The world’s former tallest buildings, the Petronas Twin Towers were partially shrouded by clouds last night. I tuned the camera’s white balance towards blue and it ended up looking like a scene from the fictional and stylised Gotham City.
A bright prime lens allows an impromptu night shot like this without a tripod. Of course, the Olympus OM-D’s 5-axis image stabilisation was working its magic too. The PanaLeica Summilux lens is extremely sharp even wide open at f1.4.
Hazy days and Mondays always get me down (not). Recent Olympus cameras have a built-in Art Filter known as Dramatic Tone. Although the effect is indeed dramatic for certain subjects, I don’t use it much. The reason is that I cannot control any of its parameters and the result is totally unpredictable. Still, that could be its very attraction for many users and it does cast a magical spell on days like these. This is a dramatic, hazy view of Kuala Lumpur from a hilltop.
Moon River is a giant monsoon drain under the overpass in Air Panas. To enhance the blusish mood, I set the camera’s white balance preset to tungsten indoor setting. I also exposed it using an 8-second exposure hoping to streak the traffic criss-crossing on the highway. Unfotunately, there wasn’t much traffic today since it is a Sunday and public holiday. Nevertheless the long exposure required a tripod and wired remote release to eliminate camera shake. Not the best thing to do as the vantage point was really deserted and dark. A pack of stray dogs kept me company. Shhhh… Don’t let any of our housing developers see this. They’ll build some gated-homes and call it a waterfont.