I’m finally back from Penang after a two-week stay. It’s quite an enriching journey for me, especially the last day of the week when my aunt passed me a 50 dollar note for helping her at her grocery store 
I was so elated - it was my first paycheck! The monetary gain doesn’t really matter, since I wasn’t even looking forward for a pay or something when I helped her out. I’m simply thankful because she’s such a nice person.
Of course living in a new environment makes me crave for chances to take photos, so over my two-week stint I’ve taken nothing less than 500 photos, although half of which are devoted to HDR and panoramas.
I’ll be releasing the photos over a few posts, a method I’ve got inspired by the way Ingsiang releases his photos. As what the post title suggests, this post will be purely HDRs taken from my grandma’s house 
The photo below is my second HDR panorama (the first one is over here), the view from my grandma’s house balcony, overlooking the barren landscape of a previous village, after it’s occupants were evicted for a housing project which is yet to begin (that puzzles me). It’s a clickable panorama, the larger one opens up in the lightbox.
The HDR below is taken from the rooftop. I found myself squatting on the melting concrete and squinting my eyes to look at the LCD as I tried to compose the shoot. It was miserable, but the effect came out pretty nicely. Some post processing includes removing a rather irritating clothes line that sliced across the entire HDR. In case you’re wondering, it was 3pm in the afternoon.
And here’s one of my favourite shot close up against a pool of water that collected underneath the compressor unit of an air conditioner, with the TV antaena in focus. I like the way the afternoon sun appeared in the photo 
I think it’s time for some linking love! If you have the time, try to follow up the five links below, and drop a comment if possible. I’m linking them because they’re great reads!
- Smashp0p (aka Jason Goh) finds himself in gorgeous Sydney! Stay tuned to his updates, he’llbe spamming his Sydney photos really soon.
- Eye-catching fireworks from Ingsiang. And if you love digging out amazing stuff from Flickr, why not paying his Flickr page a visit?
- Ivy made her first debut video on hamsters. An interesting way to welcome the year of Mouse in the Chinese zodiac.
- Rames shared with us his happy, joyous moments of his life, in photos! Don’t forget to vote for him in Happy Moments as well!
- Yanni has loads of photos from her Sentosa Trip to show! I never knew Sentosa to be such a beautiful place.
And before I end this post, I need your comment on something. I’m working on a new Wordpress theme for my blog, and I’m wondering whether should I forgo the compatibility for screen resolutions of 800×600 and below. Any views on this? And I’ll be posting mockups of the few proposed designs soon, in about a week or so.
11 responses to Back from Penang - HDR » Leave a response
Lovely HDRs!! I really love the reflection one! Thanks for linking my video! I actually don’t really like rodents but oh well, I am living with one now.
As for the designs, I’d forgo 800×600 compatibility if I were you. Well, check your counter, just in case. In my case, out of 500 visitors, only 5-10 visitors have a 800×600 monitor. More than 400 of them have 1024×768 or 1280×1024. It’s clear who I’d cater to after seeing those stats.
Check out Ivy’s last blog post: Happy Chinese New Year!
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as always, very nice shots, teddy.
Check out letti’s last blog post: Chinese New Year Spread
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My fav would be the rooftop, =p Well, too busy shooting events these days, wil return to HDR some days/weeks later, hehe.
Happy CNY to you! =)
Thanks for the link, =) It’s kind of artificial looking tho, because I shoot it from the bottom (almost 90 degree, lol). =S
Check out ingSiang’s last blog post: Chinese New Year 2008 : 初三 - Gathering @ Derick’s Place
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that sun reflection in the water is sooo cool!!! you’re getting really good at taking photos!!! i’m so jealous!! keep up the good work!!! look forward to seeing more great photos from you!!
anyway, back to the template, just as ivy has already said, 800 x 600 screen resolution is really outdated. i dont think many ppl used that anymore.
Check out Michelle’s last blog post: Mini Ribbed Lace Bolera
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hey teddy,
Although I pay homage to your site quite often, I have never felt the need to leave a comment so far. I’m just a casual visitor who enjoys looking at the pictures you take and the blog posts you write.
This time round, however, I think its necessary for me to thank you for writing that article on HDR photography. I’ve just ventured into the world of photography a couple months ago (getting my first dSLR) and I have to say your post about HDR really taught me a lot!
So i wikipedia-ed more about HDR, read some more tutorials and articles and played around with this technique for a while. It really produced some excellent pictures for me! On a side note I’d like to leave my two cents on this topic, as a way of saying thank you. Try taking photographs of cloudy skies at dusk, during sunsets or evenings. The contours of colors and displacement of shadows leaves alot of detail to be appreciated once you merge all different exposures into a HDR image.
thanks again for introducing me to HDR and keep up the good blogging! Looking forward to your next batch of pictures.
cheers!
Ranz from canada
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Ivy: You’re welcome
anyway I’ve chekced the statistics, for the overall trend (ie since the start of this blog), 9% of the 50,000 visitors have 800×600 resolution. But according to recent reports (range set from March ‘07 till today), 5.94% (or 1500+ of them) have such resolution. I guess I could forgo 800×600 resolution then. Thanks for the suggestion anyway! I just realised that my site counter does more than just counting visitors, heh 
letti: Thank you!
ingSiang: Rooftop is quite well done, I just hated the fact that I’ve took a long time to get the photos taken (7 in total) such that the clouds overhead have moved significantly, causing a grey-ish blur on the top left corner
anyway your fireworks photo doesn’t look artificial at all! Shooting from the bottom is another interesting way at looking things.
Michelle: Thank you! Actually it’s the photo manipulation programme that’s getting the colours out real good… my skills are not very good yet! I’m still yet to grasp the art of taking photos of perfect composition… for some reason I still can’t handle the rule of thirds well, lol
yeap thanks I think I’m forgoing 800×600 compatibility…
ranz: Thank you, I feel really honoured to have a reader like you who frequently drops by my blog
Welcome to the world of photography and congratulations on getting your very first dSLR (oh mans I’m yet to get one, heh 
but it’s okay)… actually I am yet to post a tutorial on HDR, I’m flattered to know that you find my HDR posts useful (since I gave very vague instructions and very little details)… you’ll surely be a wonderful photographer, makr my word 
thank you for the tips, I really appreciate them! Have a great day, and see you soon.
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Welcome back, Teddy! I absolutely love the Rooftop photo.
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The Reflection gets my vote ;)..it really does look like i am seeing and trying to focus into the image in the pool of water…great work
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u know im very curious about HDR, like i did take a picture of the same thing lah with -2, 0 and +2(is that even correct? lol). But how do u like join it all?? Because i must surrender when it comes to photoshop. =(
Check out Melissa’s last blog post: Chinese New Year 2008
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the sky color are farking blue…what camera are you using?
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thecoffeesnob: Thanks for the warm welcome! I’ve been away for 5 days… that’s long! Sorry to keep you waiting. Thanks for the compliment anyway!
med: Thank you
it’s one of my favourite HDRs so far, I’m going to love it! Anyway what really puzzles me is where did you derive your nickname from?
Melissa: Yes it’s correct, as long as you have 3 (or more) differently exposed photos. Now what you need to do now is either use Photoshop’s HDR function, accessbile via File > Automate > Merge to HDR. You’ll be asked to do some tweaking and the rest it’ll do for you
oh and if you don’t mind watermarks, you can use Photomatix to get your HDR tone-mapped too (but it adds watermarks to your HDRs in the end). Panthee Sweat is nice enough to share an interesting way of removing the watermarks though.
iCalvyn: The blue is a result of a HDR artefact where colours are used to be saturated (or sometimes worse, OVERsaturated). I use a consumer grade camera, Pentax Optio S55.
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