Eating as a Tour Group in China

Native food and performance in a restaurant furnished with the village theme.

The first song is a chinese folk song. The second is a popular chinese song.

The latter would cost 200RMB.

We do not know the couple who is holding their wedding in the same restaurant.

5 Microns

An architecture visit to a Precision Engineering factory turns into a photography exercise.

To each a task












To each a control panel








To each a bottle

Talking about factory, photographer Zhao Ren Hui did an amazing series called "this working life"

In front of the Scene

In a commissioned work, some pictures will be selected (by client) for use, the rest not needed. So why not?

"Selected" pictures could be seen at www.Uniqduo.com

In-Character Lighting?

Editorial photographer like Dan Winters could take pictures of well known personnel/celebrity in a different light (pun intended). It might whip up a different story for TIME and reveals certain character of the person we might not have known, or usually, seen on screen or print. There may be supposition that they have encountered certain major event of their life that changed them or something. The character could be constantly revised.

In Cosplay photography, the situation might well be inverted. The character, lives in the anime or manga. Otakus and anime fans knew what kind of person they are and their character is fixed unless there are extension to the stories or omakes.

That said, is there a kind of in-character lighting? While the cosplayers attempt to act out the character they are dressing as, the photographer had to "set up" artificial lighting to portray the character of the character?

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion

Suzaku Kururugi

Knighted as Knight of Zero, the highest order of knights . He claims that achieving results by wrong or illegal methods is meaningless, wanting to change Britannia from within. He has such strong sense of justice that he murdered his own father, a governor of a state, for the price of peace. Later, he found out that the princess he served (Euphemia), was killed by his best friend.

Anya Alstriem

She is also a knight, for her age it is quite an achievement. And, for her age, she seems to lack in common sense and have few expression and little interest to the whole around her. Perhaps it is due to her twisted memory. She has a nine year old diary which she does not remember writing, as well as other diary and blog entries that do not match up with her memories. She doesn't trust her own memories and in order to have a firm grip of her memory, Anya regularly uses her camera phone to update her blog.

Cosplays event to Cosplay Photoshoot

From taking cosplay during event day itself to cosplay private shoot at location. Is it considered a graduation?

Out of Character

Out of character (OOC), a cosplay lingo that means not being into the character that the person is cosplaying. In other words, any expression or pose that is interpreted to not be what the manga/anime/game character will be, while the shots are being taken.

Most often, having fun, laughing, being themselves in front the camera is OOC.

-

This is Gin from the manga, Love Celebrity. Rich and most influential young master in the country. Able to have everything in the world (especially girls). Full of confidence. Always cool. Never reveal any weakness.

The scenario in the manga is about him breaking into a wedding hall and took back his girl who is about to be forced marriage to another person. From opening the church door with light shining from behind him, to snatching the bride, to crushing the rose and tossing it away exclaiming " I am as beautiful as roses, but i am as tough as the thorns."

The above scene will never happen in the manga.

Start of Year Again 2009

After half a year deprived of cosplay photoshoot, Itismoi went to SOYA'09 recently.

A dilemma.

Wanted to experiment with pull processing to achieve a low contrast and saturation image which looks like a manga cover rendered with copic markers. If so an overexposure of 1 stop will be required. He only had an iso 100 slides. There are issue of not enough speed and uncertainty in the result. The next cosplay in Singapore will be 6 months away.



Luckily, although the result is not as expected, the exposure turns out ok. Looking through the first roll of slides through a lightbox is simply intriguing. Depth of field is more than sharpness vs blurness, it looks like layers of focus, the focused image jumps out at you!

Anyway, the cosplay event is great. The cosplayers are good at their poses, they could pull off certain poses.

Faved Cosplayer
Hayato Gokudera - KHR


All these are nice too.

Yoshida Kazumi


Ikki - Air Gear


Reno - FF Advent Children


And lastly, there is a cinematic quality to this.
Archer - Fate/Stay Night


Thanks all the cosplayers that day.

Untitled 01

why does she need to hold on to the handrail when she is sitting?

Why this photo is taken

Gotten hold of a twin lens reflex.

Having fun handling the camera.

Excited about the square crop.

Saw this plant.

Reminded of Rinko Kawauchi's photo.

Taken.

1/2 sec Dream of Chingay

A series of experimental photos taken at the rehearsal of Chingay Parade 09 yesterday. 

The parade is like a collage of performance and event. On one end, there are somersaulting Jesters, the other end, ladies wearing Japanese Kimono waving their fans, at the same time a famous local magician burns himself, and in the distance, local malay youth bang the drums (which reminds one of the street drum parade in france).

However, with events happening every moments, they are too distracting for one who tries to compose in his viewfinder. So Itismoi decides to see the parade selectively. He finds the colors and movements of certain dancers' costumes very captivating and surreal. They flung their flowing long skirts and sleeves as they spins and glides. The floodlight from the backdrop gives a random color flare and "dirties" the shot. The cloudless night sky makes a perfect dark backdrop.

Sometimes one is immersed in the colors

These 3 shots are inspired by Ninamika's senstivity to color. Her pictures are much more than photoshopping and mixing of the correct color scheme. It will be a constant exploration for Itismoi.

More photos here.

"It is better to take photos of the rehearsal than the event day itself."

-Itismoi

This is not the beginning. Has many photos yet to post and many more to come.

Anyway, Happy 2009!

Fireworks at Marina Barrage (as if it was identifiable).  Itismoi was using his brother film camera with a half loaded (or half finished) film. Only one exposure was taken in the whole event and little did he know that it was a black and white film.