Photography at Pavilion KL

Rawr!! This is the year of the Dragon, considered to be the most “mang” / ferocious creature among the 12 in the Chinese zodiac.

“From great Power comes Great PR necessity”. It’s actually interesting that anything good or bad can also be linked to the Dragon. And it’s not just any dragon. There’s 4 elementals (water, earth, metal and fire – not in that order) and 2012 is the year of the water Dragon. So you can imagine that it will be a year of greatness for farmers but also scorned and blamed by KL folks and feng shui “masters” if a flood should dare occur.

Dragons are usually depicted in red/gold/yellow colors, and the dragon in Pavilion certainly don’t give a damn, water dragon or otherwise.

Dragons and lion dances are above the norm for the Chinese. They are a necessity.

I dare say lion dances are actually mirrored after the Shi Tzu’s kept by empresses and concubines from the imperial court. Reason being no lions are ever that playful, and my little Shi Tzu at home are a perfect match in terms of behavior and general playfulness. Other owners would agree with me, else they are wrong.

Why they choose to skewer the poor dragon on sticks is beyond my understanding. Poor thing looks to be mutilated into different chunks and sew back together and paraded like a war trophy.

Ahh.. the dragon in all its magnificence! Flying in the air like it rightfully should..

Pavilion seems to be the must go attraction for photobugs like me and my friends. Every year it’s a hard decision to top the previous year and every year without miss Pavilion would get my unofficial award for the most walk-in photographer in a shopping mall. Every other day is like going to a photography convention.

Yeap.. those are my friends :P Taking low shots of the lion dances (or maybe not)

Everywhere we go, every other corner, there’s a little something to capture the photographer’s attention, forming a little human ring. Nothing ever gets damaged by little girls and their grabby fingers because of this protective human photographer ring. Little girls would therefore be trampled before she had a chance to even get near it.

Despite it all, sometimes I do get bored and take pictures of nothing to practice my skill. But that is not why I took the picture above. It’s just that my subject was eaten by hungry wolves by my second shot.

Photography is tiring. But we are relentless. When we have exhausted subjects to shoot, we shoot each other. Sometimes discretely :P

The Future Is Now

Yeap, that is what I would have screamed to everyone at CES 2012 if screaming is considered civil behavior for techno geeks during the unveiling of LG’s 55” OLED TV.

Words cannot describe the moment when technology advanced to the point where wants and needs gels together into a product that you can see and hold in your arms. With theoretically infinite contracts, infinite substrate thinness, infinite screen sizes of OLEDs a 55 incher cannot get any better beyond running off solar power.

I would also hear screams of “Photoshop!” from disbelievers. I mean look at the photo above! Even when a picture is taken off the screen, contrast and details are so perfect you’d think someone pasted a poster over the glass and just called it a day.

With a 1 mm bezel, 4 mm screen thickness, this “TV” will hang off any wall like a true piece of art.

Note: If I had a billion bucks, I would find someone to pair Tobii eye motion controls as my remote (also from CES 2012) to the TV and just let it take my soul..

Let down over new CNY MTV

I just got a sample of the newly released Astro+MyFM DVD for sampling and felt it left me a little underwhelmed. (Sorry, had to say it)

Efforts were commendable to make tours across all the states in Malaysia, gathering all walks of life in the making of this Mega MTV. From there a taste of life can be had from primary school children to the older folks.

HOWEVER the tunes are not catchy, the songs recycled and the music felt amateurish. Add in the large group format sing-along and the whole song felt mutilated. There are parts where I felt it was like a demo reel for the performers except it was not. If it’s supposed to be entertaining I couldn’t feel it. Rather I was horrified at the attempt by some of the artist to act cute on screen.

Here’s to hoping the rest of the DVD fares better. *cheers for effort*

Personal opinion? Pick a good classical song, get a capable singer, pour in heart and soul, sing it the way it’s meant to be. Never feel the need to ‘re-mix’ a classic into modern mando-pop because that’s not what CNY songs are for. Want MTV? Act out the lyrics, put in a storyline, do a Romeo & Juliet sketch for all I care, the key is feeling of joy and happiness, not laughing at what’s on the TV.

PS: Previous year’s was better, what changed?

Photo of the week: Week 52 (FINAL!)

OMG! When I first started this little project over a year ago, I meant it to keep myself committed to posting at least once a week.

For that I can proudly say I made it! Even though some weeks the photos are kinda forced because I did not have the time to go out much (work commitment kills) and worst still some months there’s no posts at all! But I always managed to clear my backlog and post up 52 photos for 2011!

Phew~

I learnt some lessons along the way. Committing to post “Photo of the week” really sucks up blogging creativity. True, it does help stimulate photography interests and even helps the flow of ideas. Good for the photographer, but for blogging it really sucks. There are times when I could have written more about a particular event as a blog post with all sorts of pictures but that would leave me with nothing to post for the “photo-of-the-week” without double posting the nicer pictures.

This is especially true when I didn’t follow any particular theme each week. (Honestly posting something up is already a miracle, to follow a theme needs a level of commitment I’m unable to provide)

For the upcoming year, I shall tweak the formulas a little. No longer will I post specifically a photo each week; rather I’ll try to post a blog each week.

Anyway for the last series of the year, I’m ending it with a double photo post! Just taken off the weekend at Pavilion KL. The only place where you can see Christmas Decoration and Chinese New Year at the same place! (perhaps only unique to Asian countries)

^ Festive flowers and interior decorations aplenty at Pavilion KL

^ Christmas decorations still hanging around even after the New Year!

Photo of the week: Week 51

My buddy from college days finally got married! Crossing right between Christmas, everyone made the effort to show up resulting in the reunion photo above!