I traveled to Sydney (first time to Australia, and first time significantly into the southern hemisphere — Jakarta hardly counts) for work. Didn’t spend much time outside the hotel and customer sites but we did visit Circular Quay one night. Also there was a strange alley full of neon blue flying angels behind my hotel… You can see the rest of the photos in the Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, May 2012 photoset on Flickr [flickr.com].
Lytro’s site was taken offline after their consumer business was shut down. So now you can’t see the photos, :-(. Remember if it’s on someone else computer (in other words any “cloud”) you don’t really own it.
Gots me a Lytro [lytro.com]. Pre-ordered it last year but it’s been sitting at my mom’s house due to US only shipping policies since February. Finally got here last week. Sweet!
This is actually a scan of an old 35mm negative. I took this photo back in 1998 at a rave in my hometown, long before I knew how to handle my camera. But I’ve always loved the effect, though I think it looked better printed on glossy photo paper than it does scanned.
There has been some debate in Singapore over the fate of Bukit Brown Cemetery [wikipedia.org], the old Chinese Public Cemetery which opened in 1922 but has been mostly abandoned for a long time (the last burials were in 1972). Most visitors today are jogging. The government wants to start developing the land covered by the cemetery and surrounding undeveloped woodland. Many people don’t want it developed, they enjoy the peaceful nature filled setting and some are worried that it will exacerbate the flooding problem when it is all paved over. And I expect residents of the more exclusive and rich neighborhoods around it don’t want a 40,000 person HDB, or public housing, development in their backyard.
I thought I would go and check the place out since the government has decided to go ahead with redevelopment, so I visited it with Nir [flickr.com] to take a few photos. I have driven past the few graves that are close to the main road many times, often thinking if they would be nice to photograph, but I have never stopped. I also never realized, from the few graves that can be seen from the main road, how big the cemetery is — according to the National Archives of Singapore there are more than 100,000 graves. Unfortunately we didn’t stay very long, 40 minutes or so, as we both have other commitments. If I have a chance I may try to go back, the place deserves to be explored. There are many graves now so overgrown with trees and bush that you can stand a meter away and not see them. I’m sure there are some amazing photos waiting to be taken.
