Snaps: Pudu Market with Olympus EM-1

After about two months of taking a break from street photography, I’m finally back to it this weekend. I didn’t realise how much I missed these shutter therapy sessions, until I was back at it earlier today. It was an even sweeter reunion for me because I was shooting with an Olympus EM-1 this time around. Reason being, was that I wanted to try out how it would feel like shooting with a view finder because my current camera the Olympus EPL5 doesn’t have one.

And now, I just realised what I have been missing out all this while. I always thought shooting through the view finder was an awkward thing to do. I felt so as I started using it earlier of the day. But as I kept shooting, I found it to be easier for me to control the necessary settings and then shooting the picture I had in mind.

It was gorgeous, the whole experience of shooting with the Olympus EM-1 felt just like falling in love; “slowly, and then all at once." If my friends were reading this, they would probably laugh knowing that I have been successfully ‘poisoned’. (Poison as in like influenced).     

                                 

But then it has only been like 1 year, 3 months, 13 days since I got my EPL5, I am thinking that it won’t be the best choice to get another new camera now. The priority is probably to brush up on my technical skills and to learn how to use each of my lens, rather than have them kept aside.

So, do I or do I not get the Olympus EM-1? It is extremely tempting to get it now, and it really doesn’t help that Jackie decided to exchange his camera, an Olympus EM-1 with me for the week. So he has my EPL5 and I have his camera now. Maybe by the end of this week, I would have decided to just get the EM-1. Okay, I think I shall stop rambling about the camera now.

Back to the street shoot in Pudu, it was actually rather packed in the market (possibly due to the preparations for the upcoming Raya holidays) which made it rather difficult for us to shoot. I had initially wanted to use the 75mm lens, but it would be a really tight space. So, instead I used 45mm lens which is my default street photography lens.

Of all my favourite places to shoot at, the Pudu market would always my best pick because the folks there are really friendly and engaging. More often than not, you’ll find them smiling and ever ready to strike a pose for you. Like the two fine man above, who was laughing as I took my camera out to take their portraits. And this is why, I love shooting on the streets.

Too bad though that for the shoot this time around, I made a mistake of not checking my settings right before we begin the shoot. I ended up shooting only in JPEG, so the pictures above have minimal edits since I don’t have the RAW images.

It think it must have been the pretty tasty and cheap dim sum we had for breakfast which threw my balance off. The dim sum breakfast for four persons was only about RM48, which was pretty cheap considering we has quite of number of food. I might consider returning there to do a proper review, possibly the next time when I’m down in Pudu.

So, that’s all from me now. I would be updating more frequently, starting with a couple of long overdue food review posts and hopefully more on my personal projects that I am working on! I’ll end this post with a *noob* selfie I took of myself with the rest of the awesome photographers! Almost all of us here are Olympus users, except for Jason (guy in Jurassic Park shirt)!

Till next time,

xoxo

Snaps: Of the streets in Pudu

I haven’t been out on the streets lately, with the last time being the short shoot in Petaling Street, where I posted a short post on it. Read about it here; The 90 minutes tease with Olympus 25mm lens. That was a very short session, and it wasn’t enough shutter therapy then. I have been hoping to get out on the streets again, but I’ve been feeling a little bored with where I’d usually shoot at. If you shoot on the streets too, do let me know of places on the streets that I can shoot too. I would love to have a different playground and hopefully a fresh perspective too. :) 

Anyway, I am supposed to post this up about a month ago. The pictures from this post are actually from the same set as the ones from People of Pudu Market, but I decided to divide the pictures because it was easier to see the connection and the flow in the other post. The rest of the pictures are jumbled over here but they are still pretty random. Haha, but I love them enough to post them up here. So enjoy!

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These shots were taken on the way to the market, at the Pudu market and some from the streets around Pudu area. I’d like to end this post with my favourite shot of the day and the best thing, was that the picture also happened to be my first picture I took during this street shoot session.

Till next time,

xoxo

Snaps: Olympus Malaysia’s First Street Walkabout in Pudu

Trust me to blog about things that happened more than one month ago, because I can damn well procrastinate.

About one month ago, Olympus Malaysia organized their first ever street walkabout which was lead by none other than Robin Wong. If you know or heard of Robin, then you would know how amazing and awesome his street shots are. In fact, it was only because I tagged along with his earlier street walks that I begun to enjoy street photography. Previously, I didn’t understand how to take and find subjects on the street to photograph. It still doesn’t come too naturally for me yet, but I’m getting there slowly. You can check out my other street pictures here; Street Photography.

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We started things off by walking from Pudu Plaza (the meeting point) through the streets of Pudu and then, the Pudu wet market and back again to Pudu Plaza. The pictures in the set below won't be in the order taken but rather grouped together with a common theme. 

Snaps: Chow Kit in Colours!

If you read my last post on shooting the Chow Kit Market (if you haven’t, click to read it here ; Chow Kit Market in Monochrome), I said I would upload another series of pictures from the shoot but this time in glorious colours. :) I have contemplated in uploading everything in the same post but I decided otherwise because they would be too many pictures in one post and it might bore you to go through, so two separate post it is.

Hope you liked the pictures from this set as much as I did.

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Snaps: Chow Kit Market in Monochrome

A couple of days ago, I blogged about trying Kin Kin Chilli Pan Mee for the first time ever in the Chow Kit area. (Funny thing was that although the pan mee wasn’t fantastic, I find myself craving for them now). I was around the Chow Kit area for another round of street shooting with a couple friends, it’s one of Robin’s favourite place to shoot.

As we were making our way to the pan mee shop, the skies were gloomy and I was worried it might rain. Even though, we were shooting indoors (inside the market), I know the pictures would turn out greyish, so I thought to myself, if it did rain, I would just shoot in black and white. That’s an easy way out, and shall I add lazy too?

It didn’t rain in the end after our breakfast. In fact, the sun was shinning gloriously, for which I am extremely thankful for. We managed to shoot the streets leading to the market and then at the market itself. I was told the market would be worse than the Pudu one, but honestly I still think Pudu is awful. I have yet to shoot there, but I have been there with my parents and it’s always so crowded inside there. Chow Kit is less crowded but it could have been due to the public holiday.

I had not intended to post process my pictures into black and white initially, but I did not like the colours as it was when I captured them. In most of the pictures below, I found the coloured version too distracting from what the picture was supposed to convey or feel. (I mean these are in my opinions at least.) 

I will post another set of pictures from the streets of Chow Kit in colour, look out for that other post. That is very colourful!

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Snaps: Deepavali, the festival of lights.

If you read my latest post - Happy Deepavali, then you’d know that I posted that in a completely sleep deprived condition in my attempt to be productive. Who am I kidding? I’m the best procrastinator I have ever met, so I ended up posting two pictures from the shoot when in my head I planned for like five. ha-ha. =.=’

(and now I’m thinking nobody wants to read what crap I have to say)

Seriously. 

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Like I briefly mentioned in my previous post, I was out shooting with a group of friends at an Indian temple yesterday night. It was my first time attending and shooting a Deepavali celebration, although the atmosphere yesterday was not so much of a festive celebration. What went down yesterday was the lighting of hundreds of candles all over the temple, where people donated money and in exchange, they were given candles to light and to place them in the temple. In other words, it is called “Diva Lighting For Charity”. I am not familiar as to whether any other Indian temple practice the same tradition, to light candles on the eve of the Deepavali celebration. Yes, today is the actual day by the way.

For this shoot, I went trigger happy and shot quite a number of pictures. But as I came back and reviewed the pictures, I realised most of them were repetitive and for the rest, they were just pictures which doesn’t tell stories, or I just didn’t like them. In the end, out of all the pictures I took, there is about give and take ten photos at most. I’m going to stop rambling now, so enjoy the pictures! 

If you noticed I shot a picture of this deity (I'm sorry I didn't get the name) from a different angle in my previous post (Happy Deepavali). Similar to that picture, this was also shot with the 25mm CCTV lens. During my post-processing, I didn't add any vignette to it so this is as it is from the lens. I'm pretty happy with the results from the CCTV lens, I think I'll do a separate post on that lens alone.

Photowalk: Jalan Masjid India, Hari Raya Haji

You know it’s going to be a good day when the first thing you see is a rainbow and a gorgeous sunrise skies. And the moment I saw that, my first reaction was to grab my camera to try to get a better shot of the rainbow (because it was earlier sandwiched between the houses and condo). So, I chased the rainbow in my flip flops with my camera around my neck. By the time I reached the park, the sun was up and the rainbow gone. I would have been upset, but the rainbow was too beautiful and it would be etched in my head anyway. Here’s a quick picture of the sunrise anyway.

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P H O T O W A L K

|Jalan Masjid India|

| Meet my friends! Can you guess who is who? |

I was up early because I was joining a few of my friends for a photo walk on the streets. If you know me, you probably know that I don’t head out much to the streets and that I’m so much more of an indoor type of photographer, except for the macro shoots I go. Otherwise, I mostly shoot still life, nails, self-portraits and also food. Shooting on the streets and the streets itself have never been something I liked, because I just don’t go what to look out for and what to shoot basically. In my lifetime so far, I have only shot the streets twice, the first time using the Canon S90 and after that, I borrowed Alex’s Panasonic GX1. You can read about the my first photowalk here (Pudu area) and the second one here (Petaling Street area). I just realised that it’s been approximately 7 months since I last shot on the street. It’s good to see if I have improved over the months.

It was a short shoot, for just a couple of hours (2 hours plus minus) to cover the Jalan Masjid India area and we finished off with lunch at Yut Kee Restaurant, a place is famed for its Hainanese pork chops. I was shooting with my Olympus EPL5 along with a couple of different Olympus Micro Four Thirds lenses. Since we were all using the Olympus Micro Four Thirds camera system, we were able to share and switch lenses for whichever picture we needed another lens for. This was definitely one of the advantage which got me into the MFT system in the first case.

| The Man at the “Kaki Lima” (Five-Foot Way) |

Some privacy, please?

Erm, I think they are mating, right?

I never meant to intrude these insects’ privacy, really. I just came across them during one of my Shutter Therapy session at the park. And I really couldn’t miss such an opportunity like that. I mean how often do you get to see insects mating. I was surprised that I was able to get a nice clear shot since it was windy and the leaf was shaking. I was afraid that they might just fly off since I’m there but they didn’t. :)

This picture is part of my Walk in The Park series. Click Walk in The Park for older pictures.