Europe June '08 Part 1.3/12 - Paris

This is the last part for Paris.

Taken from inside the Louvre

Still inside the Louvre

Out of the Louvre, into the Notre Dame

One of the stained glasses inside the Notre Dame

This must be where the Headless MRT Ghost story originated from

One of the Notre Dame pillars

Seven floors of pure shopping heaven? I think not

The Champs-Elysees, with the ever-present Arc at the end of it

That's Paris done, about 11 more main parts to go. This will take awhile.

Europe June '08 Part 1.2/12 - Paris

Continued.

More shots from Level 2

Still on Level 2..

The Arc de Triomphe, standing tall among all the other buildings

No prizes for guessing where this shot was taken

Taken at the Louvre

Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you

And Napolean ninjas the Pope's epic hat

Short on time at the moment so 1.3 will have to wait.

Europe June '08 Part 1.1/12 - Paris

Sorry for the delay! I just got Photoshop yesterday and set to work earlier today. Can't say for sure how many parts in total this set will have because I took loads of pictures. Broke each main city into a few smaller subsets to make uploading easier.

At the moment, I've only done the edits for Paris, which will be split into 3 smaller parts. So here goes!

The Arc de Triomphe, pictured with the Roundabout of Heroes (makes our SS15 roundabout look like a joke)

Notre Dame de Paris

The other side of the Notre Dame

Eiffel Tower pictured from the River Seine.

Eiffel Tower at night. The tiny specks of white light on the Tower are actually flickering

Lastly, Eiffel Tower pictured from ground level in broad daylight

Pictured from Level 2 of the Eiffel Tower. Level 2 is a bloody misnomer!

More to come over the next few days!

Just so you know

I'm still very much alive.

P/s - due to certain geographical relocations, this blog has been aptly renamed.

Ayambak

Finally got home after a short 2 week holiday. Covered some parts of France, Switzerland and Italy during that time (Paris-Geneva-Nice-Venice-Rome). Had to endure some gruelling bus rides along the way but I guess it was well worth it in the end.

Here's a before and after shot of my arm.

Looks much more pronounced IRL. The flash made it seem less dark than it actually is.

I took about 700 shots within the 2 weeks so it'll probably take me quite awhile to review all the shots, let alone decide which ones to put up. Stick around over the next 2 months or so I guess :P

Bristol Zoo Part 3/3 - Dan Lain-lain

Part 3 will be for everything else which I'm too lazy to categorize

Itsy bitsy spider has legs far hairier than mine

Sup yo

Lonely monkey one,

meet lonely monkey two.

Cehh macam gaya only

One hell of a poser, this meerkat is. Speaking of which, I missed a really heartwarming picture of a meerkat family huddled close together just because my camera died early :(

And I shall end this set with a picture of a butt, a gorilla's one no less

So that concludes the Bristol Zoo set and clears up my backlog (for now). Will be leaving for a short vacation in a bit and will deffo take lots of pictures while I'm away. Due to the impending busy-ness, I can only hope to be able to post those pictures up around August/September. Might be able to sneak a part or two in July but that's about it.

Hope you enjoyed everything so far. Gonna sign off now. Ta!

P/s I'm just starting to get to grips with Photoshop over the last 2 sets so my photoediting might still be crap at best, but do bear with me!

One Hundred and Four

I think this is as far as I can/will go, as far as Expert is concerned. Never really bothered with Beginner or Intermediate :P

Bristol Zoo Part 2/3 - Under the Sea

Voila - part 2!

Sooo dark and gloomy down there...

The obligatory Nemo picture. They weren't very friendly and refused to pose for a nice picture though

Lonely lonely lonely, eating all alone :(

Whaaa...morning already..?

This is the penguin enclosure

Another shot of the penguins' home. The tube in the middle of the pool is actually an underwater walkway. Sadly, the penguins were all on a swimming strike and hence I saw nothing interesting down there

Enjoying a nap under the sun after a long day's swim

Cheeky little fella. It's almost as if he knew I was standing there with a camera and just dived right in front of me

Fingers crossed, I hope I can get Part 3 up before I leave for vacation tomorrow.

Bristol Zoo Part 1/3 - Reptiles & Insects

So I finally paid a (long overdue) visit to the Zoo a few days ago. Low light conditions and glass enclosures (meaning no flash and nasty reflections from ambient lighting) made some shots hell to take. I had 3 choices - underexpose my pictures, use a higher ISO (which also means more noise) or somehow remain totally still while the picture was being taken. Ultimately, only the first 2 options were viable so I had to play around with the settings and reach a reasonable compromise. Some shots though were just simply unshootable so I left it at that.

I wouldn't say the shots were fantastic, but it definitely was something different compared to what I've been shooting all along. Sadly, my camera died early in this trip. I do not know if it's a fault with the camera itself or the batteries, but I ran through 2 pairs of batteries shooting only less than 200 pictures/2 hours. As a result, I missed some rather interesting shots :(

Anywho, on to the pictures.

Omg whodunit!?

I wonder what he's grinning at...

I have to say, I really liked the skin 's level of detail in this picture

His facial expression reminds me of a certain, oft-used MSN smiley. Agree?

It's a leaf! It's an insect! No - it's a leaf insect!

Can be really hard to tell which is leaf and which is insect at first glance

Not so clever now eh?

Here, have a random beetle

That's it for Part 1. Can't promise when I can get the remaining 2 parts up but I'll do what I can.

Sunday Morning Part 2/2

Part 2 will be Harbourside shots. Enjoy!

Symmetry is a wonderful thing

Rainbow mysteriously appeared out of nowhere, so I tried to follow it...

...and found out that it ends there, far behind the row of houses. So much for my pot of gold :(

I feel that this looks more like a painting than a photograph when viewed in small-medium size

That is all for this set. The pictures of Brandon Hill were somewhat disappointing imo but at least some of the Harbourside ones came out nice.

The next set will be pictures of Bristol Zoo. However, that will take a few days at the very least as I juggle between packing, finding out my results and editing the pictures. The zoo outing was quite a challenging one as I found myself in unfamiliar (and naturally, unfavourable) shooting conditions. But sadly, that will be a story for another day.

Sooo.... signing out for now. Be back in a couple of days! (...hopefully)