Here is a recent photo shoot for Lẽ TORO ~grooming for pets.

It was fun working with ToRo, he was very energetic. Besides that we also photographed two cute Guinea pig’s.

Yesterday spent whole evening and night at Putrajaya for photoshooting with kaki photog. Shot some of the interesting panorama Putrajaya Landmarks, The Palace of Justice.

Night Panorama of Putrajaya Palace of Justice

More photographs & panoramas coming soon…

This week is an exciting week, It marks a significant milestone in my photography career. I am finally completed a business cycle and received first ever payment from my client. Client was satisfy and happy with my works and hopefully can get some referrer from her. However with all the equipment and cost incurred, I’m still far from breaking even, with such rate of progress, I would need to put in a lot more effort to promote my self then get more deals.

Few days ago I shot 5 VR panoramas in a row from Puchong and Subang in some Chinese restaurants.  Result is just above satisfactory,  using 18mm on APS-C is pretty of inconvenience and lots of work on post processing. I’m saving up budget to get Samyang 8mm around next few weeks, this could saves me hours stitching by hand.

So stay tune for more exciting interesting panoramas!

Friday, as usual I went to various places to sharpen up my photography skills. Chapter for today practice is about wide angle high resolution.

This is the first time I ever attempted to perform high resolution panorama with the focal length of 85mm f/13 auto exposure (due to my M mode dail still not being repaired yet).

After reviewing the post processing result, I noticed that I made huge mistakes in the process. The tripod was set too far too high up, it was swaying, causing camera motion blur. Secondly, Flares… I use cheap UV filter.

One way or another I will be retry the shoot during the Chinese New Year when there are more lights available.

Lets checkout the full resolution stitches below and tell me what do you think about my piece of art. (resolution 11106×3552px 5.41MB)

Thean Hou Temple Panorama

Today I went to a cafe to have VR Panorama shooting, This is one of the biggest challenge I faced so far, mainly due to my own constraints.

I was first challenged by the extreme white balance problem where the interior was heavily illuminated by Tungsten, and the exterior was Daylight!

Then I need to deal with the 4 stop exposure difference between the interior and the exterior of the cafe.

I use 18mm APS-C,  so then I need to take massive amount photos, 279 of them!

Then lastly, my 500D was broken, currently waiting for spare parts,  the manual setting dial isn’t responding at all, so  I would need to tether from a notebook to do manual & bracket settings.

After shooting the photos,  It took me another 4 hours to stitch all of the photos into one piece. Only to realize I missed one big portion of the nadir point. I would have to recreate it under photoshop.

So here is it, Blossom Deli Cafe, one of my acceptable works here!

Just finish stitching a  VR Photograph from Taman Megah, shot during Christmas eve of 2009.

The motivation is to have this market shot while it is newly build, and clean. In future I will be returning to the same scene,  same coordinate to take another old and dirty version of the market.

Yesterday I just came back from MATTA FAIR March 2009 to get some attractive tour package around Thailand. After sorting out, as I am ready to leave, I heard a familiar and yet unfriendly sound coming from the side of the stage. It was a sound of a stall whistle. Immediately I know that there must be a flight simulator around, and probably a competition is going on.

To my surprise that it was a Mobile Flight Simulator from Firefly to challenge anyone who can successfully fly and land a ATR 75-500 to subang airport for 3 times could qualify themselves into the final challenge. I couldn’t resist giving it a try after spending years of training around on my own simulator alone. I paid up the registration fee and waited to my turn.

While waiting for my turn, I talked to a pilot standing nearby on some interesting topics, we talked about the standard safety procedure, flying maneuver, air disaster and flying over various landmark.

As my turn comes, I went in into the cockpit simulator and begin flying. It was exciting. I performed 3 times perfect landing with the touch down VSI no more than 100ft/min. The pilots were impressed with my result and gave me a score of 98% with a little smiley face .

On day two, I came back and to participate the qualifying round for the grand final, this time I meet with peoples who are also love flying. I am amazed by how well other contestant could perform. They are way better than those video commonly seen from YouTube. I am amazed that one 10 years old kid can also fly the plane almost perfection.

The final challenge was tricky. It was a nighttime flying, near total darkness. I was given instruction to maintain 1,000 ft and perform a full right turn, follow by landing the aircraft. Difficult challenge for me, I do not like to fly in the dark without any help of autopilot. Having no idea on how the ATR aerodynamic performance as it turns, I over banked the aircraft (loss of attitude awareness) and the aircraft come into a rapid decent. Unfortunately enough the pilot next to me notices the situation and pointed out my mistake. I have no choice but to increase throttle for recovery, less comfort for my passenger.

The final approach was another big mistake for me. Having no visual clue on the front, and no Left window on my side for me to see. I overshoot the runway centerline, and coming in too fast, and too high. I have to apply lots of turning to reposition the plane back to center so that I could still land.

The result of the challenge is that I’ve gotten second place! I am rewarded with 2 return tickets to Koh Samui! Yay!
Here are some photos of the day. Enjoy.