Huangshan photos on ISSUU

A compilation of Huangshan photos taken during my recent trip to China...

Winter 2012 - Photography Trip

This winter has been very fruitful for my photography. After so many years staying here, I finally rented a car in winter and driven around on icy roads, with occasional snowstorm and white-out (with Ankit, an Indian friend who is on his way picking up photography, and Hannes, a German friend who called for the trip). 

Visibility in snowstorm  

Almost white-out

Entering tunnel

Exiting tunnel

In windy condition, if the road is level with an open field,
there will be continues sheets of snow hurtling across the road

At night, when snowing, driving with high light is impossible.
I put on the high light for few sec just for the sake of photography.
As I am driving, so Ankit took the shot. 

For the trip, the final destination is Sounkyo, a small town  at the middle-north of Hokkaido with average temperature 5C colder than Sapporo. 
The first stop was at a hot-spring resorts area (Shirogane town) for taking pictures of this waterfall. The waterfall remained unfrozen because it's a hot spring waterfall. 

You can see the steam rising from the water

Next, we went to a natural hot spring at middle of a mountain. It's really in the wilderness! The surrounding temperature was -5C while the water was 46C... a very extreme hot-spring experience.   

When we left the hot spring, it's already dark. From Shirogane to Sounkyo took us about three hours on icy road. 
Sounkyo is located in mountainous area with many elevated cliffs. When in autumn, the cliffs turn colorful and this is why Sounkyo is listed as one of the popular red-leaves viewing spot of Hokkaido. 

The white-vertical area at the left is frozen waterfall

Taken from Mt. Kurodake. When doing time lapse, the battery  of my timer control  went dead  because of the cold temperature - first time experiencing this.

I have also visited a ski resort for the very first time not doing any snowboarding, but just photography. 

The panorama photo was taken from Mt. East of Rusutsu ski resort. I chosen this resort because of the Mt. Yotei view.

My Canon 16-35 mm lens safe my day.
Without the 16 mm wide angle,
I will not achieve a shot with this perspective
 which gives emphasis on the snow accumulated on the trunk,
and it will make a less impact then.  

The following shots seem like the desert, but with snow instead of sand?
Maybe I have not travel to other places and therefore I have yet find other places with this kind of scenery except on top of the ski mountain.  

Video Editing - Sony Vegas

I recently edited a video about the last family trip around Hokkaido. 
(It's literally a family trip because we rarely have a trip that both my parents and sibling are traveling together. I really can't recall when was the last one before this trip - probably when my parents brought us to the Penang beach during my childhood before my sister was born?)


Here is my workflow stages:
1. Review/select footage and in port into Sony Vegas Project file (Edit footage frame rate to match the intended frame rate)
2. Trimming to make it as short as 2 min (but sometime this is hard)
3. Decide/Edit on aspect ratio
4. Color grading (probably I am a very 'visual' person, I enjoy this part the most)
5. Create visual/sound effects (e.g. film burn, film effect, tv-simulation, etc.)
6. Score/musics (I hate this part, but a video is without soul if without it, so I have no choice)
7. Titles/wordings 


For this particular project, I started it two weeks ago. The final result is totally different than what I thought it would be at the beginning (old film style). Because after the stage 1, I felt that the old film style will not goes well with the flow and the contents. 
During stage 2, I have to divide the Sony Vegas project into two smaller project files, because the computer capacity couldn't handle the huge memory demand - more than 4 GB. 
(This is weird as my window 7 is a 64bit version and it has 8 GB ram capacity. Anyway, my experience with my pc tells me that for as long as I reduced the project file to below 4 GB, I will have no problem in previewing and rendering.)
Stages 3 to 5 were done in two separate project files. Then I render the results to a 1920x1080 videos with the intended frame rate, wmv format to reduce file size. 
For stage 6 and stage 7, I created another project file and put together all the video parts rendered in the previous step. This include the time lapse clips which were rendered from other project file in mov format for better quality.
Stage 6 is the most hardest part to me. For a Hollywood movie, they have a composer to create the score/music. If this is a paid project, I will not hesitate to hire someone for the task. But since this is a non-profit, personal project, I got to handle it myself. The most efficient way for me to do it is to find some nice movie soundtrack that match the video (or to fine tune a little bit of the scenes to match the music). Though this is painful sometime, but the outcome is really rewarding when you have the music that brings the video to life! 


Screenshot of Sony Vegas Project:
During stage 2

During stage 7

Screengrabs:

Here is the video:





Some notes about footage shootings:
This wasn't really a well prepared project. I did have in mind that I wanted to record somethings about the trip because it is a very rare chance for the whole family to travel together, especially to this far. However, since I was the one who did the trip planning, managing transportation and accommodations, driving, I really can't commit to seriously shooting the footage. No tripod or other support most of the time, because that will be very inconvenient for me when I need to handle other stuff at the same time. Therefore, I relied mostly on my 16-35mm lens to make handshake not so apparent. 
My mindset was that if what I shoot is adequate, then I will edit a video, and if it's not, I will just make a photo slideshow. 
It turns out that I did shot quite a big amount of footage, but they are a little  about this and that events, so I decided to edit a montage video. This explains why there is no connection between most of the scenes. 
One scene however should have been included - sushi, since most of the time we are dinning at sushi restaurant, and that Hokkaido sushi is considered the best in Japan. Probably because I am not a fan of sushi, so it turns out that I didn't shoot any footage about it. 
The bear shot wasn't by me, it was by my brother using a camcorder while I was driving. The time I took out my camera and get the setting right, the bear already gone.  
 

A Horse Farm

There are many horse farms in Hokkaido. On 22 May, I visited one of them, near Chitose (exact location still unknown because I am not the one who is driving this time, so didn't pay much attention in that) a horse farm.

This horse farm mainly breed race horse, according to my friend who invited me to the trip, their horses are of very good quality race horses.

Beside some still photos, I managed to make some footage with the 5D markII. But were very busy and eventful for the last few months, thus it took it so long for me to pose them (while the still photos still awaiting post-processing).

Touring Melaka Town Center

If you are visiting Melaka, Malaysia, this guide might give you an idea where/what to visit and eat.
I especially created this video guide series for visitors who are interested in the cultural and historical aspects of Melaka. In addition, with the thinking in mind that you can do it just by walk.
Thus it only covers area right at the center of the town.

There are all together 4 parts in a series...


Part 1.


Part 2. This video bring you to the recommended accommodation. It is a traditional-Chinese-house-turned hotel. Thus let you experience the living environment of the 1st Chinese generation in Malaysia.


Part 3.


Part 4 - Finale. This video concludes all the recommended tour paths, and suggests 4 popular eating places among Chinese visitors.

If you like the recommended tour, and would like to give it a try (in the real world), please feel free to download, print and bring this map with you.
Disclaims:
All materials are for non commercial uses only.
Cubics with photo in the video are not the real built up structures, I placed it there to show you what you will be seeing at the corresponding locations.
The recommended places are based on my very own interest and experience. Try on your own risk!

USA bottle coke

When I am going to united states for the very 1st time (about 2 weeks ago), a friend who has did his degree there told me he miss united states.
What you miss most? I asked
Coca-cola! his answered
Ok, I'll try it! my replied
And later he reminded me it got to be a bottle one...
So I bought one, then recalled that someone appreciate coke more back at home...
As a result, this coke was brought all the way back to Hokkaido from the states...

Japanese Doll Festival (Hinamatsuri)

3rd March is a day call Hinamatsuri (雛祭り), Doll Festival or Girl's day. See wiki for more infor.
As a celebration, Japanese have the costume of displaying dolls which they 'believe' it will capture the bad spirits within, then as they send the dolls into sea on a boat, it will take all the bad fortunes/spirits away.

I learned about this during a cultural program where they displayed some of these dolls:






During the day, they also teach participants how to make paper craft.
My wife is quite actively learning:

All the black & white photos at the beginning of this post are dance performance as part of the event during the day.