Weekend at the HortPark

I took a stroll at the HortPark with an online photo hobbyist friend. The weather nowadays is almost unbearable, scorching sun and extremely humid at the same time. I felt after my excursion to the HortPark, that the HortPark can also be known as the HotPark! Thank goodness that there are air-conditioned educational stationed areas around the entrance to cool down.

I spotted a rather "Shy" photographer amongst the greens, targetting a bunch of delicate white flowers through her viewfinder. I am sure that in her current cool attire, she would most defintely produce splendid pictures for her own keepsake.

Just For Laughs! Haha!

Some Fun Shoots over the weekend...

Nikon 50mm F1.4 AF-D. What more is there to say? Haha!

Here is another fun shot of her just being wacky! Constipation causes people to do crazy things, I presume? Hahaha!

Pretty In Pink

This is another shot using side window lighting of the same lady in the same location, but with the excellent Nikon 50mm F1.4 AF-D instead. I manually set the White Balance, not wanting to rely on the D700 Auto WB. Isn't she looking Pretty In Pink? Cheers!

Nikon 35mm F2 backlit shot

A moderately wide angle lens like the Nikon 35mm F2 is seldom used for portraiture unless its to show a bit of the environment the subject is in, hence we would need to be careful of distractions in the foreground or background. Again its flare resistance proved invaluable in this backlit shot, using nothing but available window light and the natural reflector effect of the white sheets under the subject. Care has to be taken to avoid putting the subject too close to the edge to prevent barrel distortion from showing up on the subject, which can prove unattractive. I took a Manual White Balance reading from the white sheets for this shot, using what I can in that location. Cheers!

Kranji War Memorial

My first visit to the Kranji War Memorial. Its quite a tranquil and deserted place, and also beautiful in a serene and dignified manner. I went there in a hurry as the weather was scorching hot and I had to get to another place in awhile. Here are some of the snapshots I took.

I was surprised this was also the resting place of Singapore's 2nd President, Benjamin Henry Sheares, as can be seen from the picture below.

D700 Picture Control D2XMode1

After figuring out that the main reason for the weird skin tones I tend to get was due to the inaccurate Auto White Balance, I decided to do a shoot based purely on manual White Balance settings where I keyed in manually the colour temperature in Kelvins. Auto White Balance seems to be rather inaccurate quite frequently and darker skin asians tend to have too much of a reddish hue, not so much a problem with fairer skin though. I took some trial pictures in Picture Control D2X Mode 1 with my Nikon 85mm F1.8 AF-D as usual, to see how skin tones fair. I would say that it does look less reddish indeed. Whether that is desirable would be up to individuals but to me the pictures do look more neutral in my humble opinion.