Tag Archives: kampung baru

Indifference, Mild Curiosity And Little Sympathy

Posted on by
Reply

At the Kampung Baru Ramadan Bazaar, a pan-handler sits in the middle of the road as pedestrians walk around him. I shot from both front and back. In the end, I think the anonymity of this rear view yielded a much more powerful image.

I photographed from a ground level P.O.V. (point-of-view), hoping to capture both the indifference, mild curiosity and little sympathy. The view as the beggar saw it.

This picture was processed to simulate the look of an un-restored P Ramlee movie from the 1960s. My homage to the colour contamination, scratches, dirt, decay, edge softness and uneven projector lamp brightness; characteristics that now evoke a special feeling.

Olympus OM-D, ISO 200, f5.6, 1/80 sec.

Indifference, Mild Curiosity And Little Sympathy

Twin Twins

Posted on by
Reply

Sometimes, you may want to use a tilted angle for creative effect. If you choose to slant the horizon, make it fairly obvious or it may be mistaken for sloppy framing.

One day, a hundred years from now, if this picture hang on the wall of some art gallery, an arty-farty visitor will speculate:

“The photographer wanted to convey the contrasting perspectives of urban and rural, the clash between development and conservation. The two sets of twins represent abstract symmetry but the oblique angle is a subtext of the underlying conflict…”

Actually, the reason I used the Dutch Angle here was pedestrian. I wanted to keep both the skyscrapers and the banana tree in Kampung Baru within a a single frame 🙂 There was simply no space for me to move back for a more conventional framing.

Olympus OM-D, ISO 200, f11, 1/320 sec.

Twin Twins

On The First Day Of Ramadan

Posted on by
Reply
The Winged Man. Olympus E-P3, ISO 200, f8, 1/320 sec

The Winged Man. Olympus E-P3, ISO 200, f8, 1/320 sec

On the first day of Ramadan, the setting sun effused an unusually warm glow. Jalan Raja Alang was teeming with people and hawkers peddling all kinds of mouth-watering food. I filmed this bustling Ramadan bazaar entirely with the Olympus Pen E-P3. Except for a couple of shots where I used a tiny ‘kitchen-table’ tripod, the rangefinder-shaped camera was handheld most of the time.

The folks at Kampung Baru were friendly and chatty, making it a wonderful place to try out the new camera. Surprisingly, the on-board microphone performed very well. The AVCHD footage was edited on Edius with a little colour grading applied to tone down the very warm sunlight. Watch the embedded version here or download the Full HD 1980 x 1080 clip from vimeo.com/tvsmith. Watch it on your HDTV!