PhotoMarathon

Last sunday I went with Dono to the PhotoMarathon and it was not too bad. I really had fun looking for suitable subjects for each theme that was assigned. There were altogether 3 themes assigned to use and three hours given for each theme. The first theme “Malaysia Leads” was drawn at 9am from a box containing more then 40 different themes. We then are given 3 hours to find and capture a shot that best represents the theme. This includes going through and selecting shots of which only one can be submitted and loaded into an assigned download station. Of cause the shots are also judged by the relevance of the theme… creativity, colour, light and shadow play are also reviewed. The second assignment was “Lunch Break” and the third was “Abandoned Lot”.

The hunt was a little frustrating … cos I got a police saman for parking illegally near Klang Bus Station… (wanted to have a quick dash to Central Market and Petaling Street for a photo op or two…well I guess serves me right for parking on a yellow line) … then later in the day I heard a tumpt’ tumpt’ tumpt’ sound while driving along Chow Kit road… I stopped and found a huge rivet screw sticking out of my rear tyre… continued driving without any big problems …. … will have to get it repaired after I leave from work today (Monday…. Yes I drove to work with the tumpt’ tumpt tumpt…) …. Oh yah did I mention that I scrapped my bumper on a side walk pretty badly along petaling street…. All this for the photomarathon… sigh!!! Why do I get myself into these things…….. anyway….

What made it even worst was that I wasn’t too pleased with the results of the photomarathon. We got to look at every picture submitted by all the participants’ in-between assignments and while waiting for the total results and I must say, there where many good pictures which should have won and where more better then the ones chosen in terms of the theme of the assignments…....... Well at least the winners of assignment 1 and 2, the first runner up for assignment 2 and the second runner up for assignment 3 where very good and deserve their win but I could easily pick a dozen other photos that should have grabbed the remaining winning positions.

So frustrating lah…… but hey … I did get a nice Canon cap and a neat photographer’s vest … (now i can have the press photographer look anytime I want…. Kekeke)…


1st Assignment: Malaysia Leads


2nd Assignment: Lunch Break


3rd Assignment: Abandoned Lot
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My entries werent that great compared to other participants ....Oh well… however I did have fun… and the experience was good…

btw they were having dress rehearsals at Merdeka Square and also base jumpers were practicing at the KL Tower.... thats what the first picture is about.

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Oh by the way Pixelatedmo.blogspot.com is a year old!!! ... ok
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tumpt’ tumpt’ tumpt’ out of here……........... mo

Langkawi 07

It was a splendid week away... my only regret was i didnt plan it better..... but then again i did get to do all that i wanted to do........ oh well .. fickle creatures we are.... It rained pretty much everyday... but it was scorching hot when we went to Pulau Payar..... didnt get to see a proper sunset from the top of Mount Cincang (Cable car)... nor did i get to see the sunrise.... the food wasnt all that good and since i dont drink that much.... duty free liquor is just wasted on me..... but one thing langkawi did have for me is its mystical lanscape and wildlife..... the southen region is developing fast and hope they preserve the rest of Langkawi because it is truely a gem of an Island. Check out more pictures of my trip at My Picasa Page

Canon PhotoMarathon

I am back from Langkawi.... :(
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wish i wasnt .... hehehe...
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Anyway to all my readers, there will be a Photo Marathon this Sunday organized by Canon Malaysia ... so check out their website for more details yah...

Holy Cats!

There are bunch of kittens running aroung my area and man they are adorable... Well i will leave you with this picture i took one morning while watering the plants. I am off to Langkawi this Monday and will be back on Thursday.... its my first time there... no points for guessing that i will be taking loads of pictures.....

Waiting for the lift

Took this picture while waiting for the lift after work. The funny part was that i had pressed the lift button before looking out the window and saw this nice sunset....... as soon as i got the the camera ready the lift had arrived.... so i took three quick shots before the lift doors opened.... thus managing not to piss anyone in it... (picture taken in Programed Auto Mode by auto focusing on the white cloud on the top left corner and recomposing the shot, 1/120 sec - f2.8)

A Die Hard Babbling Weatherman

Babel…. Yeah I finally watched Babel …. And was thoroughly disappointed with it and shocked that it was nominated for so many awards… thankfully it didn’t win anything at the Oscars except for best original score. Even that I’m not sure why it won…. Anyway….I’ve seen many movies with the “connection” theme… most are good and Babel isn’t one of them…. The movie Crash is 100 times better then Babel and I didn’t think Crash was all that good either… heck even the low budget 93 movie Twenty Bucks was better then… So far only 2 ‘connection’ themed movies have made an impact with me…. One is ‘21 Grams’ and the other is ‘The Red Violin’…. 21 Grams is 100 times better then Crash which makes it 200 times better then Babel… But my personal favourite was The Red Violin .... maybe the problem with Babel was that each story line would have been better off on its own and not connected to each other…hmmmm… … the director tries so hard to connect the stories together that it lands up just pointless……. What was the Japanese chick story all about lah… besides having her parade herself in the buff…? It wouldn’t have made any difference if the Japanese story was left out of the movie…. I minused (if there is such a word) another 0.5 points for the pointless teenage boy ‘relieving’ himself scene (by the way, the same scene in American Pie had more meaning) … so it gets a 3.5/10

I braced myself once again to watch another Nicholas Cage movie (this is 2 of 3, read about 1 of 3 HERE )… this time it was The Weatherman…. I’m sorry but I have absolutely nothing to say about this movie except that, it was a watch-able movie…… and I wish I was one of those people in the movie that got to throw all kinds of fast food at Cage… the Chocolate Milkshake was my favourite throw…. 3.75/10 for me….

Live Free or Die Hard or more commonly called Die Hard 4 was not too bad…to me the first half of the movie was pretty good… there was a good build up off characters and plot…. . but I found it a little over the top in certain parts of the show … and the second half of the movie didn’t help because it was down right bullocks……. I wish they had built the story around the relationship between McClane and his daughter as I felt she was a better character then the computer wiz kid Farrell… … and the fighter pilot that some how couldn’t even take out a huge big rig truck with his super sophisticated fighter jet… come on lah!!… give me a break.!!! Not enough the baddy was not even convincing compared to former Die Hard baddies… oh well, …. It was a good effort anyway 5.5/10… ok lah 6/10 …no no wait…I will not give in… 5.5/10 ok lah ok lah... it was nice watch Bruce in his best all time action hero character... so 6/10 for Die Hard 4…. (Cant wait for die hard 5… after a triple by-pass surgery McClane will be even harder to kill……… Yippee Ki Yay ^$**< fish head curry%%*!!!!)
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Hey, wasn’t the Hungarian F1 GP really exciting. NOT!!!!... sheeshkebab lah… I need something better to do during F1!!!…. Knitting perhaps? …
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Rain Rain go away.....

Whats with the weather lah… rain, rain and more rain…. Its July …sorry its August already and its just raining like nobodies business….it rained practically the whole of July……. What’s next?... hot weather for November ah…!!??... I wouldn’t be surprised lah… Anyway rain makes for some dramatic clouds… Adjust your exposure a notch or two lower (Which means -1 or -2) or point your auto focus to the brightest part of the cloud to make the camera underexpose the shot to further accentuate the darker edges of the clouds …

So i try this technique last friday got some interesting pictures but then when i viewed it on the monitor i noticed that the picture was so noisy... (have a look at the picture on the right, look at the trees on the lower part of the photo and you will see lots of dots) and this is a picture with normal exposure.... the pictures with exposure compensated to -1 and -2 are worse.... Then i realised that I had set the ISO rating of 400 hmmmm... i shld have set it to 200. If your camera has 100 or 50 ...go for it...........

Visited my beetle last Saturday, …. work on it is pretty slow…. The old paint is still being removed and some interesting things are being uncovered (accident damage, bad repair jobs, Bondo magic!!!)…. Slow and easy I say… im still wondering if I shld have removed the engine earlier… if I remove it now then I need to find a way to transport it back to my place…but where am I going to keep it…. hmmm I think I will just leave it in and remove it once its back at my place…. Maybe I shld have removed it before sending it to the shop for paint…… but then again….like I said…where the hell am I going to keep it!!!… arrghhhh!! decisions decisions!!!...

Ordered new glasses/ spectacles on Sunday… I have been wearing my old ones for 4 years now… I think… or was it 5 years… no, I have not worn glasses all my life although many people which I have known for a decade or two thought I did… but yah… like that lah…… Anyway Im not far nor near sighted… its just that I have bad astigmatism… and after getting it checked last Sunday I found out that it has increased by about 25 on each eye… so its now 100 on my left and 50 on my right…. I tried a few thick black frames like those nerdy ones… but I cldnt find one that fit me… I always wanted frames like what Malcolm X wore… I think those are cool… but I guess I just have to stick to normal ones… talking about normal frames… its damn hard lah to find normal plain frames.. almost everywhere we went they had all kinds of funky looking ones… and when you find a normal looking one… the side bit that goes over your ears wld have some weird design or colour… even the one I chose had some design on the side… but its very subtle.

There was a bad accident yesterday morning morning at the flyover near Sunway… which caused a really bad jam on the LDP… I moved like 200 meters in 20 minutes… and Im like what’s going on here… then when I finally reach the cause of the jam… all I can say is the accident was between a trailer and a motorbike….. and it ended tragically… my prayers go out to the victim and his family…..



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