53 | Film Series II

(Taken with Pentax K1000, Kodak Portra 200 Film)

Working with a manual film camera was the most challenging and exciting thing ever. Bring it along with me to a city that I've never been to before adds to the whole challenging thing. It's never easy carrying a camera around. It weighs you down, quite literally. And it's always a risk. A risk to take that one shot, praying hard that you are in focus, your hands didn't shake up or that someone didn't run right into your lens because that would really be a bummer. But I did got out of focus, shook up and had someone walked right in just as I hit the button. I also had the pleasure of experiencing the top woes of shooting on film - wasting a roll of film. I was devastated but I expected it. However I'm glad I at least got a roll of films to look back on and it encourages me to continue learning and challenging myself. Cause hey, nobody said it was easy; you just got to try try try.



(I contemplated hard whether to edit these or even align them properly but I decided to just leave them as how they were captured, I think I like them better that way.)

48

Played tourist with the man the other day at Gardens By the Bay and honestly it was one of the best experience ever. I've only been to the Flower Dome once with my family on a crowded Sunday so heading to this gem on a weekday is truly a plus point because lesser people equates a way better experience. There isn't the noise and the crowd and the multiple body parts in your picture. The crowd was relatively okay for a Wednesday and although we were indoors most of the time the ample sunlight was a blessing for gorgeous sights in natural light.

We headed to the Cloud Forest first which seemed to be a bad choice since it proved to be the better of the two domes. We spent about 2 hours in the Cloud Forest because honestly the temperature was just right we weren't too keen on heading out so soon. As much as the waterfall was really a sight to behold, I wonder why they placed it so near the entrance because honestly getting a full picture of the waterfall prove some difficulty with the short distance between the entrance door and the waterfall. Everyone was practically crowded at one area before we even stepped like two steps into the dome. 

I tried to be more into the plants and flowers because you know that's kinda what this dome is about but I'll be honest and say plants kinda bore me and all I appreciate are the colors so I'm not going to pretend like I'm an avid plant photographer and introduce all these flowers to you cause I only took them cause they're pretty. Ha.

After Cloud Forest we stoned at Macs for a really really looooong time because we weren't exactly excited about Flower Dome after coming out of the magical waterfall. We walked through the Flower Dome in like about an hour and at that time my guinea pig gave birth (AGAIN) so I was preoccupied with the new babies and the flowers were forgotten. Also, the flowers in season were Chrysanthemum which we both didn't fancy. The only Chrysanthemum the man liked was the one which he could drink and I just didn't appreciate them at all. So we just sat on the benches (alot) and enjoyed each other's company.

I would say this is a much needed break that we both needed. One away from the hustle of school although school only started for like a few weeks but we were quite drained from the information overload. I would actually head over to Cloud Forest again with a book and just sit there and read. The lighting in there is just perfect for a good read although it's quite an expensive read but you get my point, most definitely will go back again when I need another break.

44 | Hong Kong Diary

Hong Kong was hot. And half the time it felt so much like Singapore - the crowd, the weather and the rush from one place to another. The one thing I never got used to was standing on the right of the escalator instead of the left, like we do here in Singapore. I ate non-stop, walked almost everywhere and soaked in the blazing hot sun, wind and sights. I wouldn't say I recharged on this trip or slowed down much but it felt great snapping away on my camera instead of punching numbers on my calculator. I wasn't too much into getting more clothes, just more nanoblocks and scarves. Besides, with a three month 9 to 6 office job coming up, pretty clothes just seem so uncool for the office.

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I didn't have much time to retouch any of the photos above, okay maybe partly because I'm extremely lazy to do so, VSCO cam is too brilliant and convenient that PS seems like a chore now. The extremely bright sun played a part in the photos looking almost flawless without edits so okay sun, you do deserve some credit apart from tuning me ten shades darker. And I finally got down to manually adjusting the aperture and shutter speed for my photos so although I took less photos than usual, I'm proud to say that these weren't auto mode photos 

*pats self on back*

Shot with Olympus E-PL6 42mm