Swee Ching Photography

I'm currently on assignment in Brunei and have been here for a month now. It's my first visit to Brunei, and I'm staying at Kuala Belait, the small oil town. For a guy who are used to the city life, I felt trapped in a small town: no shopping malls, no cinema, no pub and alcohol (not that I drink very often, but would be nice to get myself drunk once a while). Therefore, my first weekend here were difficult to pass by, as I have no places to go, just stayed in the hotel and watch TV. Around 5pm, I noticed the sun shined through the small kitchen window and provided some nice lighting for an indoor shot. So took a few shot with several still objects with my LX3. This shot below came out nicely for me. I think this shot kind of reflected my state of mind at that weekend. Fortunately, I've adjusted my pace of life a little, and are now enjoying the fresh air, and have nice evening walk by the beach to catch the sunset. That's something I don't get to do in Kuala Lu...

I haven't done a wedding shoot for 3 months now. Been busy with work and haven't been selling myself that much too. So when asked to fill in as the wedding banquet photographer in less than a week notice, I was a bit reluctant, but accepted the job anyway. As usual, I decided to eat before I start work, so drove through McD for a fillet set to go. I arrived at the venue earlier (around 5:30pm) to do some location assessment. Then, spent quite a fair bit of time to shoot some details of the banquet hall. I've never meet Ryan and Pam before until they show up that evening. After a simple introduction, they're already busy meeting their guests outside the banquet hall, and I'm busy getting a good shot of them. As the dinner was served at 8:30pm, everyone was busy eating and there's not much action to be shot. After the cake cutting, champagne opening and toasting, comes the physically demanding part, where the couple and family members went table by table to toast ...

Unfortunately, I did not have many worthy shots of the Eiffel Tower during my short time in Paris. Other than those taken from outside of my hotel (posted here ), below are the remaining shots that I like to share. To commemorate France presidency of EU, the Eiffel Tower was lit up with in blue, and special twinkling light starts-off from 8pm onwards every hour into the night. Pictured here is my wife taking a shot of the lighting with our Fujifilm F11. If you like to see more photos that I've taken at Paris, click here for all my previous posts related to Paris.

Continuing from my last post on Paris , here some shots of the Arc de Triomphe , located at the centre of the Place Charles de Gaulle in Paris. It was drizzling that evening and it was difficult to get the shot shown above (setting up tripod, having people looking at you, wiping rain droplets off the lens etc). Still, those element gave a bit more drama to the shot, especially where cars had their head light on due to low light situation. Pedestrian underpass is available to reach the center of the arch. While I was setting up my tripod, the French police stopped me from doing so, said the tripod might damage the floor. Floor is made of stone, while my tripod legs have rubber tip... Anyway, not wanting any trouble with the police, I put down my backpack, rest my camera on the bag and took the shot above. Finally, the arch was lit for the night. Got better colour with this shot, done without tripod. As with most historical monuments here in Paris, the arch has plenty of intricate desig...

I can't recall when was the last time I visited Pulau Ketam (Crab Island). I guess it could be about 15 years ago. So it was my curiosity of how much would Pulau Ketam had changed that I agreed to Jeff's invitation to go for this 1/2 day trip (these 1/2 day trips is turning into a de-facto standard trip length for our impromptu photo trips). With reference to www.pulauketam.com, Pulau Ketam used to be an inhabited island full of mangrove swamp, where fishermen travelled back and forth from the mainland to catch crabs, prawns and fishes. Eventually they started to build houses on stilts and slowly the population grows to today's 6-7 thousand. To reach the island, we took a 40-minute speed boat ride from Port Klang (KTM Komuter Pelabuhan Klang station). These fishing boats are located at the river near the main jetty. I can see plenty of mud crabs mud skippers at the river banks. Seems to me the residents of Pulau Ketam goes around with bicycle or motorized bicycle. I didn...

"Easy to climb and nice scenery". That's what I was told by my colleague. This time, Jeff took the initiative to organize this trip. To catch the sunrise, we have to leave home from Petaling Jaya at 4:30am (yawn...) After driving and getting lost with Nokia GPS (map not so updated), we finally reached Broga just before 6am. But we don't know where's the exact location to hike the hill. Following the road, we reached a small (really small) town and luckily, the local kopitiam shop has already started business, so we asked for direction from the locals. By the time we reach the starting point and started hiking, it's already about 6:30am. No fun lugging around heavy tripod and camera bag and racing against time to reach the top of the hill. Took us about 30-45 minutes to reach a location high enough to take some descent photos. Never miss a group photo! Note: Lots of mosquitoes in the morning. So wear longs exercise pants and use repellents.