After having fun taking photos with the two Jelly Lenses I bought off the web, and having known that Action City is selling it too (cheaper!), I decided to add a couple more Jelly Lenses to my collection...

So when squido was out shopping for these cool little gadgets the other day, I asked him to help me buy too...

Here's what I got...

Above are shots taken with the 3 Image Mirage and Starburst Jelly Lenses, at the Church of Sacred Heart...

My verdict:

These ones bought from Action City seemed to be less "sticky" than the ones I got from grannysnaps. But still great for providing more fun options in photo-taking. Pretty cool effects despite the strong tunnel-like vignetting caused by the lenses' translucent plastic bodies... which could be cropped off or eliminated by zooming...

I like!!!

To add on to my current crave for some slightly off-beat photography, and to my collection of plastic toy cameras, I have recently gotten hold of a couple of interesting lenses from grannysnaps to give my random snaps a quirky twist and some special effects...

These are called "Jelly Lenses", and they look like cute mobile phone accessories. But when you peel off the back cover from the sticky "jelly" adhesive pads, you could stick them onto the lenses of your mobile phones and digital compact cameras...

The special effects for the different lenses include: Wide Angle, Spark, Stretch, Mirage, Heart (with colour filter), Star (with colour filter), Starburst, etc...

For now, I have the Wide Angle and Spark lenses, and they look like this...

And here are the effects of both the Wide Angle and the Spark Jelly Lenses (see if you could tell them apart), taken over the past few days at various locations (image intensive)...


The quality of images after applying the Jelly Lens might not be the best, but nonetheless, it's a lot of fun!

And for S$6-15 each, depending on where you get it from, it's very affordable!

Firstly, let me wish everyone here a Merry Christmas and may everyone have a Wonderful New Year ahead!!!

I'd been neglecting my Emo Nemo series for a while (since September actually), but besides the usual busy schedule excuse, it's also mostly because film photography on a simplistic Holga toy camera requires good natural lighting... something that's not really happening in our "tropical winter" rainy seasons...

Anyway, my friend Bryan requested a photo shoot at the gardens for him and some of his products (mostly on his own camera) to post on his Omhealth website and blog, so I took that opportunity to bring along my Emo Nemo...

And here are the results:


Hope you like these!

You can also visit my other Lomo-style pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/myemonemo/

Constructive comments and feedback only please! :-)

In addition to the set of underwater photos in my previous entry, I also got my friend Stan to take a video footage of me swimming...

Being immersed fully in a body of water gives me the greatest pleasure and peace, and I have always wanted a little something to represent that feeling... 

So, out of the blue (so to speak), I've decided to create the following video clip with all the resources from yesterday's shoot and my very first attempt at using Windows Movie Maker...

Hope you will enjoy it...

Your constructive comments and feedback are most welcome!

A photographer friend, Stan Ngo (check out: www.dragonshutter.com), who's now based in Sydney has just returned to Singapore for a break, and after shooting a couple of female models in the day, he invited me to do some test shots for him...

We were trying to come up with different ideas and themes for the photo shoot, and I thought since I am such a water freak, why not do an underwater shoot for the fun of it?

Thankfully, he knows someone who stays at a new condo with a nice big swimming pool that's relatively empty...

Just in case, I decided to use my own Fujifilm Finepix F40fd instead of his expensive DSLR camera, and I managed to find a waterproof bag (kinda like one of those specially designed Ziploc bags) for cameras that allows for underwater photo-taking!

So, here are the results (with a little bit of "mermanish" effects created by yours truly)...

The images would have been much clearer and sharper if we had used the DSLR and with a proper underwater casing, but I kinda like the surreal effect here...

Will experiment with more such stuff soon, when I have the time... :-)

Anyway, as always, all my photos are not to be distributed or re-used without permission...

Here are some more random pics I took with my mobile phone, just for kicks...







:)

The past week saw me excitedly trying out the new Holga 135 BC camera, which I'd named "Emo Nemo", after it's rather moody-looking photos. And I am still searching for fresh ways to shoot old familiar places...

As the Hungry Ghost Festival drew to a close, I visited my late parents and relatives at the temples, which provided some interesting photo opportunities too...

Check out some of the photos I took along the way...

Again, constructive comments and helpful tips are much appreciated!

I just collected the scans from my 2nd roll of film today!

In this roll, I used Fujichrome Sensia 200 colour slides film, so that I could try out all that marvellous cross-processing that I'd heard so much about and been trying to recreate using Photoshop previously...

I happened to be near the Singapore Botanic Gardens on Monday, and it was not raining (surprise, surprise!), so I took the opportunity to hop over and snap some greenery...

Another thing is that in order to shoot more within one roll of 36 exposure film, I decided to do more double-exposures, meaning shooting two images within one single frame. That way, I could tell two stories at once! But more importantly, allow the darker photos to "share" the light and avoid total underexposure...

Here are the results:



Hope you like these!

Yes! I'd already shot and completed my very first roll of negative film this afternoon, with the final shot taken of David over lunch at IKEA... 

Despite the heavy downpour I immediately roped in Kit, and the three of us made our way over to Triple D Midi Lab at Burlington Square to process the film!

Thanks, guys, for accompanying me!

We had an hour's worth of workout at the gym, then I hopped back to the shop to collect the developed and scanned photos from Uncle Mike, the friendly proprietor of Triple D, and I walked away with a roll of Fujifilm Fujichrome Sensia 200 slide film, a cable shutter release, and most importantly, a CD-rom and negatives of my first set of Lomo images! Total damage = S$30.20.

I had been dreading the whole day about the outcome of my round-the-block shoot, as it was mostly done indoors and under low-light conditions. To my extreme delight, 31 out of the 39 frames contained actual images! In fact, most of these turned up pretty okay for a first-timer!

Granted, I DID spend most of my teenage and early adult years fooling around with film photography, but it HAS been around ten years. So I'm giving myself a big self-pat on my shoulder...

BTW, I had mentioned naming my Holga 135BC camera as "My Nemo", or "Nemo" for short. I have now given it a nickname: "Emo Nemo", which will also be my alter-ego identity on Lomo-related forums and websites etc...

Okay okay, enough chitchat! So here are the more presentable photos, and there weren't any Photoshopping involved. The only editing was some basic cropping and resizing, that's all!

Check them out:


For the above images, which are actually my test shots on my Holga, I tried playing with the various focus points, the Bulb and Normal modes, the Coloursplash flash, the multiple exposures etc. Some were successful, some were not... 

Perhaps some of you might be thinking why I'm going ga-ga over these grainy, blurry, unsophisticated images. I can only say, those who get it, will get it lah! :-)

There's still so much to learn, and that's great! It'll keep me on my toes!

But all in all, most importantly, I had tons of fun doing this, and am already looking forward to starting on that roll of slides film!!!

Several weeks back, I'd expressed a keen interest in picking up Lomo photography on my blog, and randomly mentioned that it's on my wishlist...

Well, I totally didn't expect anyone to take me seriously...

But today, I had received a super duper early birthday present (that's three months ahead of time) from one of my blog readers, Eusri, who had rather enjoyed my photo entries and wanted me to improve further by generously gifting me with my very own Lomo camera!

And so, now I am a proud owner of my very own Holga 135 BC camera AND an accompanying Holga 12MFC electronic flash unit with colour filters, as well as a roll of Kodak Gold 200 negative film!!!

Naturally, I loaded it all up and started snapping my first few Lomo shots there and then!

Also, because the camera comes with a cute little monkey sticker (not sure why), and following the tradition of naming my late beloved pet hamsters, Eeni and Mini, I am going to call this new baby...

For some time, I had been experimenting with creating the various Lomo-esque effects digitally using softwares, but now I can do it for real!

With the roll of 36 exposures film in My Nemo, and armed with the flash unit, I went for a night shoot around my estate. So far, 26 shots have been burnt onto the film already! Will take some more shots tomorrow, hopefully with brilliant daylight!

Granted, I no longer have as much control of the outcome of the images as I would have with my digital camera, and will only find out after the prints have been processed...

But I hope to be pleasantly surprised... :-)

Finally, I must say that after using digital cameras for the past 10 years, it feels rather strange - strangely limiting, yet strangely liberating - going back to an old school analog camera that doesn't even need any batteries to operate!

Ironically, I now have to find a way to scan all these upcoming photographic prints into digital format, so I can upload and post on my blog to share! LOL