October 15, 2019
Today, I brought one of my close friends over to take pictures of beautiful architecture in Singapore.
We decided to go to Thian Hock Keng temple, the Rainbow Tree, and Old Hill Street Police Station.
At this beautiful temple, I had some trouble adjusting all my lighting, since it was my first trial. I had lots of overexposed and underexposed images, as you can see.
The left picture has a lower ISO, while the right picture has a higher ISO. The higher image should be more overexposed, but to me, it seems as if both pictures are both overexposed equally. The f-stop are both very similar, with 4.2 and 4.1. So if the pictures with the same aperture and different ISO are overexposed, then I've concluded that the shutter speed affects this as well. I expected the ISO of 100 to be more underexposed, but with the shutter speed of 1/25, it brightens up the image. This would mean that as the shutter speed increases (a smaller denominator), the picture brightens up. However, with the ISO of 400 image, which the picture would be overexposed, the image is not completely overexposed, perhaps due to the shutter speed of 1/400, a small shutter speed.
I also had a lot of tilted and shaky picture. Some pictures I took were intentionally tilted, since I was playing around with angling. However, even though they were intentional, some just did not seem to be intentional, and those angles are ones that I now know not to play around with.
Another thing that I experimented with here was the aperture setting, and wanted to see what kinds of pictures and feelings a change in this setting could portray.
Here are some different aperture pictures that I took using an incense stick:
This one had a low F-stop, making the depth of field very shallow. I also adjusted the shutter-speed, knowing that shutter speed affects movements in pictures, to try to portray the smoke.
I also played around with different angles, such as a low side angle, a straight angle, and many close-ups.
I am starting to realize that my style of photography is one with very stark contrast of colors and very up close, rather than far way shots.
Next, we went to the Rainbow Tree, where I faced a huge disappointment. I was extremely excited to explore this place, since I’ve never heard of it, and none of the people I’ve talked to have heard of it either. But… I guess there was a reason why no one has heard of it. The park that housed the tree, Katong Park, was under huge renovations, which I found out only after arriving there (it’s a beautiful tree that I would’ve liked to explore, but couldn’t for this project. However, the park opens again in 2020, so it is worth a look then!)
We then explored Old Hill Street Police Station, and the building itself was one that I was very familiar with; however, I, and my friend, both did not know it served this much significance. More on the the Police Station at my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hiddenplaces_sg/