Painting with Light (1)

I realised that I haven't been posting anything in the last few weeks, and this blog is more dead than ever. I was supposed to do some travel-logs from my recent trips; I have even written up half a post but it has since been collecting dust in the draft folder. I have also had some ranting about people's general attitude towards racism but I have also pushed that aside for more farming in Farmville.

Every once in a while, I sit down thinking that I should post some photography stuff. A few months back a camera shop approached me to put a link to their shop because they thought this is a photography blog. Well, since they paid me, even if this isn't a photography blog, it kind of is one now. Who knows if I don't post anything on photography for a few months they might just ask for a refund.

So here goes. Something about photography.


Photography comes from two root words, "photo" which means "light" and "graphy" which means "writing or drawing". So photography literally means "painting with light". My journey in photography has been about how I slowly come to gain insight about the importance of light.


When I first got my compact camera back in 2003 (shown here is Chin Fei's Minolta Dimage Z3), I knew pretty much nothing about light, except maybe for "it's bad if it's too bright or too dark". I played around with my tiny Powershot A70 trying to make sure that everything was bright enough.


If it was dark, I added flash. (Gosh I was actually better looking than Yee Pin before I put on all the fat)


Or, I exposed for a bit longer.


I thought I was pretty good, and once in a while I did get pretty good shots with sheer luck.


I played little tricks,


like changing the colour of the picture by shooting through sunglasses.


But that's pretty much all I knew about light and photography in general, and my knowledge about light pretty much halted without further improvement for the next three to four years.

[to be continued...]