Temporal Paralysis

Most of my shots were taken up North, where nature are less disturbed and less developed than in Singapore. If you’re wondering what kind of citizenship I hold, leave that thought somewhere. (Picture-intensive, so non-broadband users, please beware of slow loading times.)

In the land of the coconut palms, there are lots of villages and suburban towns scattered in Malaysia where coconut palm plantation is rife. This produce is the main source for all the cooking oils and some of the industrial-scale ingredients. It was also one of the fuels for bio-diesel. (Unfortunately, the economic downturn has also watered down demand for coconut palms.)

Bio-diversity in Malaysia is naturally far larger than Singapore, because of the large swathes of forested regions. However, the push for biodiesel as well as industrialization of agriculture has pushed the balance between a sustainable natural ecosystem, and development of the nation.

That is not to say that farmers must be denied access to modern living. But mindsets need to be cemented early on, to understand the fragile landscape of the Malay Peninsula forest (or what’s left of it) and temper it with a right mix of tolerance of wildlife, and clever use of farming methods (such as the use of predators to snare crop-snatching pests).

Sometimes, we often forget that we came to Earth out of nothing (but from a drop of semen), and we can take out nothing from the Earth (except our deeds and legacies). Hence we must ponder on our purpose in order to understand the complex nature of our planet.

I’m sorry, did I just bore you with my spiders?

Some of the shots I take are used with the 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS lenses, because some shots are not possible with the kit lens provided (such as the bird above). As a result, my shots feels more “naturist” than what I have intended to do in mind (that is, events photography). I tried my best to not use a higher ISO, so the maximum ISO I set for my images are 400 (on a Rebel XSi/450D).

It’s a hard take to shoot bees, because of their constant movement. It’s also hampered by the fact that the jungle floor lighting is poor (the forest canopy blocks sunlight sometimes). At best, some of the shots look good on small prints, but otherwise blurry on larger prints.

Some of the images here (or rather, most of them) have been post-processed using free and open-source software. RAW treatment is done via Raw Therapee (ISO 400 images have noises in them), and some image manipulation is done on The Gimp and Paint.NET. I’ve not taken to task in buying/”acquiring” the latest Adobe Photoshop CS4, nor am interested in Adobe Lightroom 2.0 (both are essential tools for photographers dabbling in digital darkroom software, and I recommended them to all other users).

Well, that wraps up my “naturist” post. I hope you enjoyed the photos I’ve posted up.

Speaking of up North, I spoke with some fellows I met up with, and they’re very keen to just go North in search of that… fabulous fast food item that starts with ‘R’. I’ll be more than happy to follow-up on such a gathering (JB is a whole new different ball-game than if you were travelling in the countryside, which was how I spent most of my weekends now). I’ll post up when I can finally safely say that you guys can come up North for some fun.