Digitalartist - A Photo a week

[Digitalartist]

I've done a bit of unconventional travelling by bike and by 4x4. I've done the Old Silk Road driving from Istanbul to Malaysia. I've done the Sahara Desert of Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. I've ridden my bike all the way from Kuala Lumpur to China and back, and I've also ridden through Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi. Late last year we completed a 60 days drive from London through Europe, Russia and China back home to Kuala Lumpur. I'll try and post a picture a week of some of the stuff I've seen and savoured.
Recently I drove a 4x4 with some like minded friends from Kuala Lumpur through Thailand, Laos China, Tibet, the Himalayas, and Nepal to India, and then we shipped our vehicles back to Malaysia from Chennai. That journey took more than two months and we camped and cooked our own food most of the time. We camped below the North Face of Everest and the Himalayas were truly beautiful. We all know that Mt Everest, the highest mountain in the world, was formed only 2 mil years ago, when the Indian sub-continent crashed against an unyielding Central Asian land mass. That is the geological reality. However, Tibetans believe that Mt. Everest, their sacred Mt. Qomolangma, is the Snow Goddess, or the Third Fairy. This is a picture of a Tibetan Pilgrim we spoke to in Lhasa. He told us a wonderful legend about Mt Everest. He said that the Himalayas was once an unending stretch of lush forest on a beautiful sea-coast. A haven for all kinds of flowers, birds, and animals, living harmoniously with humans. This was the legendary Shangri-la. Then suddenly an enormous Five Headed Demon came from the sea. It terrorized the tranquility of Shangri-la and frightened away all the animals. Fortunately, in answer to the prayers of Tibetans, God created Five Fairies from Five Clouds floating over Tibet, and sent them down to subdue the Five Headed Demon. With the Demon vanquished, Tibet became Shangri-La once again. The animals and humans were very grateful to the Five Fairies, and asked them to stay on in Tibet. They agreed, and the Five Fairies became Mt.Lhotse, Mt.Makalu, Mt.Qomolangma, Mt.Qowowuyang and Mt.Shisha Pangma, five of the greatest peaks in the Himalayas. Mt. Qomolangma, or Mt. Everest to you and I, was the Third Goddess, the highest mountain in the world...

 

[zaren]

welcome to APAW! great pic to start things off and look forward to seeing pics from your travels.

 

[AngelZhou]

nice one that!

Welcome here! Do post more!

 

[khairi]

with that kind of intro pict...a pict a week...NO GOOD LAH
Post everyday! If you dont post everyday, i'll spam your PM box ah...u not scared?

 

[AixisOfJustice]

Hi DA! Welcome to CS! I'm also at photomalaysia.

 

[betazone]

Selamat Datang Datuk ! Nice pic , like the treatment

 

[Stereobox]

welcome, bro!

looking forward to seeing more great pics from you! :thumbsup:

 

[Digitalartist]

Thank you all for the nice words. Actually, my Tibetan Storyteller was shot with the Nikon Coolpix 995. I love that little swivel lens P&S. Its only a 3 MP P&S. If Nikon makes a similar type of swivel lens camera with an 8 Megapixel sensor, I'll be the first person to buy one.

Nice to know that there are a few people from PhotoMalaysia here in ClubSnap too. Hope we can foster a warmer people to people interaction between Photographers in S'pore and from Malaysia even though sometimes our two governments dont see eye to eye. PhotoMalaysia has frequent, localised teh tarik sessions between ourselves. It will be great if one of these weekends, we arrange a PhotoMalaysia-ClubSnap teh-tarik session and get togethers. I have quite a lot of Biker friends from S'pore, Thailand and Indonesia and we have a 5 day Bike Fest among our four countries at least once a year, with each country taking turns to organise it. Would be brilliant if we have a photography get together too...
Let me give you a taste of Indonesia - of Sulawesi actually. Its one of the way out places that everyone should go and visit. Sulawesi, once known as the Celebes, is home to an amazing variety of peoples, cultures, flora and fauna. It has violent volcanoes, dazzling beaches and reefs, rainforests, rice terraces, mysterious lakes, fishing villages, and rugged limestone outcrops, which look like Chinese water-colour paintings. Sulawesi is home to strange animals found nowhere else, like the curly tusked babi-rusa. There are Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians and followers of mysterious indigenous religions. They have not always co-existed peacefully together, and at times their differences have erupted into quite violent clashes. I’ve shipped my Motorbike from Malaysia to Sulawesi twice to explore and photograph this strangely shaped, 1800 km long island.

Here's a picture of the Rickshaw man of Rantepao. He earns his keep by powering a ricksha (a pedal powered taxi) in Rantepao, a small town in the middle of Sulawesi. I shot him from about 50 meters, with my Canon 10d and EF 70-200L Image stabilized lens at F2.8.

I spotted him away from the crowd which surrounded us when we thundered into town on our motorbikes. Rantepao in the bowels of Sulawesi, had probably never seen such a collection of superbikes in their sleepy town before. We must have created quite a scene.

I saw he was interested, but he cooly kept his distance. And I thought I could see a slight smile in his face, magnified in my viewfinder at max tele zoom of 200mm, when I raised that impressive looking white Canon lens, and pointed it in his direction. He must be wondering why HE caught my attention.

He earns only 30 cents each time he ferries passengers over a distance of 3 km or more - a hard and even harsh life, no doubt, but I saw dignity in his demeanour. He wears a leaky hat made out of the fronds of a coconut palm to shade his head from the blazing sun. As a technological breakthrough in water-proof engineering, note the plastic sheet over his hat to keep the rain out ...

 

[Digitalartist]

The Sahara is the largest desert in the world, covering about 9 million sq km of North Africa. It stretches across Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Mali and Mauritania. Just in Libya alone, the Sahara is almost as large as India. It is stunningly beautiful in an intimidating sort of way, with bleached bones of dead camels seen in many places. The landscape comprises mainly dry hills, bare and loose rocks, dunes and shifting sands of various grain sizes. In Algeria and Morocco the Sahara is rocky. In Libya the sand grains are large and coarse while in Tunisia the sand is powdery like flour. The dunes and the colours are also different in different places and at different times of the day. The sky is beautifully blue. Absolutely clear with not a single wisp of clouds. With the sun directly overhead, the sand is slightly more yellow - like 18 carat gold I would think, as compared to 24 carat gold whenever the sun is lower. When driving over loose sand you have to drive fast - greater than 60 kph - and you have to reduce the air pressure in your tyres to as low as 18 psi and even to 12 psi to extract maximum grip and traction. If you stop, or slow down to below 40 kph, you will simply sink in the sand. It is the momentum of speeds greater than 60 kph and the soft tyres that allow you to move forward. Dust is everywhere, and a killer of photographic equipment.
I was fortunate enough to have crossed the Sahara Desert on a 60 days drive in a 4x4 starting from Khartoum in the Sudan and driving across the Sahara Desert of Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco... This picture was shot from the window of our speeding Toyota Landcruiser at dusk in the Tunisian Sahara..

 

[Digitalartist]

If you drive from Singapore to India, travelling thru Thailand, Laos, China, Tibet and Nepal, scenes like this in the Himalayas will literally take your breath away. At 4500 meters, the air is very thin and breathing is hard. The peaks are permanently covered with snow and ice.
Actually the drive is not that difficult if you hire a good guide, especially in the Himalayas. The journey should take you about 40 days....

 

[shchow]

hi, selemat datang...
nice works. i admire your works.... and I enjoy reading your writeup as well.... the reading plus pictures took me to the scenes that you've experienced....

thank you for sharing such great works with us.

 

[Trey]

Hey DA nice to see u here
seen ur works in photomalaysia....very impressive man

 

[Stereobox]

stunning, well executed shots with insightful writeups!

this is great stuff! :thumbsup:

 

[Digitalartist]

Thanks Guys. Real glad you like them pictures..

 

[Digitalartist]

Cathedral of the Intercession

This is the "Lollypop Cathedral", the signature image of Moscow. The Cathedral of the Intercession or Cathedral of St Basil the Blessed, at one end of the Red Square in Moscow, is to Russia, just as the Taj Mahal is to India. Its been a part of the State historical musuem since 1928. It was built by Czar Ivan the Terrible in 1555-61, to commemorate the victory of the Russian Army over the Kazan Khanate, which ended the Tartar -Mongol yoke over Russia. That victory united most of Russia under Moscow rule, and it was said that the designer of this beautiful building had his eyes gouged out so that he could never again design such a similarly beautiful building. The Cathedral is actually nine churches in one, each with its own unique dome, and all laid on a pedastal. Eight of them are grouped round the central Church of the Intercession, whose hipped roof rise nearly 50 meters above the other eight domes. In 1588, Vasily, the popular "fool of Christ" or Basil the Blessed, was buried in one corner of the Cathedral. A tenth Church was built over his tomb and since then the whole Lollypop ensemble has been known as the Cathedral of St Basil the Blesssed. Its a sight to behold, especially from the Red Square. From the other side, the view for the photographer has been ruined by the masses of overhead tram-car wires...I feel this is easily the most unique structure in Moscow. It looks almost like a mosque if not for the crosses above the domes.
This picture was shot in August last year during my drive from London to Kuala Lumpur. We drove through Western and Eastern Europe, through East Germany, Poland, Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan, exiting Kazakhstan at its border with China near Almaty. From Almaty we drove towards Urumqi, Hami, Dunhuang, Jiayuguan and on to Jiuzhaiguo and Chengdu towards the Himalayan foothills to Kunming and then through Laos and Thailand back home to Malaysia..

 

[Digitalartist]

Here's a snapshot in RAW from 15 paces with the humble (humble ??) EF85 mm f/1.2L. Aperture priority, spot metering, ISO 100, 1/800 sec at f/1.8 Dig that silky bokeh ,,,this is one helluva fine
lens...

 

[drumma]

very good stuffs and i like the writeups! very well done!

hoping to see more!

 

[Koelsch]

CRAZY STUFF! anyway how do you remember so much details about your trips? haha and i saw your profile as unemployed? o_o! how you pay for all the trips and everything.

 

[Digitalartist]

CRAZY STUFF! anyway how do you remember so much details about your trips? haha and i saw your profile as unemployed? o_o! how you pay for all the trips and everything.

The 1DsM2 has a sound recording function. Everytime I shoot a series of pictures I will simply narrate details about the scene directly into the camera. You can record as much narration as you like and you are only limited by the size of your CF Cards. Usually at historical sites I will simply read the descriptive signboards and brochures into the camera. These days we only need lots of RAM and thank god the cost CF Cards are rapidly falling.

How do I pay for all the trips and everything ???
Why, with money of course. I simply rearrange my priorities. Seriously however, there are still some sponsors with global operations (like Petronas) who thinks it is in their interest to to fly their flag in those areas where they are eying oil and gas exploration and production rights...and they subsidize the cost of some of my excursions. For example, in the Sudan, where Petronas is establishing oil operations, we donated computers, sewing machines, water pumps, generators and medicines to several villages and schools on behalf of Petronas.

 

[Digitalartist]

Dawn - at Nuwara Eliya

I shot this picture at dawn, 6000 ft up in the mountains of Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka. The nearest flowers were about 20 inches from the Canon 15mm fisheye lens, which was pointed slightly downwards to keep the foreground flowers in focus, and to also include the distant mountains. Nuwara Eliya is an idyllic resort high up in the mountains of Sri Lanka. It is beautiful here and during the drive up to the mountains, you will pass through extensive tea plantations started by the British and still having British sounding names like MacGregor Estates, etc.

Go and see Sri Lanka. It's cheap and it has many delightful surprises. And dont worry about the Tamil Tigers coz the dont usually bother foreigners....