My World Cup 2010 Food

Went to Kasbah before the Argentina VS Germany match to get a lamb doner, fries and scallop potatoes. In support of the World Cup 2010, I'm also having coke in the World Cup glass from McD (we finally collected all of the colours).

Half time now. Time to enjoy my food.

Excited To Be Older

LIGHTROOM THEN PHOTOSHOP. Retouching photos is starting to get longer now for me the more anal and detail I get with each photo. If only I can find the time to do more.

Anyway, this is a dedication to my two cousins and my brother (though his birthday isn't until August but thought I'd surprise him with a very advance birthday celebration since he was there too). Happy birthday guys!

Finally, A Facelift!

IT'S BEEN AWHILE SINCE I'VE DONE THIS - lack of internet at home is really depressing for my blogs. Especially now that it's the holiday, there's no other places to go online but at a cafe or someone's house. How sad. This also means that it's hard to post updates which is why I've been spending whatever time I can get online here in Miri updating my blogs.

Here on Shutter Speech's blog on the other hand I've spent the last hour or so on updating the looks via Blogger's new template editor. It's WYSIWYG editor is amazing! If only you could use your own background though but otherwise I haven't got much to complain about. After all, it did help me update this blog from the over-one-year-old look.

Next, real updates.

365 Days Blog

WE STARTED A BLOG NOT SO LONG AGO - again. This time, with a purpose. For 365 days, we aim to post at least one post each on something that we learn/learned. Check it out at http://theexclusives.wordpress.com and support us! Hopefully, within that one year, we'll be able to keep it up.

Portfolio

I'VE FINALLY MANAGED TO CREATE my portfolio though not entirely in my control but still, it's a work in progress. If you are hiring for designing or would like me to teach you anything concerning designing and photography, I'm here at your disposal. Head over to my portfolio for my artwork.

Comedy Night 2010

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND, the Brunei Amateur Dramatic Society presents their Comedy Night. Tickets are limited so come book yours quick for BND20 per person!

Date: 27th May 2010

Time: 8.00pm

Venue: D'Anggerek Apartments

Price: $20 pp (includes dinner buffet)

To book your tickets please contact:

Albert: 7181003

Greg: 8856815

or email: badsdrama@gmail.com

Tickets Pick Up

Day: Monday

Time: 7.30pm to 9.00pm

Venue: 6th Floor, D'Anggerek Apartments

From: Syaf

Fantasy Garden

I'VE BEEN IN A FANTASY ART MOOD as you can see in the above image. Originally, I was planning to create something different - something more modern. Going through my photo collection, I saw this photo I took last year of JuLeZz's sister during a Hari Raya photoshoot session. Tweak here, tweak there - and what did I end up with? Another fantasy art.

A lot of brushes and brush techniques went into the above piece - mostly dodging, burning and erasing certain parts to create the desired effect, something different than my usual style. I ended up loving the result and so I shared it (see facebook fan page).

One thing that annoys me at the moment though, my images seems to look a bit dark and sharp when I upload it on Picasa. Best that you go ahead to facebook to see how I intended the image to look like.

Sky High

I'VE BEEN TRYING HARD to keep practising my photoshop skills and get back to where I was before - back when I used to just design something from scratch - everything 100% photoshop. These days, I even need to go online and get some inspiration before I could even begin a piece. The results? I always end up with not 100% happy with the product but not entirely despised at the results as well. The most important part though is that I do see that I have been improving.

The above photomanipulation is my latest work on a photo I took of my fellow SEEDS members. The photo was originally taken on a flyover (after I parked safely on the side of course) and is a combination of a few stock photos I've collected the past few years. I apologize though that I can't remember who the photos were from (I really should keep a record of it).

The tiny planet was created by myself with a meadow stock photo after which I also added that single tree on it, also a stock photo. The little rainbow however was made by myself on photoshop itself. Easy job. This piece took me about an hour and a half to create - adjusting the lighting took most of my time.

PS: I miss working with the Oliver! casts and crew. Even though I've got a lot of work, it feels like I've got a lot of free time compared to the amount of time I dedicated on directing Oliver!.

Facebook post here

To A New Life With Another

I'VE BEEN BUSY WITH SEEDS this past few months. A lot of time was dedicated and sacrificed just to make sure that our production went well - and I have to say, I was amazed at the end product. I'll blog about that soon.

Today though, I would like to dedicate this post to this long awaited time where my brother is getting married. I wish him all the best and may he live a happy married life.

Photo: Taken during his Berzikir/Bebedak ceremony. See Facebook or Flickr for a better quality photo

Back To New Old School

AN INSPIRATION IS A STRONG TOOL for motivation. When you are interested in something and you see others who do well in them really do do well, it gives you that drive to want to be at the same level or do better. Unless of course if you are a jealous douchebag who just wants to trample on someone else's success (or steal them in some cases) or your self-esteem level is at an all time low, watching others do their magic I guess just doesn't cut it for you.

Going back to the topic, as you can see from the previous posts (here and here) I've been posting a lot on food. Our home-cooked food to be specific. Well, mostly JuLeZz's work. But my point being, I've never been so motivated to work on food this much before and it's all because of all the amazing food photos I've seen plus the food channels on TV.

Heck, I'm come to pray upon the wonders of TV (again). For years, I've ignored the device but now, it has come to a point where I'd have it in the background even while playing games on the PS3! But I do not stop there - I take it a step further - recording. I don't surf through channels - I surf through the schedules and when I find something I like (or a title that sounds interesting - mostly on Travel and AFC) I hit the record button. Now, only over a month later since we got our little digital magical device (little here being too over ambitious - Astro Max is huge!), we've recorded almost 20hours of TV shows. And I'm loving how you can just skip through the commercials while watching a recorded episode, the reason why I left TV for the internet to begin with anyway. But now, I can save all my hard disk space for my photos instead of downloaded TV episodes.

Next stop, Astro Beyond. HD is everything today!

Photo: Apple Brown Rice (inspired by 'Chef At Home' - we love that show) and Yoghurt Chicken (not actual name - I just can't remember what it's called).

Bolognaise & Meatballs

NO MORE BUYING READY MADE MEATBALLS. Everything was home made from scratch, except for the pasta of course.

Two food blog posts in a row! Wow...

Food, Glorious Food

FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD~ I seem to be watching Asian Food and the Travel channels a lot these days, mostly finding tips on how to create my own dish. JuLeZz makes really good food all the time and I always want to be there in the kitchen to help lessen her work. Sometimes I love to cook and even more so now that I'm so inspired after watching these TV channels. Even more addictive with the fact that we've got Astro Max which means that I can record a lot of food episodes I might miss.

Funny thing is, now that we're in the middle of producing Oliver! (see previous post), the song "Food, Glorious Food" always sings itself in my head, which makes me want to watch the channels more, cook some more and, inevitably, eat some more (or in this case, eat more).

Back to the topic at hand. Because of all these glorious food we've been watching, this month we decided to have home cooked meal - and we've started. I didn't get to take a photo of the yoghurt roasted chicken we had the day before yesterday but after the event we had in the kitchen yesterday, I thought I should keep a record of the meals we have this month. With that, we begin our first adventure into the culinary art kingdom!

Photo: JuLeZz made the Frittata while I the garlic bread.

Oliver! by SEEDS teaser

I CAN'T SAY MUCH ABOUT THIS at the moment so watch this space for more information. Just so you know, seats will be limited so if you are interested keep coming back or follow me on twitter.

A Symbol of Love

AS THE BEGINNING OF 2010 passes by, I keep getting busier and busier. Work seems to be filling most of my schedule these days leaving me with less time to do other things that I want to do such as spending quality time with JuLeZz, going through my photos (which have yet to be edited, uploaded and printed) and playing the new games I've bought.

I'm also in the middle of a few projects, some planning for stage performances and an event for my brother's after-wedding celebration. So I've pretty much got a heck of a lot in my hands to handle at the moment. Lack of updates here is unavoidable but hopefully I get to come back now and then to write something.

This year though, I'm hoping that I would be able to write more than just a few lines of mindless text.

Photo: My brother's fiance's sister's baby taken during my brother's engagement ceremony.

Happy 2010

BTW, HAPPY 2010 to all of you! It's not too late now is it?

High Contrast Black and White

DOING A PHOTOSHOOT SESSION WITH LIMITED TOOLS is extremely challenging but thank God for Adobe who came up with the brilliant Photoshop I can do almost anything to my photos. Even then I did have to keep in mind what I was going to do with each photo during the photoshoot, especially in terms of light directions like the photo above.

Anyway, photoshoot promotion is now over. It's no longer BND50 for a photo session. With the amount of time I'm dedicating to this, especially editing the photos, it's now at BND70. For more information, leave me a message.

Christina & Jeremy's Wedding Reception

SO IT WAS MY FIRST PHOTO TAKING at a Chinese wedding reception and did you know that they really feed you? This guy who was sitting next to me told me that what we had was nothing compared to how it used to be. They used to serve a 20-course meal! Amazing. I got to get myself invited to more of these receptions.

Anyway, congratulations to JuLeZz's friend, Christina, for finally tying the knot with Jeremy, who has been together with her for 8 years (I think that's what I heard they said that night). May you live a happy married life just like JuLeZz and myself.

Wet Bokeh

BOKEH, derived from the Japanese word boke (which means blur), is a term used when photographers take photos of lights by using wide aperture thus creating shallow depth of field to cause the certain lights and objects in a photo to appear like a blurred orb. Most use this technique for a dramatic background. The technique isn't that hard to learn but, in my experience, it's not easy to master either.

Sitting in Miri, in the middle of backing up my photos onto my external hard drive, I thought about Bokeh and tried to find something in the hotel room to experiment on. Instead, I went to a window and took a shot at the streets. The results are these two photos. I thought the wet windows gave an interesting effect on the lights.

The Glamourous Exclusives

THIS DECEMBER HOLIDAY IS GOING BY SO QUICKLY. I can't believe there's only a week left of it. That said, there's only a few days of 2009 left! Are you guys ready for 2010?

With the coming new year, I thought I'd design some kind of glamourous wallpaper for my computer and the result is as seen above. The colours and effects (smokey and noise) are designed around the original photo (see 'Playing With Silhouette'). There were a lot of noise in the photo, due to the lens I was using then, and I thought it would be nice to have the rest of the wallpaper flow. This one's called "The Glamourous Exclusives".

Playing With Silhouette

I'M BACK FROM VACATION and it wasn't pretty. JuLeZz and I had one hell of an argument with the hotel staff at one of the places we stayed, though otherwise everything else was fun. Looking forward to our next trip at the end of the year.

While we were out of the country, I got a text from my aunt, asking me to be the photographer for her husband's 40th birthday celebration, held straight after we got back. It was a 60s themed party and, since we just got back, it wasn't easy to try and get ready for the theme - let alone prepare myself for the photography (speaking of which, I need to remind myself to send my DSLR for servicing).

All the rushing aside, we did enjoy ourselves at the party - especially towards the end. The photos above were taken during the final hour of the celebration. I didn't have the right lens that night so I had to boost the ISO up in order to get the silhouette effect. Admittedly, I'm not so happy with the final results but it was good fun taking the shots nonetheless.

The photo in the middle (of JuLeZz and me) was taken by my sister, Syamimi, after a brief explanation on how to do it. I trust her eye when it comes to taking photos for me. I hope she goes the DSLR way though - she's got potential.

Happy 40th birthday to my uncle!