Posts tagged kids

Pesta Tanglung at Number 4

Life

Last Friday, instead of having our usual cell group meeting, we decided to go “on leave” and have a mini Pesta Tanglung (or Lantern Festival) instead. We had it at a friend’s new home. Originally the Lantern festival is an ancient Chinese festival usually associated with the Lunar new year. In Malaysia, it’s more commonly associated with the mid-autumn festival or Moon festival where people will celebrate with food, family gatherings, lanterns and moon cakes. This is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, which is usually around late September or early October in the Gregorian calendar. It is a date that parallels the autumnal equinox of the solar calendar, when the moon is supposedly at its fullest and roundest. The traditional food of this festival is the moon cake.

All the shots were with available light and ISOs from 2500 to 12800 at f/1.8. Didn’t want to get in the way of the kids having fun…









My niece, Julia, OMF, Camerons

Photography 2 Comments

Children in some ways are easier to shoot that adults. Of course, there’s a different set of challenges and also not everyone’s the same. Like adults, some are more comfortable in front of the camera. Recently, I was at Camerons and while relaxing and also planning out some big changes ahead as well as a lot of calendar packing events — including a large photo seminar for university students as well as the upcoming Shoot4Charity fund raiser. My niece Julia was there and she’s a gregarious kid and rather happy to be in front of the camera. She proudly exclaims “I’m shooting pictures!”. Best part is she’s able to tell my 5D Mark II, battery grip, 70-200 f2.8 compared to daddy’s 500D and 18-200, “Your camera is much bigger than daddy’s!” Size does matter?

The OMF bungalow has a nice open area for kids to run around. It’s also a good time to think, reflect and plan for the future. Change is definitely on the horizon. Most of the shots were flash assisted with my RadioPoppers, even some of the daylight ones as I wanted more directional lighting.

Julia found the older kids (another group who was also staying in the bungalow with us) playing football (soccer) but they didn’t want her to play plus also they were kicking much harder. The only time we had was later in the evening about dinner time (around 7pm) when the kids went in for their dinner. I kinda of like those shots where I had to drag the shutter down quite a bit. You can see the slow shutter in the shots — I was going down to 1/30 at f/4.5, ISO 1250 in those shots. Some shots had 3 580EX IIs going off to provide enough light but as I didn’t move my lights around, some shots had to make do with a single flash (the others were off position).