Weekend Snapshots 22-23 October: The Darkness

Last weekend was relatively quiet because I descended into a blog redesign pit on Saturday and didn’t really emerge till about 3 am on Sunday night. Apart from going to church on Sunday, I literally didn’t leave the house during daylight hours the entire weekend, which is why I’m rather grateful the Nex-3 takes excellent (handheld!) low light photos.

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BBQ stingray at Boon Tat Street Seafood, Glutton Bay:

Boon Tat Street BBQ stingray, Glutton Bay

Installation art in the Esplanade foyer:

Installation art at the Esplanade

Giant squids attack Marina Bay! OK no, they’re part of i light marina bay, a sustainable light art festival, which is probably better to explore if (unlike us) you choose a night unblanketed by haze:

Giant squids attack Marina Bay Sands!

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the (skyscraper) forests of the night:

Tyger Tyger

Couple on the Helix Bridge:

Helix Bridge, Singapore

Light installations on the casino side of Marina Bay:

Lighting installation, Marina Bay Light Festival

In the shopping area of Marina Bay Sands, where it appears I am unlikely to ever buy anything:

Snapshot, Marina Bay Sands

Disturbing signage, East Coast Road:

That's not exactly how I eat ramen...

Pre-supper snacking (Nam San Mackerel Otah), Joo Chiat Road:

Nam San Mackerel Otak, Joo Chiat Road

Actual supper (Long Phung Vietnamese Restaurant), Joo Chiat Road:

Vietnamese Supper

Bridging

2009 has started with lots of small happy things for me, though it’s quite possible that a notable feelgoody achievement for me is a non-issue for someone more active and productive. Writing a letter, as in with a pen, on paper, to be sent in the post! Completing my Chiang Mai photobook only 2.5 years after the relevant holiday! Watching girls viciously beat each other up in a muay thai tournament at Golden Mile, while some of the best fried chicken I’ve had in a while (Diandin Leluk’s) was still travelling to my fat ass!

I wanted to add a photo to this entry to break up the text overload here lately, and with apologies to the boys, it’s not going to be the girl-on-girl action. Instead, here’s my favourite picture from another happy thing I started the year with, a night visit to the Southern Ridges aerial walk:

Follow the yellow bridge road
Follow the yellow bridge road

The Dancing Sky (National Museum of Singapore Night Festival)

The National Museum has cottoned on to the truth I have always known – that crowded outdoor events during the heat of the Singapore day are invariably miserable sweat-sodden affairs – and organized a rather delightful Night Festival instead. Here are some photos from The Dancing Sky, last weekend’s performance art spectacular by Italy’s Studio Festi. I haven’t a clue what any of it meant but it sure was pretty. I was in a rather bad position for photos and other people’s photos on Flickr are much much better, but I’m still happy enough with what my darling F31fd managed handheld.

The first half of the performance used the museum building as backdrop. There was a huge flying sailship and a grand piano that soared through the air complete with dancer on its lid, but unfortunately my photos of those weren’t very good.

 

The second half was set in the Singapore Management University garden, and it started with the projection of images onto a screen of water in the centre of the garden, like so:

After this, performers appeared on platforms dotted around the perimeter of the garden. A good place to watch all these performers was the centre bit where the water screen had been earlier, so that’s where I stood to watch this girl dancing:

Shortly after I took the above picture, the water screen came on again without warning, so I spent the rest of the event looking like an extremely low standard entry into a wet T-shirt contest.

Whatever Makes Her Happy, On A Saturday Night

A good Saturday night – chicken claypot rice, coffee pork ribs and sambal petai for dinner in Geylang, then lazy couch potato-ing at Alec’s place watching Children Of Men (lots of cats, a random flock of sheep, Clive Owen being a motherfucking rockstar and the best movie-making I’ve seen since Downfall) and Humbug (one of my favourite X-Files episodes ever) over cider, with Alec bearing my periodic exclamations of “Cats!”, “Sheep!” and “Rockstar!” with admirable indulgence.

Oh and just for the hell of it, here are some photos taken over the weekend with my brand new Fujifilm Finepix F31fd, which I’m very happy with. They’re not spectacular from an artistic point of view, they’re just my attempts to test out the universally raved about low-light capability of this camera. Basically, the following pictures were taken totally hand-held without much forethought or technical knowhow whatsoever.

Clarke Quay, Singapore
Clarke Quay restaurants
Clarke Quay reflections, Singapore
Clarke Quay reflections
Durian stall in Geylang, Singapore
A durian stall in Geylang
Red lanterns in Geylang, Singapore
Cornershop temple in Geylang
Clarke Quay canopy, Singapore
Study of the Clarke Quay canopies (my favourite shot)

As much as I loved my previous camera (Canon Ixus 430), there’s really no way it could have managed these – the darker shots, in particular, would have come out totally unusable or at least would have required a lot of post-processing. I’m very new to a lot of what this camera has to offer, such as aperture and shutter priority modes, but if it gives the above results to a clueless user, I can’t wait to see what it can do once I get to know it a bit better.