Following my friend to workshop for car service today at Taman Melawati where next to it is this Buy Sale Trade shop. Been a while since I last came here, so I guess while waiting for the car service to finish, I want to pay this shop a visit.

There are quite a number of electronic goods sold here, and I kinda wondering whether they have lens sold here. Bingo. There are a few lenses in the cupboard, and it is just my day. Too bad I didn’t bring my camera, but I really want to test those lens today. So after the car has been serviced, went back home, got my camera and came back here.

Most of the lenses are just merely a standard zoom lens that the focal length has been covered by my kit lens, except this one. This is Canon EF 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6 USM telephoto zoom lens. Give it a few test to make sure that it is in working condition, and check the glasses thoroughly to make sure no scratch.

At the end, I just decided to get this lens for RM159. I hope that I get a good price on this.

Well, with this, I have stocked another lens for my Canon EOS 40D. It looks like that I should get bigger bag to carry my gear pretty soon.

Still on my wish list: Canon 580EX II Speedlite, Canon BG-E2N Battery Grip, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro, Canon Zoom Telephoto EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM

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It’s been a while since I last blog about my cat. Recently, I got my boys a new toy for them to play with, and it’s actually a tunnel that looks like below.

I thing that I notice about my cat, everytime there is an opening that looks like tunnel, might it be an empty box, carpet that I make into tunnel shape, they like to play hide and seek in it. Looking this tunnel at pet shop, I know this is something that they will like for sure.

This is Uneng in the tunnel. Kinda hard to get photo of him as he kept running away eveytime I lie down on the floor looking into the tunnel.

And this is Uteh playing with the tunnel tu. Actually, he tried to grab my hand when I’m taking the photo.

As always, for every new toys that I brought back home, Oyen is the one that is most excited.

I kept this tunnel inside my bedroom, in front of the toilet’s door. And Oyen is always the one inside the tunnel,

and he even use the tunnel as the place for him to sleep.

Hhhmm.. Talking about monopoly…..

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It’s almost 2 months since I first got my Canon EOS 40D DSLR camera. My shutter count is at around 3500 now, which means, I have taken approximately 3500 photos using my new camera. But none of the photos I’ve taken really WOW me.

Been introduced to PhotoSchool by CandidSyndrome forum by a visitor of my blog, Fazira Abdull, and starting from that moment, I started getting an exposure on DSLR world. But after so many reading I’ve made and self experimentation with what I read, I still not satisfy with the photo that I take.

Then I saw the following adverts posted in the PhotoSchool forum. Then my heart starts to tick whether I want to join this or not. I want to, but I just too shy to make a move and book a place for me.

I made an enquiry about this outing for 15th March in the forum, where the post owner suddenly put me in the list of reserved people. Well. That’s the sign I guess. I should join this outing. Finally, made a payment to confirm my place. But just another thing happened, where the location has been changed from Tasik Perdana to Putrajaya.

Having a transportation problem, I just decided not to join, where someone in the forum private message me telling that I can car pool with her. What a brave girl she is. She hardly knows me, but willing to give me a lift to Putrajaya.

The day that I’ve been waiting for has arrived, and as early as 7:30am, I went to Putrajaya, car pool, with the girl that offered me a lift together with another lady. When you have something in common to talk about, the ice breaking process is so easy. And there’s no other thing that we talk in the car except photography. Surprisingly, all 3 of us are Canon user.

This is Brother Adhadi, the person that conducting this outing/class. He came from Software Engineering background, but give up that profession and doing wedding photography full time now. Software Engineering?? That’s my background too. LOL

I’ve taken this photo right after the class has started. See. This is the typical photo that I’m getting everything I photograph. The photo is a bit dark, and not very sharp.

There are 16 of us attending this outing today. We went through theory class for almost 2 and 1/2 hours, learning about the basic of digital photography. Then it’s practical time – how to shoot portraiture.

Oh boy. How I’ve been using not an optimal setting whenever I take photo all this while. The simple but yet invaluable lesson that I learn today, for portrait, use the telephoto side of the lens, use aperture priority mode, set the aperture to f/8 and ISO 200 (in this bright light), and let the camera decide the best shutter speed for normal exposure. And the result:

I don’t know. I feel that the photos above are way better that what I’ve taken so far. All the photos directly out from camera, unedited and uncropped. We don’t have model to be used as subject, so all of us take turn to be a model. As a matter of fact, I’ve been asked to be a model at the very beginning. Well, I don’t have the photo of me being a model since I’m the model and can’t take photo, and I am also not intended to ask those photos of me from others. LOL.

Then it’s lunch time. Hhmm. How time flies. Here are some of people that attending this outing having lunch. This photo is not well composed. I’m very weak at this. After lunch, the outing bring us to another topic, which is photo composition.

Bro Adhadi gave some tips on how to compose photo in viewfinder. But according to him, having the ability to take photo at a very good angle is not something that can easily learned. It takes a while to get acquainted with the process. It is more to skill than technical thing that has certain formula or format.

But from the tips given, here is a photo that I’ve taken applying the technique that Bro Adhadi explained,

and here’s another one.

For me, I guess this is far better than what I’ve taken all this while.

The next topic is using flash, and for this, we need some place dark. This session will expose us on how to use flash in proper way in the place where light is not enough to well lit a scene. Luckily, there’s an empty badminton court where we can spend a few minutes taking picture. But man. Someone came and chase us out, saying that we need an approval letter before we can use the facility.

But that incident won’t bring us down at all. We moved to the underground parking area, which is quite dark for this flash photography session. I didn’t actually follow this one as I don’t own myself a speedlite yet, and what being shown is more for Nikon users.

After that session ended, it’s the end of today’s outing as well. To be honest, I rather feel a bit sad. But, apart from learning a new thing in my life, this outing also give me a chance to make more new friends. Like I said. When you have something common to talk about, all of us get along pretty well, as of we have known each other for years.

A group photo ended out outing today, and as usual, the light particle emitted from me somehow didn’t perceived well by the camera’s photo sensor.

I’ll leave you all with the collage of photo that I made from the photos that I’ve taken from the outing today,

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So, what brings me to this foreign land? Actually, I’m visiting the vendor site – NextHorizon – for this whole week. My company has this thing called smart sourcing, and working together with NextHorizon is one part of it, replacing the old company that we worked with that couldn’t perform well. Can’t say too much about this, and this thing is so political and confidential.

NextHorizon is located on the 34th floor of Onelink International Plaza. Actually, the location is nice, at the heart of Guangzhou, overlooking the Pearl River.

One thing that I like about this building is the smart elevator they they have. Have you ever faced the situation where thousand of people waiting in front of a single elevator, since that one almost reached the ground floor? And eveybody just squeeze into that single elevator, with hands spagettied trying to press the floor button. And when the next elevator came, there’s hardly anyone got on it, and that pack elevator stop almost every floor.

Well, the elevator here work with the principle that you enter the floor that you want to go. The the panel will tell you which door to go through. In my case below, the panel said that I have to wait for elevator D.

This way, the elevator passenger is equally distributed between the 6 doors. And once you got into the elevator, there is no floor button to press, except the door open and door close button. I kinda like that that is very organized like this.

Not going to talk anything about the training I conducted today. It’s a boring topic to write anyway. There’s more fun thing that I would rather write, which is my dinner for today. I had dinner with 4 other NextHorizon’s member at Banana Leaf Restaurant – a thai restaurant located at Guangzhou World Trade Center. This is a very nice place. At the enterance, there is this very nice river like landscape greets you.

The interior decoration is very nice too. It’s like the rastaurant is built under a very lush trees…

… durian trees to be exact.

And not just that, there are also performances entertaining all the patrons at the restaurant.

I guess I got the spotlight too when the group came to our table, asking where I’m from, and singing a Malay song (which I never heard) after knowing that I’m from Malaysia.

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It’s time for me to travel again. Gosh. I started to feel exhausted and sick of this. I got my luggage packed, and most importantly, 3000 Yuan, ticket and passport in sight so that I won’t miss it. I woke up as early as 4am today to catch my 9am flight to Guangzhou. Booked a taxi already at 6am to bring me to KLIA, and the taxi’s here at 5:45am.

Yes. It’s MAS again that I’m flying this time. Being an Enrich member, I can collect miles from this trip, and eventually I hope that I collected enough for free trip somewhere (maybe to Indonesia side).

The gate for departure to Guangzhou changed last minute. Sigh. Walking from gate C1 to C15 is quite an exercise for me.

I’m staying at “4-star” Hotel Landmark Canton here in Guangzhou. It is just 5 mins walk to the office that I will be going to for the whole of 1 week here.

The hotel room is not bad. King size bed, tv showing satellite and cable program, as well as paid porn channel and free broadband internet.

But the best thing of all is the view from the window. The company that I’m going to visit tomorrow has booked a river view room for me. This is the view from my room. I bet the view will be nicer at night.

Anyway, 2 of the staffs (Jane and Joe) are very kind enough to pick me up at the airport, and bring me to the hotel. Once I arrived at hotel, Wendy then came and join. For a start, all 4 of us are having an evening tea at the restaurant nearby. Joe is ordering some food below, while me, Jane and Wendy having a sip on the hot chinese tea on this very fine 21 degrees celcius afternoon.

As always, when people from different culture sit on the same table, we tend to have an exchange of tales. Do you see the statue of the right below? That is 3-legged frog, which people here believe that it will bring money.

There is also an interesting piece of furniture here. An aquarium coffee table. Man! I really love this. When I have my own house in the future, this will be in my living room ;)

Fancy some ginseng? Well, this restaurant also offered ginseng/drink that has snake in it. Yeap. 1 jar containing snakes head, the other jar containing snakes body. I ask Jane about this, and it turned out that people drink this for health.

They asked me where I want to go next. Being in China I have to go their computer shops to look around at cheap china made products. So they brought me to Guangzhou’s technology and business district called Tianhe,

and went to several computer plaza there.

This place is pretty much like Low Yatt Plaza of Digital Mall in KL. Only that there are plenty of china made product, selling at very cheap price. Too bad that by the time that I got there, it almost closing time already. Shops closed at 7pm here.

Not doing any of the computer gadgets here since I can’t think what I want to get, but I stop at Canon store instead checking the price of Canon lens. Well, they are cheaper here. At the end, I just got myself a Circular Polarizing Filter for my lens here. I’m lucky to have them here, since most of people here can’t speak English. Joe also is very good at bargaining, and I’m getting that filter at a very very good price ;)

Wow. What a tiring day. Woke up at 4am today, and just having 1 hour nap in the flight, I feel very tired and so sleepy. Got back to the hotel after that. I kinda can’t wait to see how my hotel room window view looks like at night. Got in the room, went to the window, and I saw…..

Oh my. The view is so very nice, and very relaxing. Took a shower, ordered dinner from room service and I went to bed almost immediately after that. Tomorrow is a hard day.

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