City To Sea In 30 Minutes

Cruising On The Federal Highway

Jaded KL city folk may no longer remember but you can drive from the heart of the city to the sea in 30 minutes. What’s amazing is that the journey is non-stop except for two toll plazas and a couple of traffic lights in Port Klang town itself. All possible only on a Sunday or public holiday, of course.

The video begins just before the Federal Highway near Mid Valley. It goes past Petaling Jaya, Subang Jaya, Shah Alam, Klang town and straight to the doorsteps of the Ferry Terminal for Pulau Ketam in Port Klang.

Federal Highway or Lebuhraya Persekutuan is the country’s first highway and one of the busiest. It runs east to west connecting Kuala Lumpur city to Subang Airport and Port Klang. From a narrow road in the 70s, it is now a six and eight lane expressway. There are now four other expressways spanning east to west in the Klang Valley. The KESAS, SKVE, LATAR and NPE routes are all covered by MyCen Maps and MyCen Videos.

Since this is intended more as a “sightseeing” video, there are no intermediate captions at the exits as with the regular driving videos. Filmed in HD with the Olympus OM-D and edited on Grass Valley Edius.

Enjoy the drive!

Tough Guys Need Hugs Too

Top Pic: Saw this big fire while driving on the Federal Highway to Klang just now. TheĀ  picture was captured with my dashcam.

Middle Pic: Drove to the site on my way back to KL and the fire was almost put out. It was a kongsi (workers quarters) on a construction site in the Glenmarie area. The Indonesian construction workers were salvaging their belongings. I asked one of them if everyone is safe and he replied “Alhamdulillah” (Praise to God).

Bottom Pic: One of the guys also confirmed the rescued soft toy (on left) is his. Hey! Tough guys need hugs too šŸ™‚

Photographed with the Olympus OM-D.

Into The Fire

Happy New Year 2013!

Photographed / videoed this New Year Eve’s fireworks display at the Petronas Twin Towers (KLCC Park) from quite near the cannons. Ended up pairing the Olympus OM-D with the Panasonic Lumix 7-14mm ultra -wide angle lens so as take in everything. The fireworks were shooting higher than the world’s tallest twin towers.

I brought popcorn and just let the camera roll. In Full HD video mode, the camera was capturing 9000 potential stills in the 5 minutes span. The quality of the stills grab is good enough for web and Instagram use. One of which is shown here. Shot some high res stillsĀ  in the first minute. After that, I switched to video recording mode and enjoyed the fireworks by looking up at the lighted night sky instead of peering through the viewfinder or at the LCD.

Photography tip: If practical, juxtapose fireworks against a landmark. Fireworks against the dark sky alone can be anywhere.

Watch for the first time the spectacular fireworks from KLCC in Full HD embedded below or from my Youtube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/tvsmith

Happy New Year 2013

Full HD Video:

Happy New Year 2013!