Category Archives: Clare
Songbird
We chanced upon this jazz performance while at Paragon last Sunday. For some reason, this lady’s voice attracted a fair number of kids who decided to plonked themselves onto the floor in front of her. Believe it or not, Clare insisted on sitting through the entire performance and made me sit down on the floor next to her. Not that I minded of course, although I was fairly sheepish at being the only adult with a front row seat 
Clare getting her dose of Sunday afternoon jazz.
Clare deciding that her doggy stuffed toy wanted to listen to music too.
Transit at Guangzhou Baiyun Airport
I was reading the colourful prose of Neruda in contrast to the dull grey skies that greeted me as we touched down at Baiyun Airport.
It was actually a blessing that I had two and a half hours to kill during transit there. The airport is HUGE, and some bits are still under construction. Finding my departure gate turned out to be a bit of a treasure hunt as the signs were few and far between, and I even had to take one of those golf cart contraptions and it went down this long and windy corridor that would have passed off as an expressway back home, except that it was indoors! I actually attempted to walk down that corridor at first, but turned back after a minute or so when I realised that the cart driver wasn’t kidding when he said it was very long.
The boarding gate turned out to be this comparatively tiny holding area in the bowels of the airport. It was one of those rooms where you wait for them to ferry you to your plane in a bus. It was raining outside, so I was all prepared to brave the wind and rain for a brief spell, and trying to be thankful that I had at least found the departure gate with lots of time to spare.
Then, the next thing I knew, this announcement blared out that the departure gate had changed. A horde of people swarmed out of the waiting room and I kind of got swept along into a lift and along to another departure area, this time within a more mainstream part of the airport, which seemed to smell of stale cooking oil (can’t have ‘em all I guess). On the bright side, I would be staying high and dry as this boarding gate had a sky bridge, so I wouldn’t have to break out my goretex jacket.
I’m not sure what the temperature was in Guangzhou, but it got very cold, even inside the airport terminal. I’m glad I brought my puffy michelin-man style jacket. I suspect it will come in handy at some point.
My thoughts on having to put my rusty mandarin to use after all these years? Still barely manageable, though the locals speak a bit too fast for me to understand them on the first try.
The other revelation of the day is that I’m getting soft with age. After trying to mentally and emotionally prepare Clare for my trip over the past week, I surprised myself by almost bursting into tears at the gate when I saw what a brave and wonderful little girl I had. Apart from asking me a few times why I needed to get on the airplane “all by myself”, and that she wanted to go with me when she got older, she didn’t kick up a fuss or cry. She even waved at me as I quickly walked away before I started to cry.
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f20090081tmax400_contact009, originally uploaded by photokalia.
This is actually an accidental scan of 2 different frames, but I kept it as I liked how it turned out.
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f20090081tmax400_contact010, originally uploaded by photokalia.
Years from now, when Clare sees this and wonders what in the world that furry thing in her hands was… for the record, it’s supposed to be a beaver, and Clare thinks it’s cute.
Watching tv with her doggy
Watching tv with her doggy, originally uploaded by photokalia.
Can’t get any sweeter than that
Proud Parent Moment
f20090077hp5_contact026, originally uploaded by photokalia.
Clare drew a car the other day all by herself! Being the photo-crazy parents we are, we immediately organised a photoshoot to celebrate!
New lens
f20090074tmax400_contact014, originally uploaded by photokalia.
Above: Clare unimpressed with the camera/lens setup. She prefers the Leica maybe?
It’s complicated, but since I am in the blogging mood, I might as well explain. I got a new lens for my mum’s old Olympus OM10 camera. It’s a 50mm f/1.8 lens that used to be sold as a kit lens together with the OM series of cameras.
I have been shooting a lot of film lately, and one of the problems I always run into that digital shooters never have to worry about is the issue of having black and white film in my camera when I want to shoot colour, and colour film in my camera when I want to shoot black and white (normally in horrible lighting situations where I know that I will end up with people looking like green-skinned aliens from another planet).
I toyed with the idea of getting myself another Leica, but I wasn’t willing to shell out that much cash for a camera that I essentially see as a spare, unless I’d made the decision to shoot film for the rest of my life and not look back on digital.
But I started out in digital, and I still think that digital generally does a better job at reproducing accurate colour compared to film. At its best, film colours can beat all the photoshop in the world, but most of the time, the results to me haven’t been worth the trouble, and I have come to the conclusion that if I want colour, I might as well just bite the bullet and go digital for that.
So I thought of getting one of those micro 4/3 cameras (still thinking hard about the Panasonic GF1 and 20mm pancake lens) to shoot colour, but again the cost is an issue. After a year in the land of Leica and film, I see how quickly digital cameras lose value, while the classic film cameras and lenses seem to hold their value quite well over the years.
That led me to think, “If I’m going to shell out cash to get a digital camera, why not just skip the GF1 and save up cash to go for my first choice?” I actually want to get a Leica M9. It’s full frame, and it’s a Leica rangefinder. Now that I’m hooked on rangefinders, this is a no-brainer for me.
Except… that the camera body alone costs a cool $9,000 to $10,000 at the moment. So that leads me to consider the Leica M8. Sure, it’s a 1.33 crop, and I will need those silly UV IR-cut filters to avoid getting purple instead of black when shooting black objects made of synthetic material, but it is at least more affordable at $3,500 for a used body.
But… if I’m going to save up and spend $3,500, then I’ll have to postpone that holiday that I desperately need.
So for now, my poor man’s solution is to spend less than $200 to get a decent lens and put it on a camera that I already have. The OM10 now has colour film in it, and my M6 has black and white in it.
And is all at peace now? Not quite. I love the lens, but I still prefer using a rangefinder compared to an SLR. As manual SLRs go, the OM10 is a great camera, but stacked up against my M6, there is no contest. I think it’s probably more of an emotional reaction, but I like the feel of the M6 much more. I have come to hate the shutter slap and viewfinder blackout of the SLRs, and I find focussing accurately on the SLR a challenge compared to the M6 (although this could be because the M6 viewfinder is much brighter).
So I’m still thinking very very hard… but at least thinking doesn’t cost me anything. Not for now anyway.
Clare wrote my name!
IMG_0974, originally uploaded by photokalia.
She grows so fast that we can’t keep up with her sometimes. Recently, she just whipped out the mini whiteboard and started to write my name. I was blown away!
Budding Actress
m20090008tmax400_contact009, originally uploaded by photokalia.
Clare got bored after a while and decided to try her hand at acting instead. She ran into the house declaring that she wanted to read, and then strolled out nonchalantly to get into the shot as Joan was trying to get a shot of her grandma.