[Sun·15·May·2011] It was a good turn out of 13 CSers joining the NatGeo-CapitaLand walk which brought us around some of the CapitaLand properties around town - Ascott Raffles Place (Residential - Raffles Place), Raffles City (Commercial and Office, CityHall), Bugis Junction and iluma (Commerical, Bugis Junction).
We were chaperoned around by Shane and Awantika from NatGeo, and Grace from CapitaLand. While I was under the misconception that the walk would have brought us through some secret doors and chambers into secret areas of the buildings, I quickly realized that it was not, and found that the most secretive tunnels were those leading in and out of the security post where we collected our building passes.
Following quick briefs at each venue, the CSers broke out to their individual and groups to explore the location - the people, the architecture, exploring the theme of "Building People". The outing started at 8am at Ascott Raffles Place, a service apartment at Raffles Place. This stop focused a lot more on the architecture and facet of the physical building. However, later in the day as we moved to Raffles City (Cityhall), Bugis Junction and iluma (Bugis Junction), human traffic picked-up quite considerable at these malls. With that, the focus of the shots started to shift more toward the "people and the building".
Of course, entries to the NatGeo and CapitaLand "Building People" competition is not limited to only participants from the photo walk. But the photo walk brought us around to 3-4 CapitaLand facilities within 1-day, and allowed us to bring in our relative large camera setups in a reasonable large group into the premises without being hindered by security... something you would have to be a possibly more weary of if you did not have your CapitaLand building "Visitor" / "VIP" / "Contractor" pass.
The walk reached its last stop, iluma, at 4pm so that we could round off the walk with a drink at Koi. However, the queue was its usual insanely long self, which provided itself as another photo op instead. Of course, there was no camera was too big or too small, no perspective too wide or too narrow... we had anything from x100, M8, GH2, all the way up to the line of DSLRs, fish-eye, wide-angle, tele (70-200)... it was also my first time seeing a 360 panohead and bracket in action... i suah koo, lah.
The walk was made successful by the participating CSers (Allenleonhart, SurrealDreamWalker, Iguanavon, Doveman, loneWolff, litechaser, rosewood1969, weekh, acman, wolfbomb, lunas, Shen Siung, Sfink) with special thanks to Shane and Awantika from NatGeo, Grace from CapitaLand, our very own chngpe01, and the behind the scenes work by Simon and Darren.
This was the first in a series of 3 weekend photo walks organised by ClubSNAP, NatGeo and CapitaLand, the subsequent 2 to be on (Sat) 21 and (Sst) 28 May 2011. CapitaLand buildings include Capital Towers, The Seafront, Tampines Mall, Wilkie Edge, and IMM. Hopefully, we can discover some secret chambers there... or at least, have more opportunities to capture that winning shot of "Building People".
Afternotes
- participants of the walk were each given a 3-mths free subscription to NatGeo.
