Nike Free 5.0

MH's latest goal.

Okay I think I'm like a Nike Fanboy now since my current running shoes are from Nike as well. (And the White Nike Dunks) But these are barefoot shoes! Super bendy and light, and designed to replicate the feeling of running barefoot as accurately as possible. Now I'm torn between this or Vans/DC shoes. :/

In other news:

Signed up for the Standard Chartered Marathon on the 5th December. I have no idea why I signed up for a 42.195km race when I can barely run 2.4km. Ah wells it's a good excuse to get new running shoes like that one above! :D If only there was a swimming marathon, I would definitely join it. :( Swimming is more fun than running.

Anyone else wanna go run! You need to be 18 and above for the full marathon though, but if you sign up before the 12th June you save $40. :)

New Zealand Day Four.

The Hardcore Photographer Look.

Finally Day 4. Hahaha. I need to go on a photo editing spree but my current module dictates the daily usage of photoshop to the extent that I get so sick of using it at the end of the day. =(

Birds and Vectors.

So for my current module I have an exercise that requires us to trace an image manually, by hand. And one of the images I chose was this.

 Those are birds flying by the way, shot in New Zealand! :)

Then I proceeded to spend the next 3 hours tracing out the birds with the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator. For noob non-designers, the end result was like this.

I then proceeded to open up the original image in Photoshop, just to irritate myself further. And in less than 5 minutes I had pretty much the exact same result.

I even had 3 more birds. :/

Ah wells, at least now I feel like a model student for following my lecturer's instructions and not cheating with Live Trace or Photoshop. Hahaha and I feel like a pen tool expert now! Come on give me something to vectorize!

Okay anyways if anyone wants the birds in a vector format you can download it here and do whatever you want with it. (Unless your lecturer forbids you to use the birds)
Hopefully you won't have to waste 3 hours of your life like I did. :) Okay back to work.

Lame Jokes and Tai Chi.

Was walking to the bus stop alone after Cell Group today when I realised that this was one of the few times when I'd be walking alone. Because my Church in Bishan is kind of far from the 136 bus stop in Ang Mo Kio (okay it's not that far). Usually I'd just cut through Bishan Park, although now the park is closed for a revamp and you can't cut through it anymore. :(

Lenson Enters a Bus.

Lenson demonstrating how to open the door of a bus, by pressing a button. =D

New Zealand Day Three.

Before you start reading, you should be warned that this post contains a lot of pictures of mountains (like the one above), so if you have a phobia of mountains or other rock-related fears, you probably should not read this post. :D

Ambiguity.

I hate ambiguity. I hate people who are ambiguous, cryptic, mysterious, about their feelings and thoughts. I hate it when people say things about someone, without naming that someone. It is as if they are delegating the arduous task of figuring out what they mean to others to decipher, when a single word uttered from them about who they are talking about would save everyone a lot of misunderstanding and grief. It is as though their feelings are open to interpretation, although half the time these interpretations are wrong and misunderstood.

But then again, I am ambiguous myself. Since there is always an alluring quality to ambiguity, to be able to say something and have it mean a lot of things, or nothing at all. To allow the meaning of your words to change as with everything else. To be able to vent your frustrations about someone without inadvertently confronting them or hurting their feelings. To speak your thoughts on a subject without being forced to draw a conclusion that makes it final. To weigh both sides of an argument without making a stand. In other words, to stay in the gray area and not be in the black or white. 

Am I a hypocrite then, to say that I hate ambiguous people and yet am ambiguous on many things myself? To say that I hate people who don’t give provide a name to who their talking to, when I don’t do that either?

But what if I said that I hated being ambiguous as well. I hate ambiguous people, myself included. Would it still be hypocrisy if I hated my actions as much as everyone else’s? That this was a part of my life that I wish I could let go? That I could speak openly to anybody about any subject, without any reservations or without the attractiveness of keeping my opinions to myself. Because we're all taught to be polite and respectful and kind. And somehow this all leads to us hiding from the truth when it needs to be spoken. Not really speaking lies, but not exactly telling the truth either.

This is such an ambiguous post. Hahahaha. The Colorado Kid by Stephen King is a book that left me stunned after reading it, maybe because it's related to this. And it's short so you can read it in a day like I did. =)

New Blogskin.

It's been two years since I last changed my blogskin, and two years before I changed my blogskin before that as well. I figured my old one was getting kind of, you know, old? Anyways, it's good to have something new once in a while right? It's like new shoes except you can't walk around in them and it's free. Horrid analogy hahaha.

Interesting thing about this blogskin is that there are page breaks! Like this one right here asking you to read more.

Cross Processed.

Part of our design for Studio Lighting was to take pictures of Teddy around random places in Singapore and compile the images into the Cd sleeve, haha and so we/I went around shooting pictures of Teddy with a roll of Fuji Velvia 50 slide film, which cost $14. =(

Unfortunately, the photo lab cross processed my slide film, so instead of nice normal looking photographs we ended up with lomography-like pictures. Which was kind of depressing because I did not want to believe that I had just spent $24 dollars to get an effect I can easily replicate in Photoshop for free. Hahaha I tried to undo the cross processing in Photoshop and got varying results, so I decided to just post the original pictures without any editing. I think they turned out okay though, at least I got 39 exposures. =)

Met up with Ryan and Shawn on a Friday to go shoot the rest of the roll around the City Hall area. Three guys walking around with a Teddy Bear=Lots of stares. Hahaha.

We went to two playgrounds, a library, a bookstore, Selegie Soya Bean and all the roads in between. =)

We discovered this awesome playground with swings! =D Thanks in part to Google Maps on Ryan's iPhone.

How this photo was shot:

The leaf next to Teddy reminds me of New Zealand, haha.

Okay that's all.

Studio Lighting.

Okay so my first module was Studio Lighting! Where we learned about studio lights, seriously. Like the one above. We were spilt into groups of three and had to choose an object to shoot throughout the block. And my group choose a Teddy Bear! Hahaha. I was without a doubt the manliest guy in my group, because I was grouped with Gwen and Si Pei. Being the only guy was okay, but I had to carry all the heavyrelatively weightless lights around.

The Teddy that was our model for the 4 weeks. (Wearing sunglasses to protect his eyes from the constant barrage of flashes)

We learned to shoot pictures like this.

And this.

I think the module turned out much more stressful than initially anticipated, and we were rushing to get everything done towards the end. And I don't think I like product photography very much. Mostly because it's so irritating to keep having to shoot the same thing over and over and constantly correct any insignificant mistakes in the picture. Gah.

But I think my group mates were super cool! (Although they probably won't read this hahaha) Like the three of us had very different design styles, Si Pei was the graphic designer, Gwen the illustrator and me the photographer. And we had very different ideas on what looked nice (not that I didn't like pink heart shapes and flowers, but you know..), but we still managed to come up with a CD Sleeve design that I think was awesome.

You know, why is it that girls can design something that guys would like, but if a guy starts designing flowers and heart shapes, it's just wrong. Then again, I do not want to be the first guy to create flowery pink designs.

And the three of us are left-handed! =D My hair is not curly at all by the way.

Okay the rest of the pictures were taken randomly throughout the block.

The Fm2 could sync with the studio lights, when my D80 could not. =(

I think this was one of the few times in Design School where our work was collaborative and group-based, and I think learning to work in a team is difficult. Not so much recognising the need to compromise on your ideas at times as maintaining a sense of enthusiasm even if the design is not moving in a direction you'd want. But then again, it wouldn't be called learning if it was something you already knew. Not that I had any problems with my group, other than a constant recurrence of pink in the colour schemes, hahaha.

And I thank God for my group mates and the opportunity to work with them. I think such opportunities don't come by very often.

The End of a Block.

Studio Lighting and Public Speaking is over! Today was such a hectic day from start to end that I felt really weird when my final presentation and speech was over. Like the whole thing ended so swiftly and instantaneously that I was not used to it at all. It feels like there's still some deadline to meet, although I'm more or less free for the next two days. Then it starts all over again on Monday with new deadlines! I'm going to sleep now.

Okay will blog soon, but I've been updating my tumblr regularly though. And attempting unsuccessfully to sort out my thoughts which have been anything but coherent and lucid and capable of articulation.

Never mind back to swimming tomorrow!

Cheryl's 20th Birthday.

Long overdue pictures.

I'm kind of stuck on a desaturated colours phase now, because I'm kind of bored with the usual saturated colours in my photographs. And thanks to my recent stalking of lots of photographers with amazing film-like pictures hahaha. So I decided to post-process almost everything with desaturated colours! =D

I think I'll probably get tired of desaturated colours and revert back to the usual edits and leave the desaturated to film though. Haha. Or maybe I'll stick to this an be a wedding photographer like this awesome guy that Yt introduced me to.

Brace yourself. *Puts on Sunglasses* For Timothy's braces.

Daniel took some of the pictures too! Whilst I was eating. =)

Self-Portrait.

I miss long brown hair.

Ken Watanabe Pose.

Kiwi bird we gave Cheryl. With awesome hair-styling properties. =)

Rest of the photos on Facebook here. =)