So do you think that photographer's lead a very nice and high flying life? I guess the Duck does tell a different story :)

I hardly ever blogged about my birthday but this time I decided to write a little bit about that. You see, I turn 30 (yes the big three oh) in a couple of months time, less than 3 months to be a little bit more precise. A friend of mine once told me that when he turned 29, he embarked on a journey to complete a set a tasks for him to complete by the time he hit 30. That sort of gotten the clogs in my brain working a little while and I decided that I should embark on a similar journey.

To lose 30 pounds (lbs) by the time I am 30 years old.

Well of course the whole idea of losing weight is something I have been procrastinating and the final nail hit the coffin when my insurance agent informed me that because of my current weight, I got to pay an extra loaded premium.

At this time, I weigh about  107 kg. So my target weight to reach by the time I am 30 next year in February would be 93 kg (I am just rounding up). Hopefully by then, my pants/shirts (about 70% of my clothes) would have fit me better.

What I have installed for me would be to:

• Diet - cut down on fast food completely, drink more water, eat less carbs especially at night and eat more fruits instead


• Exercise - swim a little bit more at the swimming pool at my apartments, reschedule my night teleconferences and go for badminton!


• Lifestyle - Get more sleep in order to let my body process the sugars in me

Let's see if I can keep up with this project, Project 30!

 

Having bought a model ship, the Unicorn, for a pound off a market stall Tintin is initially puzzled that the sinister Mr. Sakharine should be so eager to buy it from him, resorting to murder and kidnapping Tintin - accompanied by his marvellous dog Snowy - to join him and his gang as they sail to Morocco on an old cargo ship. Sakharine has bribed the crew to revolt against the ship's master, drunken Captain Haddock, but Tintin, Snowy and Haddock escape, arriving in Morocco at the court of a sheikh, who also has a model of the Unicorn. Haddock tells Tintin that over three hundred years earlier his ancestor Sir Francis Haddock was forced to scuttle the original Unicorn when attacked by a piratical forebear of Sakharine but he managed to save his treasure and provide clues to its location in three separate scrolls, all of which were secreted in models of the Unicorn

I remember when I was young, whenever I got sick, my mum would always cheer me up by bringing me to the bookstore and getting me a Tintin comic book. Yes, back in those days, comics such as Tintin and Asterix would fill my time tremendously and I really did enjoy reading them. Of course these were the days before computers and computer games.

The moment when I heard that a movie was coming out about Tintin, I was equally excited. Especially when it was coming from the likes of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson! And to top it off, it was in 3D as well. From the moment I bought the tickets via my GSC iPhone app, queueing up for snacks at the counter and entering the cinema, I was totally on my edge, thrilled with excitement and joys.

And the movie doesn't disappoint! What actually disappointed me was that there weren't that many people who were interested in Tintin. I think there were only 8 people in total in the entire cinema.



Based upon the story of the 1st book, The Secret of the Unicorn, the movie goes through the story well and shows how Tintin meets Captain Haddock where the two of them will eventually start off on an exciting journey of adventures and thrills.

Overall the movie was done quite well and the CGI graphics were nice. I love how that the entire series is depicted in the old days and how funny the Thompson and Thomson idiotic Scotland Yard policemen were played as well.



The movie itself had a star in the form of James Bond actor, Daniel Craig who played the voice of Red Rackham/Ivanovich Sakharine. Jamie Bell did play a good job as Tintin

Overall I would rate this movie a good 8/10

It even garnered a good 7.8/10 on IMDB

 

 

As clueless I was, I didn't know that iOS 5 came out with this new feature, which was the ability to update your iPhone's/iPad's iOS version via Wifi without the need to plug-in to iTunes. It's very easy to do it, just follow the following steps.

1. Go to your iPhone's "Settings" option


2. Select "General"


3.  Then select "Software Update"


4. The phone will search the servers for the latest patch

Select "download and install"

Make sure that your phone is also plugged into a power source

Wait for the download to complete and voila, your iOS device is now updated.

When you advertise a movie that came from the same producers of 300, it is definitely a movie I wanted to watch but the only problem with that was it created a huge hype. Now the problem with having such a high expectation of the movie, the moment it slightly disappoints, critics will be all over it.

Storyline was straight. Absolutely straight. A tale of a hero that the Gods believe in named Theseus. Set in the time of ancient Greece, the land was at trouble and amongst a peasant  village emerged a hero. So what else is new? Greece is still in trouble today with it's financial crisis that I wonder if there would be a hero that emerges to bail them out.

Anyway the whole story is about an evil king, Hyperion, who wants to unleash the Titans to challenge the Almighty Zeus who lounges about at Mt. Olympus. In order to do that, he needs a magical bow (as in bow and arrow) to help him do that. Of course this is where Theseus steps in as the hero.



The fight scenes were pretty good, I love how far Hollywood has progressed in terms of the fight scenes to match that of chinese kung-fu movies. The graphics were good but the one thing which irked me the most was our Malaysian censorship board. Everything kept skipping and certains bits were censored off which really did spoil the mood of the show.



Personally, I had a lot of expectations to the show and perhaps that it would have been better if there wasn't any censorship (I know where I would go and get one that isn't censored) and perhaps if the storyline was a little better.

I would give it a 5/10 overall.

Check out the movie trailer below.

Back in May this year, I attempted my first night shoot on the Volkswagen Golf. Only recently did I attempt my second shoot. This time it was done within 45 minutes and the location was extremely impromptu. Let's just say that I was driving back from Putrajaya and I made a detour towards an industrial area.

Here are the results of the shoot. Shot completely in natural light mainly because it was an impromptu shoot and I didn't have anyone to help me to carry my speed-lights.

[caption id="attachment_3197" align="alignnone" width="540" caption="Volkswagen Golf 1.4 TSI"][/caption]

[gallery link="file" orderby="rand"]

 

When you start getting advertisements in your email inbox like the one below. I wonder if they are trying to hint something to me...



:(

[caption id="attachment_3167" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Volkswagen Scirocco 2.0 with a Rieger bodykit"][/caption]

Here is the continuation of photos that I took during the previous shoot which I organised with the Volkswagen Malaysia Club members. More photos are also available in my previous post.

[caption id="attachment_3166" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Volkswagen Scirocco 2.0 with a Rieger bodykit"][/caption]

The funny thing about the image below was that while I was busy snapping away, a couple of "mat rempits" decided to join in on the fun and I was pleasantly surprised that one of my frames managed to capture him in "action".

[caption id="attachment_3168" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Mysterious Trio"][/caption]

So can you guess the differences between the 3 cars above? Let's see if you can guess which of the models are on displayed in the image above. I will buy whoever (excluding those who attended the shoot) a "teh ais"  if they manage to guess them correctly and comments on it in the comment section below.

[caption id="attachment_3167" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Volkswagen Scirocco 2.0 with a Rieger Bodykit"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_3169" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Comfort, Normal and Sports mode!"][/caption]

According to the owners of the cars above, they all agreed that the left one is on comfort mode, the middle one on normal mode and the white one on sports mode.

I definitely can't wait to plan for another shoot and this time to spend a little bit more time on a single car.

It was a bright sunny day when a group of VW enthusiasts all decided to meet up at Putrajaya on a Sunday morning. Well, we didn't really all decided together but more towards an opportunity for me to be able to photograph some VW cars, talk to some of the other members and get to know them better. This is all part of my procrastinated project where I wanted to take the effort to shoot more cars and build up my automotive photography portfolio.

Although this was my first time but I also learned quite a lot of things to take into consideration. Here are some of the results.



Group shot of all the cars which participated in the shoot that morning.



A Volkswagen Scirocco 1.4 TSI with the Scirocco R bumper and custom Euro license plate.



A white VW Scirocco 2.0 TSI with a full Rieger Bodykit











Next up is a series of photos of a Volkswagen Scirocco 1.4 TSI which is not black but rather in the colour, Dark Maroon. But yeah, it looks black in the photos. This car sports a Supersprint exhaust system, Caractere 18" Rims, a Scirocco R bumper and Rieger side skirts.

















Overall I learned that when it comes to photographing cars, a lot of factors come into play. The more I look at my photos, the more that I know I can do better and the mistakes that I have made along the way.

Stay tuned for more photos!

The shroud has finally been unveiled. Volkswagen Group Malaysia has finally unveiled the VW Passat, VW Jetta and the VW Cross Touran.

Price structures for these cars are as shown below.

• VW Jetta - RM149,888 (160ps, 240Nm, 1.4 TSI, 7-speed DSG gearbox)


• VW Passat - RM184,888 (160ps, 250Nm, 1.8 TSI, 7-speed DSG gearbox)


• VW Cross Touran - RM166,888 (140ps, 220Nm, 1.4 TSI, 7-speed DSG gearbox)

I am surprised that the Jetta prices are a lot higher than the earlier said rumours which priced the car to be within the RM138k range to compete against the Civics and Altis. At RM150k, the price is going to be very close to that of the Golf TSI.

All of the cars are CBU units as the Pekan plant hasn't started operations yet.

As with our Malaysian mentality, the market still doesn't really care about the various car segments and they mostly compare cars based on price.

At RM150k, that touches the Toyota Camry, Accords price range and the Jetta might have a tall order to challenge them. The Jetta wouldn't be spec as much as the other Japs but in terms of drivability, the Jetta should win hands down.

The Passat priced at RM184k should be within the range of the 2.4 Camry, Mazda 6 as well as the higher specced Accord. I should say the Passat would then be a better buy purely on the fact that the car has good power and the road tax for the Passat which falls within the <2000cc range should make it more attractive. Although, the Ford Mondeo comes at very close competitor offering 200ps and 300Nm at RM180k, I am quite surprised that I don't see that many Mondeo's on the road. Probably because of its looks that most people don't fancy.

Most discussions on the social network tend to show that most people think that the cars are a little overpriced but then again in Malaysia we tend to be buying cars at an overpriced price anyway.

What we haven't seen yet is the Polo Sedan even though the brochures are now available at the Service Centers. Also everyone is still expecting the Golf R's as well. I would definitely would love to own a Golf R personally, maybe someday when there are way too many on the road and the second-hand price of it goes down.

Rest in peace Steve Jobs, that seemed to be the theme this whole entire month when the iconic and visionary CEO of Apple passed away. Plenty of blog posts, news wire, memorial services flood the internet, I was curious. Curious about his life, curious about this photo.



Yes, that is the photo on the splash screen on the Apple website. Getting aside from being emotional over the demise of a great man, the curious side of me or shall I say the photographer in me wondered, who was the guy who took that image of Steve and what was the story behind it?

This sort of sparked from a message I received from Grace about taking images of family members during a wedding and you never knew when they would use those images. The last thing on my mind was that at the funeral memorial service. But it did make sense to use because in our Malaysian mindset, taking photos isn't so much of something my parent's generation like to do and how many times have we seen on the obituary, the photo used in our IC (identification card) is displayed.

Anyway back to the point. After mucking around on the internet, I found out a little bit more about the story behind the image of Steve. Read it more below.

Steve Jobs: Visionary, Inventor, and Very Challenging Photo Subject

©Doug Menuez/Getty Images

The media is heaping accolades on Apple founder Steve Jobs, who died yesterday of cancer at the age of 56. Tributes have poured in from all over the world. Jobs was a  visionary who changed the way we use and interact with technology. The iPhone and iPad have certainly helped re-make the photography landscape.

But Steve Jobs also had a reputation among photographers for being a difficult subject–and not just run-of-the mill difficult, but the archetype of difficult.

“It was the joke among photographers. He was like the nightmare subject,” says San Francisco photographer William Mercer McLeod, who photographed Jobs on assignment a total of five times, and once worked for Apple, helping to develop the company’s Aperture software.

Asked to recount his experiences photographing Jobs, another photographer said,  “I don’t really want to be the guy who pans iGod during this hour of national mourning!”

Photojournalist Ed Kashi, who photographed Jobs about 10 times between the early 1980s and early 1990s, recalled via text message, “He was one of the most difficult subjects I ever dealt with during my Silicon Valley years but I appreciated his awareness of identity, setting and message of the images. There was one time I had to get a picture with him and Ross Perot and when Jobs acted up Perot turned to him and like a stern parent said ‘Steve, Grow up!!’ No matter how dreadful he could be as a subject, I am deeply saddened by his early departure.”

McLeod says his first encounter with Jobs was as an assistant for Kashi. “It was in the late 80s. [Jobs] walked into the photo shoot and started moving the lights around. Then he picked up the phone and called the art director in New York and said he wanted to do something different.”

McLeod recalls how he and Kashi stood there watching in disbelief. “He’s the only person I ever saw do that,” McLeod continues. “Photographing Steve was like a dance. He had such a thing for control like nobody I’ve ever seen. He loved to be in charge. He wanted to have his say.”

“From an editor’s standpoint he could be difficult,” says Scott Thode, a former Fortunemagazine photo editor. “[He was] not unlike a political candidate. The main difference is that he had a real sense of design and how things can look.”

Doug Menuez spent more time photographing Jobs than just about any other photographer, after Jobs agreed to let him document the development of the NeXT computer. Menuez had access to the labs and boardroom for three years.

“In all those years, Steve only screamed at me at the top of his lungs once,” Menuez recalls. It was in 1988, when Fortune hired Menuez to shoot a portrait of Jobs for the cover of the magazine. Menuez wanted to photograph him in the NeXT offices, on a staircase that Jobs had commissioned architect I.M Pei to design. Jobs arrived for the shoot, looked at what Menuez had in mind, “then [he] leaned in and says, ‘This is the stupidest fucking idea that I’ve ever seen.’ Right in my face, like  5 or 6 inches away,” Menuez says. “I felt like I was 10 years old. He went off on a tirade. He said, ‘You just want to sell magazines. ‘And I said, ‘And you want to sell computers.’ And at that he said, ‘OK,’ and sat down.

Menuez concludes, “ I’ve been in war zones, but I like to say that I became a man learning how to stand my ground with Steve.”

Albert Watson, who photographed Jobs just once for a portfolio of people in power that Fortune commissioned him to shoot in 2006, had a different experience from other photographers. “The one thing I insisted on was that we have a three hour window of set up time,” Watson says. “We were prepared…we set up to make [every shoot] as greased lightning fast as possible for the [subject].’ Watson says he had also read “a massive amount of stuff” about Jobs to help him conceptualize the shoot, and so he would be able to converse with Jobs intelligently.

When Jobs walked in, Watson says that his power, charisma and genius were palpable. “It was like when Clint Eastwood walks in to the room.”

Jobs didn’t look immediately at Watson, but looked instead at the set-up and then focused on Watson’s 4×5 camera “like it was something dinosauric,” Watson recalls, “and he said, ‘Wow, you’re shooting film.”

“I said, ‘I don’t feel like digital is quite here yet.’ And he said, ‘I agree,’ then he turned and looked at me and said, ‘But we’ll get there.’”

Jobs gave Watson about an hour–much longer than he ever gave most photographers for a portrait session. “I had wanted to do the shot in a minimalistic way because I knew that was going to suit him very well. He said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ I said I would like 95 percent, almost 100 percent of eye contact with the camera, and I said, ‘Think about the next project you have on the table,’ and I asked him also to think about instances where people have challenged him.

“If you look at that shot, you can see the intensity. It was my intention that by looking at him, that you knew this guy was smart,” Watson says, adding, “I heard later that it was his favorite photograph of all time.”

Apple cleared its home page today to post that photograph as a tribute to Jobs.

(correction: an earlier version of this story said Fortune commissioned Albert Watson to photograph Steve Jobs in 2008. The date was actually 2006.)

Source of the story: http://pdnpulse.com/2011/10/steve-jobs-visionary-inventor-and-very-challenging-photo-subject.html 

The amount of work put in by the photographers just to shoot Steve was absolutely amazing, I mean, 3 hours or prep work? Shooting in film? Standing up to his screams? These are the guys who like in turn captures the most amazing or memorable images. And with this image plastered on the Apple main page, hundreds of millions of people will remember Steve by it. What an honour.

Now, to gain a little bit of insight to what they meant about Steve's character, I would recommend that you watch this show, Pirates of Silicon Valley, to see how Steve's character was portrayed alongside together with Bill Gates. Because frankly, before watching this movie, Steve in my head was that of an angel with a strong fatherly figure and someone you might look up to and ask for more porridge. Well, that movie did definitely set my thinking straight but it also came to me as a revelation that Steve's character is what made Apple what it is today.

BERSIH came twice with protests on the streets and garnered a huge publicity. Upheavals in the Middle East brought down governments and don't even get me started on the countless of revolutions which happened over the past hundreds of years. Riots and panic caused a lot of damage and even death to some of the people caught in the stampede. Most of this time, it all takes a bit of spark to set off the mob mentality.

Nowadays, we take that very same mentality to the internet. First we had the case where a video of a guy punishing his poodle and that was publicized on all social media networks from Facebook to Youtube to blogs and even news portals. Then came many more rantings and created that mob mentality online. It all just takes a spark and the whole internet community became enraged.

The problem is that, as much as we say that facts are sometimes turned around on our news and mainstream media, I tend to see the same thing happening on the internet as well.

Take this story about a bartender in the US of A, she waited on a couple one night at the bar and lo and behold, when the couple left and paid for their drinks, they didn't leave a tip. That might seem normal here especially in Malaysia where service charge is already charged into our bills but in the states, it is deemed as rude not to leave a tip.

A normal tip usually ranges from 15-20% and whenever I travelled to the states, I made sure I used an app on my iPhone to help me calculate my bill when eating out (which I do anyway since I was travelling).

The worse part for that bartender was that, the couple also wrote a small note on the receipt.

p.s. You could stand to loose a few pounds

Image source: http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/

By the way, that's "lose" instead of "loose".

Anyway, she became enraged and posted this receipt on her Facebook page and the thing just went viral. She gotten tonnes of support from people and they even started researching for this alleged person who left the note and the no tip and when they found the guy, a whole hate smear campaign onslaught went on.

The problem with the whole entire episode was that the bartender, gotten the wrong guy! I guess with "gwailo" fellas, a first and a last name such as John Smith (just an example, the guy's name wasn't John Smith) would be extremely common.

I can just imagine that one day just waking up and finding out that half the internet community is knocking on your social media door asking for comments or just plain bashing you in.

Of course the news site have then issued apologies here, here and here. But the damage has been done already. So the next time you decide to start an online vigilante campaign, just make sure that you do your own proper research and homework before hitting out on innocent folks out there.

The Ping Pong in Hong Kong! A line from the movie which sort of stayed within the confines of my brain. Why is that? It's because "Real Steel" was a totally awesome show. I have actually heard of the show but because it really didn't garner as much marketing budget versus some other movies where they had the movie posters plastered over billboards across town, Real Steel was really a great movie in hiding. I guess that's why there are so many movie reviews written about this movie right now.



Most movies that have been hyped up usually target a summer launch in order to catch the crowd so by the end of the year, I never did expect a fantastic show such as "Real Steel" to really wow the crowd. I haven't read a single negative review about the movie yet although it garnered a 7.5 score on IMDB but personally, this movie deserves a 9/10 in my books.



Set in the near future, where robot boxing is a top sport, a struggling promoter feels he's found a champion in a discarded robot. During his hopeful rise to the top, he discovers he has an 11-year-old son who wants to know his father.

The story begins with a very washed out Charlie Kenton (played by Hugh Jackman) an ex-boxer who now has lost his livelihood since Robot boxing has taken the arena. As he struggles through life with mountains of debt and robots, him finding out that he has a 11-year old son really changed his life.



We have always known Hugh Jackman as a very tough man especially in his roles as Wolverine, this time, Hugh Jackman played his role very well and turns this movie into both an action packed story line as well as one that tugs on your emotional strings.

What I was thoroughly impressed was the amount of CG graphics (computer generated) used and how it blended in nicely with the story as well as the overall ambiance. It wasn't overly done but executed extremely tastefully. But hey, who doesn't like to watch two robots punching each other in a ring.

Overall, Real Steel is really an underdog movie which definitely is worth watching in the cinema for its awesome CG graphics and even for the story line. It's nice to feel that nice fuzzy warmth at the end of the show. Watch the show, and you will know what I am talking about.

Prior to the launch of this movie as well, a viral site was also launched in accordance with the move. Do check out http://www.wrb.com/

I was invited last weekend by both Edwin Tan and Nicholas Leong over to their new gallery located in Bangsar South. It was a fun event with plenty of other photographers about with food and even a photo booth!



Put photographers in front of the camera and you end up having loads of wacky pictures. Some just too wacky that it has to be censored. Or should I leak one or two up on this site.







 

I know I had way too much cake at the event but am a little sad that I missed the champagne popping session that you guys did after I left. At least I didn't get splashed with champagne ;)

Being part of the WPPM does have its benefits. Though I am a little shy as I haven't posted about photography in a while, this time I managed to join Patrick Low on one of his Photographer's chill out sessions at Autodetailer. In case you may not be familiar, Autodetailer is located at Jaya One and it prides itself as Malaysia's most advanced detailing studio.

I first met Darren when I attended the Nigel Barker's workshop a while back. Am glad that he managed to recognize me when I arrived at his studio.


Took this shot using my iPhone 4 and edited the image using SnapSeed

As I was at another event prior to this, by the time I arrived at the batcave, Darren was already giving the rest of the group a tour of his detailing studio. It is really really impressive and there has been countless of articles on the Star as well as car magazines which featured his studio.


Large turnout at the Photographer's Chill Out session

It was a real pity that my gears were in for service at the time or else I would be happily taking photos of his studio but I was very impressed with his car studio setup as well as his post processing setup. I have never seen a Wacom tablet that is larger than a 24" iMac in my life before!

After going through a tour of the detailing studio, I was utterly amazed! No wonder plenty of people send their cars to Darren to detail as well as restore. It's just amazing to see the amount of detailed work they put into each and every car. I was literally blown away and amazed and I can say that his detailing studio is the only one that has an iMac and a uber large Wacom tablet :P

Here are some of the images taken by Darren and displayed on his Facebook Page.





The last of the 3 images above has me very intrigued lately. Mainly because that is Darren's car and he has been working on his personal project which is to transform his Mito into a unique looking mini car which looks totally awesome. You can find out more about Project Mito at the blog or you can always check out their Facebook Page for latest updates. Do check out this Facebook Album set for a plethora of poisonous images.

I think I should do that as well for my Golf but most of the time, my Golf is pretty much dirty from all the rainy weather we have been having. It definitely needs a good wash!

For more information about WPPM and the monthly Photographer's Chill-Out Sessions, do visit the WPPM Facebook page for updates.