Dragonplane Photography Blog

Spending time with loved ones especially my family is important to me. It has been a while since I last celebrated my birthday with everyone in my family presence. It gave me great joy that my lovely sister Melissa threw me a nice BBQ with the family. During the day I took the opportunity to bring my lovely niece and nephew down to the pool to create a splash. Here are some photos where the kids certainly had great fun playing in the water.

Singapore's famous Christmas lights up at Orchard road is at its 25th year. This year the theme is "A Sweet Christmas" and I can see why by the many light decorations resembling sweets and candies. See Singapore Tourism - Christmas in the Tropics Lights up

Visiting Singapore in the weeks leading to Christmas is usually greeted with a city dressed with many Christmas decorations in shopping malls and streets. Many shopping malls would hold shows with Christmas themes to entice shoppers to spend more during the traditional high sales month. One such mall I was at was the Raffles City Shopping Centre . For tea, I headed to the very large basement mall of restaurants and cafes where I chose to eat at the "Toast Box" which is designed after the old Singapore coffee shops of the turn of the century with wooden stools. Here they serve traditional Singapore kaya toast with street style coffee. Kaya is a Singapore/Malaysia coconut egg jam which is my favourite jam that I find irresistible. Wikipedia - Kaya toast

It's the 23rd day of November 2008 and just slightly over a month before Christmas. Here I was spending my first full day in Singapore visiting my family and friends. The weather was fine up until the later afternoon when it started to pour. I had just finished shopping at Raffles City when I was caught in the heavy downpour while crossing the road towards Chijimes . I had my camera with me so while waiting for the rain to stop, I walked around the compound of the beautifully restored Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus which has been transformed into restaurants, bars and shops.

I was at Frasers Property's Trio apartments early during the week to shoot their cocktail party for their specially invited guests. There were two apartments that were fully furnished and exquisite in every way. Both are located inside the formal Alexandra Children's Hospital at Camperdown. The starting price for these two bedroom fully furnished apartments start from $1.3 million. The rest of the apartments are in the construction stage to be completed mid-2009. Reference websites - Trio apartments, Frasers Property Sydney

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary - David Bailey

Edinburgh , the capital city of Scotland has rugged setting and vast collection of Medieval and Georgian architecture. There were many stone houses making the city very pictureques. It has been capital of Scotland since 1437. The city is one of Europe's major tourist destinations and second most visited tourist destination in the United Kingdom, after London. At the centre of this medieval city is the famous Edinburgh Castle which is built on top the Castle Rock and dated back to the 9th century BC. Refer to wikipedia - Edinburgh

At the recent event at Lumiere I shot close to a thousand photos for the full day activities. It was a mixture of photos from the activities to the sit in portrait shoot. I thought the best way to show the photos is to create a personal photo gallery for Lumiere. A news article of the event is published at Lumiere's website with link back to my website. Have a read here . A piece of the news is also publish at one Oz Chinese website . Gallery - http://lumierefestival.dragonshutter.com/

Recently I was at the Lumiere residental apartment to shoot it's first anniversary celebration which consisted of a day of activities for its residents. Festival de Saison was an opportunity for its residents and guests to come together to sample a variety of classes, events and activities. There were swimwear fashion shows from 2eros and Jets, Napoleon and MOHS offering mini makeovers and hair styling, Oak Barrel providing the perfect accompaniment, champagne and wine tasting. There was also Stan Toohey providing caricature portraits. As for myself besiding covering the events, I have setup my first photography stall to promote my photography. It was a mini studio that provided free portrait shoot which was very popular with 65 people posing for the camera. It was exhauting having to cover the activities over two floors throughout the day and going back to the stall at intervals to shoot the portraits. But it was rewarding as there were many great shots coming out of the shoot. Al

If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up - Richard Avedon

This year the top Artists award goes to Mark McClelland for his work titled " she thought" as pictured in the above photos. The other photos are the rest of the winners. Incidentally, I did not know which sculpture was the winner when I shot the sculptures. When I first saw the sculpture, I thought the art work was different. The protrusion on both sides are visually interesting with smooth lines hence the many images I captured of this winning art work. Other blog on the rest of the sculptures Mark McClelland website

I visited the Sculptures by the Sea at the Bondi to Tamarama coastal walk yesterday. The weather was a little chilly, abit overcast which is a big contrast to the temperature we had the previous day at a hot 38 degrees celsius. The sculptures are different every years but I did noticed some artists were back this year with their work with their trademark style. In my opinion there wasn't many stand out sculptures unlike previous year. Read this year's winners - 2008 Winners Read earlier blog - Sculpture by the Sea 2007 Office Sculpture by the Sea website