catalogue. The colour looks very nice in the catalogue, BUT when the colour stands on the big wall, some might get shock or even a heart attack. Do not confuse your eyes with other colours that were printed side by side. Cover other colours with white or black paper to understand the full impact of one particular colour. Before choosing the colour, think about the effect of the colour when it goes to the wall. Does it match with the mood that you are trying to create? What will be the colour look like in a very bright light and at night. If all of the four walls of a room were painted with bright colour i.e. orange, fluorescence pink or green, you may want to spare some sun-glasses or paracetamol for your guest, as they can get BLIND or even developed severe MIGRAINE. Soothing combination of colours: duck egg blue and cream Usually each room will be painted with 2 colours, one

A Good Point Why do ballet dancers always dance on their toes? Wouldn't it be easier to just hire taller dancers? Source: 1001 things to make you smile (Marion Kaplinsky, 2005)

Too dark or too bright.....this is due to poor exposure of the sensor to light. Is it a problem if my photo is too dark or too bright? May be yes and may be no, depends on what you want in your image. If the photo is too dark (underexposed), you will loss the detail of the shadow. If the photo is too bright (overexposed), you will loss the texture of the cloud and sky. Exposure is a combination of two fundamental settings: the aperture opening and the shutter speed. Aperture opening is the function in your lens and the shutter speed is the function in your camera. Optimal exposure can be achieved with many combinations of aperture opening size and the shutter speed, BUT each combination will have differences in depth of focus, motion blur and etc. How this exposure can be controlled? The answer is by having a good understanding of the combination of aperture and shutter speed. Shallow depth of focus, focus point was on the middle broccoli, focal length of 50 mm, large aperture ope

This post will be the first part of sharing related to colour in interior decoration. How we use colour in our homes depends on several factors i.e. space, light, proportion and texture. Small room is best decorated with bright colour. This statement is usually justified decorating the room with neutral colour. I personally believed that very bright colour is far better for the limited space as this colour will stay brilliance and rich with the low level light. Warm colours such as REDS , YELLOWS and ORANGES are welcoming and uplifting, thus suitable for hall way, stair and door way. These colours may scream out loud, but do not worry about this because time spend in these areas will be very short as people only passing through these areas. You may want to combine these colours with darker colours to tone down the screaming note.   Combination of brown and orange If you are worried to use these colours then try natural light colours such as off-white (yellow

What I did today is just burned a big hold of my pocket. Just because of my interest in photography. The EFS 15-85mm IS USM has been added to my lens collection. Hope to capture more interesting photos with this lens. This is an investment for my new project, just wait and see. The 15mm really gives a very good wide angle view with  f3.5 and the 85mm with f5.6 is appropriate for full frame portrait. With crop factor 1.6x, this lens is equivalence to 24-136mm. The body is quite sturdy and quite heavy too. Filter for this lens is quite expensive as the diameter is 72mm. This is a good lens for travelling as it is less hassle compared to the multiple lenses which require frequent changes for different compositions i.e. landscape to portrait or vice versa.

"An abstract noun," the teacher said, "is something you can think of, but you can't TOUCH it.  Can you give me an example of one?" "Sure," a teenage boy replied. "My dad's new car." Source: 1001 things to make you smile (Marion Kaplinsky, 2005)

Oppsss! I think I should introduce the lens, camera parts and photographic terms first before going to image composition. This time, I just want to share and introduce the terms and parts of lens. It is applicable for whatever lenses especially for the DSLR camera. The different will only be the terminology or abbreviation used by the specific manufacturer. Lenses can be categorized to many types such at wide angle, standard, prime and zoom. Each type of lenses have specific features and is used for specific purpose. For example, wide angle lenses are usually used for scenery/landscape and narrow space photography. Each lens will be marked with zooming distance (look at the numbers which ended with mm; see photo bellow). This number will gives you some ideas about the width of view when a photo is captured. A number less that 35mm can be considered as wide angle, the 50 - 55mm as normal lens, and the 75 mm and above as zoom lens. Wide angle lens will highlight the perspective of an

Top - suitable for modern or Zen design and daily usage Middle & bottom - suitable for elegant, English or colonial design and special events Today, I will write about small part of decoration and living, the CUTLERY . Cutlery includes knives, spoons and forks. The best quality cutlery is often made of silver or stainless steel. If frequently used, stainless steel will be a better choice as silverware will require regular polishing to maintain its shine. In choosing cutlery, personal preference is very important.  However, in terms of decoration, the style of cutlery may follow the overall look for the dining room and the dining ware. If the dining room is best described as modern or Zen, a set of geometric or plain designed cutlery maybe suitable. This newly designed cutlery may be nice to look at but can be difficult to hold especially the rounded handle such as the bamboo design. If the dining room was decorated with English or colonial theme that is very FLOWERY or with d

Good photos are not always captured using expensive camera. What makes good photo is the story behind the image. Capturing good photos require planning, nevertheless highly impact photos usually captured at a point what we so called as LUCK , because you were at the scene and the camera was at your hand. Most of the time good photos were captured at leisure, as such, great planning was undertaken. This what we called partly as  COMPOSITION . Expensive camera may helps in enhancing the composition, to produce high quality prints (pixels) and post-shooting processes i.e high dynamic range (HDR) which requires capturing several photos using bracketing exposure. Composition in combination with good camera will usually produce excellent image. Several composition tips that I have learnt from my guru will be shared in the next post.  The Rule of Thirds The basic composition rules include the RULE OF THIRDS . This rule is about how to position the subject in the photo. Actually, it’s n