Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Pre-Dawn

A couple of Saturdays ago, I did something that I never thought I would do - I dragged myself away from a snoring husband and out of my comfortable king-size bed in the wee hours of the morning so that I could join a couple of my FlickrSG friends to capture some dawn shots of the Merlion and the Esplanade. Whizzing into the city and arriving at 6 a.m. at the foot of the famed Merlion, I find one of my FlickrSG mates, 'eyes1997' and her hubby already set up with tripod on the ready, and I am thinking to myself, "hmmm, these two have got to be in their early years of marriage... no way a husband of more than 10 years (like mine, for example) would leave his comfy bolster and goose-down pillow to follow his wife on a pre-dawn photo-jaunt!" [followed by a cynical hrmph!]

Doing the Merlion
At about 6.30 a.m., this is what I saw of the Merlion lighted up and having just started on its very distinctive 'act'. This reminds me of my last trip up to Jiuzhaigou Valley in Sichuan, PRC (about 3,000 metres above sea-level) during which I suffered a disastrous bout of altitude sickness, and ended up doing a pretty good imitation of the Merlion 'act'!

B.L.U.E.
This is a long exposure shot of The Esplanade Bridge, with the street lights being reflected off the waters. Quite surreal with a little bit of digital post-processing.

And if you now ask me where are those dawn shots with the rising sun in the background, I can only sheepishly answer that I didn't check the weather the day before. With a slight haze descending on the morning, and very little cloud play, the dawn was for me pretty bland and undramatic and my other shots turned out like 'crap'. Okay, this is the classic 'workman blaming his tools' excuse (in this case, blame the weather) as my other FlickrSG buddies did manage to take some pretty awesome shots, like this one, this one, and this one. These guys are good, aren't they?

Looks like I need more practice and more early morning traipsing!

8 Comments:

Blogger seventh stranger said...

wow, 6 am on a sunday morning? heeeee. well, i have to say, it's verrrrryyyyyy difficult!

the last one i did was the shears bridge run.... it rained pretty heavy the later part.

8/31/2006 12:04:00 AM  
Blogger Edith said...

takes lots of determination to get out of that bed!! from the looks of your pix, i think it is worth it. stunning.

8/31/2006 10:23:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Absolutely stunning!

8/31/2006 03:16:00 PM  
Blogger Rosa's Yummy Yums said...

Absolutely magnificent!

8/31/2006 04:21:00 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

@seventh stranger, yeah, tell me about it!! doubt if I'll be getting up so early again for quite awhile :-)

@PM, pam and rosa - THANKS, you guys are very sweet :-D

8/31/2006 10:28:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

>> Looks like I need more practice and
>> more early morning traipsing!
nahhh ... go study more about the weather instead :P

9/01/2006 01:50:00 AM  
Blogger Babe_KL said...

wow so beautiful!

9/04/2006 10:38:00 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

@slurp... lolz, will check weather report the next time for sure!

@babe - thanks :-))

9/13/2006 07:52:00 PM  

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