Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Window Seat

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I love IKEA’s vegetarian pasta. For most textured food, the light should caress it from the rear or side. Only then do you see the texture, thus making it look sexier.

You can’t control much outside a studio setting but you can make your task easier. First thing I do, when eating out in the day, is to find a window seat where natural, diffused  sunlight seeps in. Not an easy task at the IKEA cafeteria as it is always crowded.

Tips for restaurant owners: To make your food look appetising on the menu, do not shoot from an overhead angle. Photograph from about 45 degree or lower. Psychologically, when the customer sees the food picture at the angle similar to that as viewed from a dining position, he or she will want to eat it.

Olympus OM-D, ISO 250, f10, 1/40 sec.

IKEA's Vegetarian Pasta

Swinging Time

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What do we adults do when we go to IKEA? We bounce on the beds and lounge on the sofas. This little girl checks out a hammock while her siblings and mother looks on. It was an unexpected and happy photo moment for me as I was chillaxing on a cushion seat nearby. For the unusual and dramatic perspective, I held the camera directly above her and framed with the LCD screen tilted at an angle.

The giant Swedish store is great fun for children, adults and shutterbugs during the current hazy spell. The over 8 feet-long Garo hammock and stand retails for RM 398 (about USD 125).

Trivia: The largest IKEA store is the Stockholm store at 594,000 sq ft. The biggest outside Sweden is Shanghai at 531,000 sq feet. The sole Malaysian store is 360,000 sq ft.

Olympus OM-D, ISO 500, f4, 1/30 sec.

Hammock

Stunt Boys

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I ran into a nice bunch of teens visiting the landmark Stadium Merdeka. One of them had a dSLR. As I stopped to observe, another boy climbed up the gate. Thought he was going to pose with a peace sign (V-sign). He did. Then without warning, he flipped and somersaulted across the roof. This is a stacked double exposure of that moment  I photographed from the car.

Asked them later where they were from and the shy and polite kids said they are from a school in Puchong. They rode a motorcycle to town to sightsee. I am not sure if this is safer than street racing though.

Other Moral Of The Story: For street photography, keep your camera in continuous low burst mode instead of single. Or 4 fps in the case of the OM-D. Its high burst of 9 frames per second mode is even better but it can shorten the camera’s shutter life if used indiscriminately.

Olympus OM-D, ISO 200, f11, 1/400 sec.

Stunt Boys