Truphotos
I know Chinese New Year is over, but just to recap one of my personal shoots I did on the eve. Knowing that the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple has a lightup of the entire building only on Chinese New Year’s Eve, I went there during sunset to wait for the golden hour when most of the people were having their reunion dinner. Yup I had mine too 
Since the golden hour only lasts for a short while, I planned the shoot in my head while travelling to the destination. I wanted a standard head on shot. The key point was the timing and colour of the sky to balance the brightness of the sky after sunset and the lighting from the building exterior.
But it was not meant to be. I reached the temple and expected to setup my equipment, click some shutters and call it a day, but the never-ending flow of passersby kept everything from going smooth. The most frustrating thing was a man (presumably drunk) who stood at the entrance and was enjoying all the attention that people who wanted to take photos of the temple were giving him.
With my equipment ready to fire, I was just anticipating for the brief moment when this man would move out of my viewfinder’s view. Of course that didn’t happen. Instead, he started singing some tragic love song…
With the golden hour soon to be over, I reluctantly shifted my lens to a different angle and fired some shots. Only until it was pitch black did the man leave the scene.
The main photo above was one of the successful ones. Below is a comparison of one taken during the golden hour and one with the sun totally gone down. And before anyone asks, no HDR processing was done, just captured directly in-camera. Which one do you prefer?
If you’d like to find out more about how I took up photography, my inspirations and my thinking processes behind the camera, check out this interview by Tristan Jud over at RAW, with a part reproduced here for your viewing pleasure. Visit RAW: Interview with Weizhong Deng for the full interview
Many thanks to Tristan for the awesome questions~
And also Happy Chinese New Year to those who celebrate it! We have entered the new Dragon year, and I hope this year will be a meaningful one full of peace and happiness for everyone!
Original source: RAW: Interview with Weizhong Deng
What inspired you to get started in photography?
My very first contact with photography came when my father bought me a compact digital camera for a summer program to Japan in 2004. I started snapping at everything that caught my interest or at things which I wanted to preserve as memories.
However, I officially picked up photography when I went back to Japan for a 1-year exchange program in 2008. While I was there, I was mesmerised by the many beautiful Japanese landscapes and scenery that I came across in magazines and posters. At the same time, my buddy happened to introduce the digital SLR to me when I was contemplating getting a new camera. I had no intention of getting a dSLR at first, but I am glad I did.
What’s your favourite photo that you’ve taken and does it have any significance?
This has always been a very difficult question to answer as I have many favourites, but one of the most satisfying piece has to be “First light”. I recall seeing a photo of Moraine Lake in a magazine and was instantly captivated by its surreal colours and glassy reflections. From then on, I have always wanted to capture it in a different light and when I finally did, it gave me a huge sense of satisfaction.
Select a photo you have taken, explain how it was taken and how did you edit it?
This location is quite a popular spot for people looking to capture the iconic image of Singapore. Faced with the challenge of the popularity of the location, I thought of capturing it with a slightly different twist rather than producing something similar to what many have already done.
Since the buildings were lit up with different coloured lights, I planned to capture all of them in one shot to give a sense of the rainbow spectrum. The biggest issue here was that most of the lights were orange, and each of the other coloured lights were programmed to change colour after every predetermined amount of time. Green and pink were the most gruelling as their sequences were very random. As a result, I had to put in quite a bit of effort to anticipate the exact moment when the lights changed into the correct combination of colours that I had in mind. The fact that I had to do this before the golden hour is over adds to the complexity of the shot.
For post-processing, all I did were some minor adjustments to the white balance, brightness and sharpness in Lightroom. No other fine-tuning was required.
What processing tool do you use and do you believe in the camera doing all the work or in post?
I stick to Lightroom most of the time for basic retouching (white balance, contrast, shadows etc). I always strive to do everything right in-camera and reduce the amount of post-processing work. I have received feedback from viewers wondering if I use HDR techniques, but I would like to clarify that no HDR processing has been done on all my work. Instead, I always attempt to present my work as close as possible to what I witnessed. That said, I do use graduated neutral density filters to balance the high and low contrast areas to try to reproduce what the human eye actually sees.
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Another piece from my earlier days, this was a scene which inspired me when I happened to come across on a train back home. This was before I took up photography.
I was sitting beside a man who was browsing through images he had just taken. I happened to catch sight of an image on his camera’s LCD screen and needless to say, I was mesmerised. The one he had was slightly different in the sense that it was taken when the sun had totally gone down, pitch black sky with lights from the buildings and the Tokyo Tower. I have the other version too if anyone is interested.
It was only 2 years later when I picked up photography that I managed to see it for myself. As you can imagine, this view was etched in my mind for that 2 years.
Hope you enjoy this piece as much as I enjoyed capturing it!
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I came across this inspirational piece of text circulating online and just felt like sharing it. It just describes what I am feeling right now. Sometimes, no matter how hard you are working, or how much effort you are putting into something, some self-doubt just surfaces out of nowhere and makes you feel as though your world is just standing still. Sometimes it just demoralises you and you feel like giving up.
The key here is to define and reestablish your goals really clearly, and not lose sight of yourself in the midst of all the expectations, demands, requests bombarding at you from all angles.
