A beggar outside the Bank Centre

The original shot was in color mode, and turned to monochrome and add some vignetting.

With the new retouch brush function in Aperture 3, I tried to brush away the saturation of the background, and just retain the color of the subject (the beggar). The result is interesting, but I don't like it. So I just keep with the basic processing.

Branches

Trees are everywhere, and similar picture can be found everywhere. I don't know why I love to take photos of branches. I just do.

Thanks to Apple bringing the curve function to Aperture 3.0. The Aperture 2 has a 4-point Level function, but it's not as good as the Curve command.

Show Window

I like to snap show windows. I always imagine the mascots inside the show windows have their own cognition, they are just not moving. They don't don't feel sad being confined in the crumble space of the showcase, but mocking the human being outside stupid enough to chase materials and fame that don't last....

In this snap, the mascot seems mocking the high-rised office building, and the people inside. The triangle shape of the mascot is also a strong design element in the frame.

Digitally alter to monochrome with orange filter setting (to further isolate the yellow dresses from the greenish background), and added selinium toning effect.

What are you looking for? / On Cross Processing

With the new Aperture 3, there is a lot of different 'presets' of common digital effect, Selinium tone is one, and this one is Cross Processing. Aperture will show a quick thumbnail preview of the effect when you mouse-over on different presets, so you will know how the image will look like before clicking on it. It's real fun!

This Cross Process effect (there are two different cross process presets in Aperture 3) resembles the E-to-C effect in the film age. "E" refers to E6, which is the Kodak process for color reversal slide films; and "C" refers to C41, the Kodak process for color negative films. People actually get this idea by accident: some people mistakenly used the C41 to process color reversal slide, and they find the processed slide to be of high contrasted and mis-colored. Some people like the surreal feeling, and intentionally use E-to-C as a creative tool of photography.

It's the old days. Now we have digital processing, and you don't need to know a lot about technical to try different color effect. Many new programs also have this kind of effect build-in, so all you need to do is one mouse click. HOW GOOD IT THAT!!

An off-finder street snap with wide angle, cropped and leveled. "Cross Process1" effect in Aperture.

"Passed by...." / On Selinium Toner

An old snap with slide (yes, the expensive slide). This shot was shot on ISO100 slide, handheld at approx. 1/4s, scanned with film scanner, and digitally altered to monochrome with Selinium tone.

Speaking of Selinium tone, it is actually more than an artistic style.

In the good old days of black-and-white photography, the photo paper was treated with chemicals. Because of the acidic nature of the 'fixing' process, b/w photos are prone to color fading over time, particular when photos are not washed in running water long enough. For additional stability of the photo-print, an additional step called 'toning' is often used. Most toner will alter the color of the print, e.g. Sepia Toner will add a brown tone to the print. Selinium Toner is the most stable toning chemical, and often used in gallery display.

The Power of Light

The beauty of nature is everywhere. You just have to look for it, and you will find it.

Only minor adjustment in curve.

Aperture 3.0

Having a quick trial on the Aperture 3.0, which claimed to have 200 new features.

It took me quite some trouble and time to upgrade my Aperture library: you need to have a lot of free HDD space on your Mac (approx. 1.5x of the file size of library); and the upgrade took overnight.

My initial feeling is:
- Most important news for Pentax user: Aperture finally get the Pentax EXIF right, and correctly display the lenses and meter mode information.
- Aperture 3.0 is faster than previous versions
- As expected, the face function is quite slow
- Finally, Aperture has the 'curve' function

I think the Aperture is a good program, and the 3.0 is getting better. Good for Apple.

Dawn at somewhere in China

An old snap took years ago.

When I snap, sometimes I will stop and wait for some interesting elements to come-into the frame; and this was one of these shots. Motorcycle is very common in this part of China, and the bike in this shot reflect my impression to this city more accurately.

It's a handheld shot, and I pushed the sensitivity way up to ISO 1600.

And this is Shantau, Guangdong.

The morning market

The market was not yet opened. Sunlight shines through the canopies of kiosks, casting different shades of shadows. I was on my way to work, and snap this with a P&S camera.

Took with color negative film, scanned by film scanner, digitally change to monochrome.

Buried? Still shines!

Deeply buried in concret, the barrel still shines with it's color. Ain't that inspiring?

Vignetting was added in digital processing to enhance the subdue mood of the scene.

Locked

I like locks recently, for unspeakable personal reasons.

Digitally monochrome with default setting in Aperture.

Branded?

Is that a famous logo out there?

To enhance the light and shadow, I choose to execute this image in monochrome, with an orange filter setting to show-up some details in the sky.

Blize on street

A quick snap on the busy street of MongKok, Hong Kong. It was the shadow and light that have my attention, so I choose to mix the photo into monochrome, and further highlight the shadow and light with a bit of vignetting.

A red dot

Spontaneousness, it's the word for DA21. Having my camera ready in my hand, I just keep my eyes open, and snap a photo whenever some scene catches my attention.

The contrast between the bright red paint and the grey concrete had my attention. The original shot matched my intention quite nicely, and I just add some vignetting to project a surreal feeling and further isolate this already abstract scene from the real world.

Spring Flowers

According to the Chinese calendar, it was "beginning-of-spring" on Feb 4, so it's officially spring now.

I seldom managed to border with the hassles of serious macro shots, but I still want to snap some of the beautiful nature stuff around. The FA43 gives very nature color rendering (even in over casted sky), and a very nice looking bokeh. I just love this lens!

Disc formatting on Mac OS

I am using Aperture to manage my photo library, and the library was on a FAT32 formatted external HDD connected to my Macbook via USB.

Such setup was slow, and I always have problem to sync the backup vault to the external HDD.

recently, I spent some hours to backup my library HDD and reformatted it with Mac native HFS format. After that, the vault function of Aperture works flawlessly!!

Time for me to embrace HFS.

破舊中的淒美

基本的圖像優化早已認定是數碼攝影的必要技巧，而很多軟件亦能輕鬆地作基本處理。

優化的原意是把照片修得更接近肉眼的感覺。但我則喜歡修得更接近我的心情。上圖原本的色彩沒那麼豐富的，但我就是想表達斷的鐵柱及鏽蝕的鐵皮也有其淒美的一面，所以拍攝是刻意用平面的構圖以便抽離現實；用較細的光圈以表達質感；電腦後期則加強了色彩濃度以表現冷暖色的對比；再加上暗角效果以製造超現實的感覺。