Went to East Coast Park to shoot stuff last Friday. I was, erm... 1 hour late. Oops. In my defense, I miscalculated the time it took to travel from Woodlands to ECP. By a lot.

Anyway, my tardiness aside, I did manage to get some nice pictures... Even though I've really begun to feel the limitations of my Panasonic Lumix FZ-5. :( More on that later.

I reached East Coast Park at about 2:45 pm, after promising boboshooter to meet him there at 2 pm, although I think he waited only for about half an hour. I dropped off about 3 or 4 bus stops away from where I was supposed to get off, and then had to walk quite a distance to where we were supposed to meet. -.-"

Then, when I finally met up with him, he wanted to shoot at Ski 360. Which I had just passed about 10 minutes ago. Woot.

Alright, picture time.

Looked for things to shoot on the walk from our meeting point to Ski 360. I got some erm, shots of random people. I hope they don't mind!

While we were walking on the beach, boboshooter was trying to capture footprints on the sand - even though he kept complaining that Singapore sand sucks. Then I said, "Okay, we'll create footprints over there." I pointed to a nice stretch of (still sucky) sand where there was not a lot of people around. I took off my shoes and socks, and boboshooter kept asking what the hell am I trying to do. "Have you thought about where you're going to put your shoes? Do you have a plastic bag or something?" And I was just trying to be spontaneous, and grinned, and left my shoes on the sand. He arranged his slippers on the beach, and I started making footprints.

He took several shots, but I like this one the most. The others had me swinging my arms weirdly. Haha. Then I said, "Okay, your turn."

I used his Nikon D80 'cause I had dumped my FZ-5 in my bag, beside my shoes and socks. I said, "Ok," to signal him to start walking. And he brisk-walked out of the frame before I could take proper shots. >.< I asked for a second try, and said, "Walk slower, dude!" But he practically ran out of the frame the second time too. Oh well.

Like, how far away is thattttttttttttt?

Our test failed, by the way. Couldn't really get nice footprints out of the beach. Partly because we weren't really trying. Partly because there wasn't much contrast between the footprints indentation and rest of the sand.

It was quite a nice cool day even if it had drizzled for a bit, though.

We got off the beach once we found nothing else to shoot, and headed towards Ski 360. Ski 360 is apparently "Singapore's first cable-ski park", where the more adventurous, and more well-off, of us can wakeboard around a lagoon-like area. Wakeboard, ski or knee-board, actually. Really looks like fun... But I'm guessing it'd take a lot of upper-body strength to keep moving.

This is where I really feel like my Lumix is not up to par. The auto-focus (there's no manual focus) takes a long time, relatively, and most of the time, the picture is taken after the event has occured. For this fast-paced action, even with continuous mode on, I will still get photographs with my subject quite off-frame or I might not even get the subject in frame at all. It gets really annoying, and some of the nice shots that I did get, really depended on luck. :(

But of course, boboshooter wasn't happy either with his Nikon D80 and his S$1000++ telephoto zoom lens, 'cause at 200 mm (if I'm not wrong), he couldn't zoom in close enough to the action. There was a Canon photographer beside us wielding a super-huge telephoto zoom lens on his tripod. I peeked at his LCD screen once a while and saw that he caught some really nice close-up photos of the people in the lagoon doing stunts. Like, really close-up. The lens must've cost him a bazillion dollars.

Me and boboshooter kept an eye out for some of the more skilled wakeboarders to shoot... But they fall into the lagoon sometimes, and would have to wait in queue for another turn. After a while, I called quits for a bit and we went off to shoot something else.

And so we shot castles of sand.

Once we were tired of shooting sandcastles, we made our way back towards Ski 360 to see if there were anymore pro-wakeboarders to shoot. Haha. But before that, I saw nice sun rays across the clouds, and asked, "How to shoot that?" And boboshooter replied, "Try underexposing your picture."

Ah well. I'll try again the next time a better looking opportunity appears.

We went nearer to the starting point of the Ski 360 so that we can shoot closer to the people.

Since the sun was already setting, it was hard to get nice exposures from my Lumix. Worse still, the left half of the lagoon and the right half of the lagoon required 2 totally different exposures, and by the time I adjusted my shutter speed, I didn't have anything to shoot anymore. So sad... :(

After a while, we decided to leave, but before we did, I asked boboshooter if he knew where they placed their pricelist.

Look at the prices. Rich buggers! A.A, must remember our Plan A, yah? Hahaha. The prices might not seem like a lot, but keep in mind that if you pay for an hour, that includes the waiting and swimming back time. And if you pay for "Round Pass", if you fall at the starting point, that's still considered a round. Bye bye S$9! (We were there on Good Friday.) Hahah!

We left East Coast and headed for Popeyes Chicken at Changi Airport, for dinner. Another friend of mine joined us for dinner 'cause she needed my help with some stuff. At the cashier, both were paying for my meal, which was great. Hahah. The other friend kept her money and said, "Nevermind, I still owe you a meal."

That's crazy, by the way... If everybody I help keep insisting to pay for my meals, I'd have perpetual free meals! Wahahahha.

Oh, and I think 2 buttermilk biscuits were left almost untouched. Sorry, fa!

I took the above photo using my handphone 'cause I was too lazy to take out my Lumix from my bag.

Okay, that's it for this entry. Got some other stuff to blog about, but I'll keep them for another day.