An afternoon in Kuching.

Went forr a trip into town yesterday (Sunday April 1st...no really!) with the intention of shooting the skaters and bikers who were in town for a 'convention / meet'. Sadly I had the days wrong and they were already packing up when I arrived. I decided to have a wonder around town anyway and take some shots. I had a few ideas in mind already.
One was the idea of a stage, e.g. find a location and shoot the people as they fill it, I already had the location in mind, which turned out better than expected as I was able to combine that idea with another of my favourite shot types...the reflection. I stood in the narrow passage called Jalan Mosque and pointed my lens at a conveniently placed mirror mid way down the passage.

I'm also fond of what I would call textures (usually of architectural features) and wondering round looking up gives one a different view of Kuching's architecture than if one purely focuses on street level, so I've included a few of those shots below too.

It's hard to photograph Kuching without the State Legislative building, with its golden top, being in there somewhere and the weather at the time was being very accommodating and providing a nice backdrop.
 
Then the weather took a turn for the worse in a big way, so I headed back to the car and saw the dark foreboding clouds highlighting the buildings near by, the Central Kuching mosque being the most prominent.

My first food shoot

A friend of mine, who owns a bar / restaurant, has been asking me for a while to photograph some of her food for a new menu and new look she wants to start doing. This being well out of my comfort zone, I was reluctant, but enticed enough, that I eventually gave in. I recruited the help of Mr Gerry Fox whose work can be seen here and here who has been an inspiration and great help during my recent adventures in photography.

We used a single off camera flash fitted with a soft-box and then used all manner of impromptu diffusers and reflectors to try to get the light right. We had arrived at the restaurant with three hours of afternoon daylight left, but sadly didn't get to shoot the food for a while. In the meantime Gerry took control of the camera in the kitchen and he got a few shots of the guys in action and I held the flash and other silly things to get some light in.

Eventually we got round to shooting some food but the light had taken a turn for the worse as bad weather had moved in. We did our best anyway and shot a selection of the new dishes from various angles. The owner was very keen on overhead shots, which I'm not a big fan of, but followed her wishes and then I shot some more that were more to my liking and style. Overall I suppose I'm happy with the results and and very grateful to Gerry for all his during shoot assistance and post shoot processing guru-ness. NB the shots below have been processed by me as I forgot to actually take a copy of the shots once we'd finished processing them round at Gerry's, so any amateurish post-processing is down to me. Here are a selection of the shots anyway. I hope they make you hungry. Please note, as mentioned above, that the man behind the lens for all the kitchen shots was actually Gerry, so while they've got my name on the bottom, they technically belong to him. Thanks again mate, much appreciated.

Hello.

It's been a very long time. Due to many things, like Skyrim, Eve-Online, holidays, Tumblr and largely just taking too many pictures and loving photography more and more. etc etc.
I will try to get this blog up to date over the next week or so. Since my last post I've visited Singapore, KL, Bangkok, Ko Chang, Penang and Tioman. I've done a lot of macro work due to the inspiration of my mate Anthony Ratcliffe over at http://anton-off-the-beaten-track.blogspot.com/ and http://www.nomadicimagery.com/gallery/macro-1949 who came to visit for a while and we experimented with off camera flash, extension tubes and eventually stacking techniques to further our macro work.
I've also jointly put on a photography exhibition with 3 friends here in Kuching, Sarawak.
So lots to talk about, lots of pics to post, I'll try to get started ASAP.

Here's a couple of pics to start you off, a month or so ago I went out with my mate Gerry Fox to basically act as his assistant while he completed a few assignments he had to do with street photography and portraiture. He was using a semi-studio setup but on the street, and in between him shooting, I fired off a few shots without flash using my 100mm macro lens that also takes great portraits.

Alec is a cobbler who has a small stall at the end of India Street in Kuching. He is a great character and while not exactly comfortable with being the centre of attention, he allowed us to spend an hour or so taking lots of shots.While this shot is not the most flattering for him, I think it brings out the character in his face, he is normally very happy and smiley.

And here he is in action.

Lots more soon...promise

King of the Jungle

Our next stop was a place called Semengoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. It's not far from Kuching, so an easy 20 minute drive for us. It's a smallish patch of protected rainforest and it is set up as a way of reintroducing injured, stolen, captured animals back into the wild. They have a long list of wildlife released such as pangolins, tarsiers, slow loris, civet cats and of course, the reason why most people visit....the Orangutans. Once again I've only seen them on TV or in a zoo, and my fear was that this place would be just a big zoo. It wasn't. They do say that you are not guaranteed a sighting of the apes, but as they put out big baskets of fruit for them twice a day and 'call' to them....they often come.
So we trudged through a short stretch of forest to the feeding sight (along with about 40 other people) and waited. The park rangers were doing their tarzan type calling to get the apes attention, but as time went by it looked like they weren't coming. The rangers explained to the visitors that 4 orangutans were out near the park entrance, where they also put out food, so most people wandered back off that way. We stayed and hoped for the best. The sky by this time was getting blacker and blacker and the first spots of rain were falling. Visiting time is only an hour and we were approaching 40 minutes by this time. Then, we saw signs of movement high up to our left and what looked like a mother and child stared to make their way down to the feeding sight. The heavens of course chose this exact moment to really open up, and rain poured out of the sky like it does in tropical equatorial countries...i.e. very heavily. Then.....the trees in front of us starting to move like an elephant was barging its way through them... and we got out first sighting of the alpha male...Ritchie.
Anyway enough of my blathering...here's some shots. They are not great pics, but they were still some distance from us and it was pouring down.

The young one makes his way across the ropes to the fruit

He's rather wet as you can see

Their home in the rain (forest)

The alpha-male 'Ritchie' puts in an appearance

Ritchie tucking into the free fruit

Kuching and Damai, Sarawak

So here's a few pictures from out first few weeks in Sarawak. We have spent most of it in the capital, Kuching; as that's where we are working, we did get chance to go north to the coast (Damai) and spent a few days in a treetop cabin next to the sea.

So we arrived just before Chinese new year, which has pros and cons obviously. When you are trying to get stuff done (like find somewhere to live) it's not good, but there are quite a lot of interesting cultural events going on. These dragon dancers were performing all over the city, as well as lion dancers and musicians.

This is the state administrative building in Kuching, which almost dominates the skyline and is a real focal point. Kuching is actually a nice manageable city and very relaxed compared to most Asian cities. A river runs through the middle, and it's very lush and green with trees and greenery everywhere.

We have also arrived during the rainy season, so it has rained most days at least for a little while, and other days have been seriously major downpours.

The city is a nice cultural mix of all the peoples of Malaysian Borneo; Muslim, Chinese, Indian and a large number of tribal peoples of Kalimantan and a smattering of expats. The seperation of 'races' is not as strict as in other parts of Asia, so lots of inter-breeding has taken place over the years, making it very difficult to tell where anyone's origins really are. Which I suppose is a good thing.






The pic below is from the very busy weekend market, that sells almost everything, though a lot of it is given over to local produce and foodstuffs obviously. The smells can be rather overwhelming on a hot sticky day; but it's an amazing place to takes photographs.

Characters like this one hang about on the river taking tourists and locals across to the other side for 0.5 RM or 1 Rm at night, they usually wait and fill up like shared taxi, unless you are willing to pay a little extra for a 'private' trip. An unusual aspect is that they are paddled and steered from the front as you can see.

Our employer paid for us all to go on a river cruise along the river as a team building exercise and to get us out of the hotel for while, it was a bit cheese-tastic....but sipping beer as the sun goes down, aboard a boat with friends, in Sarawak, Borneo...there are certainly worse ways to spend an evening..

Here's a pic of the cabaret dancers, in traditional costumes after performing traditional dancers that had stuff to do with eagles and fish and hunting.

They also worked as the boat crew and served drinks, but they were lovely, and we've all got to earn a living some how, so good luck to them.

I'm tempted to put in some more pics of theevening, I'll restrict myself to one, my fave from the boat trip.

We also went up to a place north of Kuching, called Damai and Santubong a small peninsula that sticks out into the south China Sea. Beautiful little place and we splashed out and stayed in a treetop house on the edge of rainforest and stormy sea. Only the sound of jungle and crashing waves to sleep and wake to. We had a small troop of purple-faced-leaf-eater monkeys for company. It was a very nice four days; here's a few pics, the first of which has been heavily doctored in PS, but I took it in RAW to do exactly that.

Grainy Photo-shopped effort

Sunset

This one's for Ant

Longhouse

Local cooking cakes