Travelling Lens

A Travel, Photography and Points Blog

Chinese New Year Lanterns, The Twelve Zodiacs

Even though I brought along my camera to Malaysia, I hardly took it out to shoot unless there was something in particular that I wanted to capture. I found as Malaysia is somewhere I visit quite often, I’m much more deliberate in what I photograph. On one of my last few nights in Penang, we visited the colourful Chinese New Year lantern display at Dewan Sri Pinang. Being Chinese New Year, Penang island was packed full of tourist. The lights attracted plenty of visitors even at 11pm at night. I enjoyed trying to compose photos with and without people in my shots. As it’s the year of the rooster, that was the most prominently displayed zodiac in the crowd.

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Life in transit

I had a couple of hours to spare waiting for my flight from Kuala Lumpur to Penang during my trip to Malaysia back in January. While I was waiting in transit in KLIA 2 airport, it came to me to shoot a short photo series on life waiting in transit. A mini project of sorts. I envisioned it to be a black and white series. Focusing on contrast, lines, curves and symmetry. I also wanted to encapsulate the typical scenes you find in any airport in the world. Walk ways, seats, large windows facing the tarmac, people walking, people resting. I couldn’t wait to load up the photos in Lightroom and convert them to black and white shots.

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Technocolour: Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains, Sydney

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This is a sneak peak into the upcoming Blue Mountains photo essay. I’m kicking it off with a HDR of the iconic Three Sisters. This was taken from the Three Sisters Lookout at Echo Point in Katoomba. It’s probably the most famous landmark in the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales. Each rock formation or “sister” is over 900 metres tall.

The unusual rock formation that is seen here represents the three sisters who turned into stone according to one of the Aboriginal legends. According to the legend, the three sisters, Meehni, Wimlah and Gunnedoo lived in Jamison Valley as members of the Katoomba tribe. Each sister fell in love with brothers of another tribe whom they are forbidden from marrying. The brothers sparked a tribal war as they wanted to use force to capture the sisters. To protect the three sisters, a witchdoctor turned the sisters into stone to protect them from harm. Unfortunately the witchdoctor could not reverse the spell as intended after the war as he was killed.

The day we visited the Blue Mountains was insanely windy. It was very challenging to hold the camera still when photographing. I managed to capture a couple of frames of bracketed shots which has been post-processed in Photomatix Pro. Thanks for stopping by today.

J.

Technocolour: Church of Good Sheppard, New Zealand

The Church of the Good Sheppard is probably one of the most photographed little churches in New Zealand. While I knew it was popular with photographers I did not expect so many tourist to be visiting and walking around the church late in the afternoon on the day we arrived in Tekapo. Mind you, I can see why its so popular. Tekapo was probably my favourite of all the towns and cities we travelled to during our two week road trip around New Zealand. It’s just such a beautiful and quaint little lake side town. Given we visited New Zealand in the Autumn, the Autumn colours were spectacular, especially late in the afternoon. Lake Tekapo felt so peaceful, beautiful and calm.

I actually photographed this church twice, once in the afternoon in golden hour (this photo here) and another time at night with the stars in the background. As there were lots of highlights and shadows in this scene, I bracketed the scene at +1, 0 and -1, then processed this in Photomatix Pro. This is a HDR photo that is part of the Technocolour Series. It’s been fun experimenting with HDR photography and seeing what my little Fujifilm X-T10 can do. Thanks for stopping by today.

J.

Viewing the sunset at Mount Ainslie lookout, Canberra

Mount Ainslie in Canberra was our last tourist stop on our day trip to Canberra. After experiencing the Last Post ceremony at the War Memorial, we drove up to Mount Ainslie lookout and ended out day in Canberra watching the sunset and the golden light falling across Canberra. It was a very chilly and windy day at the lookout. I was glad I had my wind breaker jacket with me, but that didn’t stop my hands from freezing up while trying to photograph the sunset and Canberra city. From the lookout we had a great view of Anzac Parade, the top of the War Memorial and Parliament House. The mountains in the background framed the scene perfectly

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