Lucerne, Switzerland

Lucerne (/ˌluːˈsɜrn/; German: Luzern, [luˈtsɛrn], is a city in north-central Switzerland, in the German-speaking portion of that country. Lucerne is the capital of the Canton of Lucerne and the capital of the district of the same name.

No, I didn’t go to Lucerne in Switzerland but I darn wish I did. The closest I can get to visiting the place is probably by editing the photos taken by boo on his trip in 2010.

He takes great photos really, but one of his shortcomings is that it takes him years (literally this time) to edit his photos and so he’s passed me his entire set of photos from his 2010 eurotrip for me to edit. I’m treating this as a challenge/exercise; to practice my editing on all sorts of lighting conditions and landscapes (snowscapes are also new to me).

All photos taken by boo but edited by me.

  At the Lucerne lion monument.

 One of my personal favourite edits. Love the mood and tone of this photo.

  Ausfahrt means highway exit.

 

No, I don’t know why there are so many pictures of cars.

xx

Lunch diaries #1

The Daily Grind at BV I.

 Best soft shell crab salad ever!

Just spent a considerable amount of time fixing up the template for this blog. A nice-looking blog is a motivation to blog more!

xx

The Supermoon

On Sunday night the boo was driving me home and I happened to look up towards the sky (completely unaware that the 23rd of June was the appearance of the Supermoon) and there was the moon, looking back at me in all its splendour and glory. Even with my naked eye I could see craters and bumps on the surface of the moon.

I was excited to go home and shoot this beautiful moon with my new gear (something previously unimaginable with my GF-1) and the pictures really did not disappoint. Albeit not very sharp at 100% cropped (and I did crop quite tightly) but sometimes you’ll just have to make do with low budget gear.

I learnt something new from shooting this. Dial down exposure and switch to spot metering so that the moon won’t get blown out against the dark sky. Managed to get a decent shot with 1/500s shutter at ISO320 considering the pitch black night sky.

xx

My weekend in pictures

One thing about working life and filling all my other available free time during the weekdays with being a gym junkie, is that you really start to appreciate having hours on end with nothing to do, but just to relax with the people you love.

I am virtually lifeless during the weekdays so the only chance that I get to wield my camera about is on weekends. Street photography to me is also something so new and so fresh I’m experimenting with that I always fear that I’ll be caught out by my subjects.

 
Celebrating Father’s Day

 
Boo and his beloved grandparents

I’ve been reading so many photography blogs recently, of blogger personalities from New York, Australian wedding photographers etc, and it’s inspired me to start up my own blog and also inspired me to want to take better pictures.

I think it’s my aspiration to be a wedding photographer someday. :)

xx

coming full circle

I remember starting my first blog more than 4 years ago when I just started university, partly it was jumping on the bandwagon because everybody around me had a blog (and blogging was all the rage back then), but partly because I finally had my own space to write whatever it was that I felt like putting out there into the vast space of the internet.

I’ve since moved all those posts away from this address in a bid to start afresh, but sometimes when I look back at all those posts, I’m glad I blogged during that time because I recorded my life as a university student. God knows how much I miss being a university student and not stuck in the never-ending cycle of routine that I’m in right now.

In boo’s garden.

Keeping up at something consistently has never been one of my strong suits, which explains why my relationship with this blog has been on and off for the last 4 years. But this time round I’ll focus more on making this a photography blog; one that I can sometimes rant to as well. Sometimes I feel that there is so much emotion inside me that maybe I can channel into writing.

One of boo’s family pets: Glory.

Reading a blog post today made me really empathize with the blogger, about how she felt as though all her peers from school were doing so much better in life than she was. Kudos to her, I think she’s really brave for talking about it on such a public domain.

Ever since I started working more than a year ago, I felt the same way about my own life. All my friends seemed to be doing better in life than me, working in higher paid jobs or jobs with better prospects, and I’ve never felt totally comfortable with telling people what I do, or how much I earn.

At the end of the day, I guess I just have to learn how to embrace my choices in life and not feel too insecure about things; and stop comparing myself to everyone else I know. I am seriously looking forward to the day when I can put all this behind me and really do something that I feel passionate about, something that makes me WANT to wake up everyday to do. Something that I never get tired of.

xx