Beach Jump!
The day before school started, the committee members of the 2009 Malaysian Freshmen Orientation Camp headed to Sentosa in search for nothing else but fun in the sun! Of course the day started with us travelling from NTU all the way to Sentosa beach in chartered buses. We did this singing gig on the bus with only a few people actually singing to the tune – the rest were reciting the lyrics, pretty amusing. Dee brought along his Alpha 350 (yes, the one with the tilt screen) and we starting to shoot each other.
Dee and his A350. We indulged in a few moments of shooting each other.
Arriving at Sentosa we headed for Siloso beach. The weather wasn’t very good in the past few days – although we still have a considerable amount of cloud cover, it’s still very sunny and so darn hot there. Since we kind of know each other before this outing, the ice-breaking session was hastily wrapped up – marking the start of some hardcore playing on the beach.
More photos are behind the jump! The post is so long that I can’t afford to publish it entirely on the front page:
Carmen sporting a pair of glamorous sunglasses
Gotta be one of my favourite shot for the day – Carmen with her glamorous shades! Love the reflection on her eyepieces. I did a little photoshopping trick though – colour dodged, increased contrast and highlighted the eyepieces and then blended the reflection into the original photo. Here’s a rough sketch of what happened behind the scenes:
Post-processing of Carmen's photo
I hope Carmen doesn’t mind me displaying her face in three rapid successions, heh! Oh, and we have Andrew who coordinated the whole outing. Thank you for keeping everyone motivated and excited!
Andrew the coordinator.
Ready? Go! - Clearing the hurdle.
You’re not alone if you find the above photo a little… surreal. If you haven’t noticed, there are two jumpers (both are Hong Kiat, in yellow) – I have two photos taken in close succession and so what I did was just to align them, and then mask the rest of the image except for the jumper himself.
Some sea water for you.
Look! There's a water jacket on your back!
Our gatherings, regardless of whether is it to celebrate one’s birthday or just an outdoor trip (like this one), will always end up with at least one person getting wet. We’d throw people into ponds (we call it ponding) or make people splash each other. Taken at 1/1000th second, freezing the water droplets in the air came at a price of higher noise.
Taste my fury! Whipped cream fight. Meow!
Of course, nothing beats having an adrenalin rush at a beach gathering – we gathered up the losing groups, and pelted them with plates of whipped cream (some of the attacks even took the liberty to sprinkle some sand to spice it up). The ‘torture’ session of the losing groups eventually escalated into a full scale whipped cream fight, with people indiscriminately shoving whipped cream into your face. Mmmph!
Just another group photo
So many people are coming up to me to have their group photo taken and I’ve lost track of the numbers. This is one of the best, with me squatting on the ground instead of standing. Pang Chong was holding the blue water balloon because he thinks it’s a ________.
Wow, what cup is that?! (forgive me for the noise, I forgot the change the ISO settings)
Some even went great lengths to mimic human mammary glands (breasts sounds so crude, hah!) by inserting balloons into their shirts. Here’s one hilarous photo – the look on Sebastian’s face (the one in green, extreme right) is priceless.
The art of confusion.
We also played this game where we toss someone’s slipper into a ring, blindfold him and get two groups of people – one to make sure he gets his slipper back while the other does the exact opposite. Screams filled the air. Guys backed out as the shrieking girls completely overpowered them :razz:
Please, don't spill it all over me!
This game was tricky – you’ll need to lie down, use your legs to retrieve the bucket from the person in front of you and then pass it to the person behind you with hands over your head. The two greatest fears of this game are (1) getting sand and water all over your face and (2) spilling water on your crotch. Yikes! I took quite a lot of photos but I’m sure that nobody wants to see their grimacing faces with their legs propped up in the air, ass facing the camera… so I end up with only the two photos above.
Flag game!
The flag game – flag-holders are given multi-coloured flags and they will have to follow instructions to raise/lower their hands accordingly. Those who screwed up will have a free face-painting session with black, oil-based paint (which means it can’t be washed off that easily). The game also includes an occasional mad dash into the sea, and back to retrive a flag. Afterall, they just want you to get wet and dirty.
Get on and count!
One of the most torturous game of the day – one person stands on the left of another while the one standing on top will be asked a math question. If he gets it right, he can get down. Really funny scene!
Dunking time!
When the games are over, it’s dunking time! We started throwing high and dry people into the sea, bwahaha. And soon before one can notice, everyone is in the water already :)
Random photos that I can't find anywhere else to post.
Group photo in the sea!
So yeap, that’s the end of this post!
p/s: If you didn’t notice, I’m actually playing around with a few cross-processing techniques for the photos in the post – some of them have a colour balance off the norm and etc. I’m still experimenting, so it’s not perfect!
Wah, 5am still haven’t sleep? Thanks for ur effort!
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@daifei: Oh, that’s because I accidentally drank Coke and it makes me very restless. So I just process the photos first before I get too busy to do them, haha!
Wow that looks like a lot of fun! I remember going to Sentosa last time, but I didn’t go to the beach areas. Come to think of it, I’ve not been to the beach for years aside from the quite recent funfair held by the local university there.
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@Aki: It is a lot of fun that we had! When was the last time you’ve been to Sentosa? It changed a lot since then, and you should come when the Integrated Resort is completed ;) it’ll be a fantastic experience!
I rarely go beaches nowadays as well – in the past, whenever it’s holiday, my brother and I were guaranteed a trip to the beach in Penang! I miss those days now, so badly.
@teddY: The last time I went there was in 2004. 5 years! :O
I remember a few things about Sentosa but my memory isn’t so clear now :P I’m getting old lol. I should probably go to Singapore again. I’ve only been there twice. Once was when I was only three (and I’ve absolutely no recollection of it)
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@teddY: Wow, that’s quite a long time ago! Sentosa definitely changed a lot since then, and they’re still in the process of improving it. The new IR is coming up (and taking shape too), they have a new monorail system (they scrapped the old one haha). The beach facilities are a lot better, but things are still as expensive as before – well, you can’t expect discounts at a touristy place heh.
hehehe…very fun outing with interesting beach theme games i.e. getting wet ;)
My absolute favourite photo is the surreal one – it’s not only beautifully framed, and brightly lit, and appearing to be a shot out of paradise … but when you pointed out that BOTH yellow shirted people were the same person my jaw just dropped.
That was bloody clever of you, Terry! Amazingness …
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@Eli James: Thank you! Actually there are even more amazing examples on Flickr – one of the best I’ve seen so far is this photo. Basically he asked poor Julian (the subject) to jump several times so that he can get a range of photos showing his dive into the pool. It’s not easy!
Mine is pretty easily achievable – as long as you have two nearly identical scenes, you can ‘paint’ an initially non-existent object (present in the other photo) onto the first photo. Heheh!
Thanks for the compliments! I don’t it my version deserve a jaw drop though – it’s still very amateurish heh!
Waah! Looks fun! Hehe. I bet you had fun with your camera too. :D
Nice photos!! Wee~
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Looks like a lot of fun, Teddy! Its nice to see an A350 – one that I almost chose as my first dSLR. Haha.
I would agree with Eli James about the surreal jumping photo! Very clever technique. I absolutely like how your friend in yellow seems to be looking at himself jumping over the rope. It’s almost as if he’s picturing his feat ahead of time. Awesome!
And the blue skies and coconut trees all around are really what made that photo stand out. =D
I’ve also been a great fan of cross-processing lately! The tones produced with that technique can convey a mood otherwise not possible with traditional post-processing. Good luck with it! =)
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@ember: Oh yea, how can I forget that! But look at you now – a contemplated and happy Nikon user, teehee! Actually during the jump he wasn’t sure if he could clear the line or not – we were just coercing him to do it because he’s one of the taller guys, muahaha! The power of persuasion.
Cross processing do make the colours a little off (like for this post, most photos tend to the green side), I’m still trying to get myself used to it.
Great photos, Teddy! What fun. :D I wish my class would have done something this cool while I was in school, lol. We did take that one trip to the zoo though… hah
Really.. great captures!
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@med: Yea, going to the beach is all about getting wet (and probably, some sand in your mouth). Heh!
@abdusfauzi: Definitely! Nothing beats having to cover the event with your camera, and being able to keep all the photos yourself. Muahaha.
@Latrina: Speaking of trips to the zoo, I don’t remember going to a zoo with my schoolmates in childhood, what a shame! The only time I went to a zoo was when my parents brought us there. I think that was when I was only four or five. I couldn’t remember much, except for being given a generous serving of giraffe sliver when feeding!