Category Archives: Olympus OM-D

In The Rainforest, No One Can Hear You Scream

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You can go equipped with heavy-duty winches, knobby tyres and a 500 horsepower engine. The sneering rainforest takes no prisoners. It will swallow your shiny 4wd vehicle into a giant mudhole and spit it out as colourless vomit, if you are lucky.

Sometimes torrential rain, floods or mudslides sweep away the vehicle before one can even grab the camera bag. It has happened before and will happen again. This is the nature of the merciless monsoon and tropical terrain. And it is these risks and challenges that attract international participants from as far as Russia and the USA.

The torturous journey for men, women and vehicles in the annual Rainforest Challenge (RFC) makes tough but interesting photography subjects. I try to follow the gruelling expedition whenever schedule allows. Here’s looking forward to this year’s coverage with the new all-terrain Olympus OM-D 🙂

In The Rainforest, No One Can Hear You Scream

Pit Stop, Jakarta

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Street photography need not be about people alone. If you are uncomfortable photographing uncomfortable humans, there is a wonderful world of inanimate things. Be it urban decay, graffiti or urbex (urban exploration), visually-interesting objects are to be found at every turn.

One of my favourite subjects are the various wares sold on the streets in the capitals of South-East Asia. While exploring Jakarta (Indonesia) on foot, I came across a street with several shanty tyre shops. Some were in rickety huts, many under trees. I like how this open-air vendor arranged his tyres and rims like a racing pit stop.

Pit Stop, Jakarta

The Imam’s View

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Made it back from the Bentong-Raub road-trip in time to join my Bangladeshi friends for their Eid al-Adha prayers this morning. The community of expatriate workers occupied the entire stretch of Jalan Tun Tan Siew Sin (formerly Cross Street and later Jalan Silang) to pray and listen to sermons. The Islamic Festival of Sacrifice is also known as Hari Raya Haji locally.

For this shot of the Imam’s POV (point-of-view) of the congregation, I needed a very deep depth-of-field. I switched to aperture priority and selected f20 on the 12-60mm lens. It was deep enough to pull in focus from near the Imam’s head to the end of the street.

The Imam's View