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I got this Chinese name seal with the bust of Confucius made of soapstone in Qufu, China. The store guy asked for my Chinese name (which is 骑士) and carved out the characters on the bottom of the seal. Chinese seals are used with a special rubbery red paste.

Shot by covering the subject background with white paper and shot under flourescent light. Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photos.

Photos of seniors shot at the Temple Of Heaven Park, Beijing close to evening. The light was great, but my D40 metering system was consistently overexposing for some strange reason.

#1 is my personal favorite. Seeing the old man I felt equal parts of contentment (on seeing his peaceful demeanour) and sadness (for the loneliness in the dusk of his life). I should've shot it again underexposing it, but the old man saw me after this and the moment was lost. There were lots of seniors gathered around the historical buildins at the park, singing, dancing, and playing instruments with such energy and aplomb that it would put youth to shame! I hadn't expected to see such scenes in my wildest dreams of China! In the last photo, the seniors are playing Jianzi, a game similar to badminton but played with the feet with a larger and heavier birdie.

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photos.

Some photos of kids in China. Shooting kids was easy since most kids out at tourist spots were posing for their parents anyway. Also, whenever I asked parents for permission to shoot their kids, they gladly agreed.

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photos.

How do you shoot a dog? Shooting Pluto, the golden retriever was an interesting experience. He would always be shaking, panting and taking an intense interest in the lens pointed at him. Here are some compositions of the dog shot while in action chasing after his ball and while he was resting.

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photos.

The trip to China gave a lot of opportunities at photography. China has a ton of historical and natural places for the photographer. As usual, on travel I just carried my D40 with its kit lens. I will share more photos from China as I post-process them.

To start off this one is from Tiananmen Square. We were in Beijing on May 1, which is the Labour Day holiday in China. It's possibly the most crowded day at Tiananmen Square. I know the photo might look like that the guard is preventing me from taking photos at the Square. But actually, he was only shielding his face when I tried to take his photo upclose.

We had plenty of time to kill in the morning while waiting for our ferry. The ferry terminal was a hive of activity, ferries arriving and disgorging their passengers and ferries getting loaded and leaving. #2 was shot from atop a nearby tower to capture a sense of the activity of loading the ferry.

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photos.

Curves adjustment, sharpening and sepia conversion applied on the photo.

Some photos from the Earth Hour event. Some folks even brought lanterns.

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photos.

Birds sitting on a dead tree behind barbed wire. Yes, I needed a longer zoom for this.

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photo.

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photo.

Shaky shots of people twirling glow sticks during the Earth Hour. #1 looked like the letters C-O-Y to me :-)

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photos.

#1 is fishermen by the side of the river captured through their nets. #2 and #3 are women in conical hats in their boats. #4 is us chugging along a canal of the Mekong. #5 are some larger cargo boats docked next to each other.

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photos.

There was a small event held at the NUS football field for Earth Hour yesterday. The non-essential lights on campus were switched off at 2030 and people held candles standing in the darkness. #1 is a kid holding a candle. #2 are candles arranged in the grass.

The event was a total trainwreck for me, with respect to photos. I had taken the 50mm lens which was hard to manually focus in the darkness. But even its f/1.8 wide aperture didn't help. There was almost no light other than the candles and almost every photo was taken at the highest ISO 1600. Some folks had brought along tripods and were shooting the candles on long exposures. I don't know how that helped since the flames flicker all the time.

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photos.

Another shot of Evil Cat.

Curves adjustment, sharpening and film noise applied on the photo. The curves have been pushed quite a bit to darken out the body leaving only the eyes.

Underexposed the photo to blacken the background and get the details on the lamp. It kind of reminds me of planets.

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photo.

These photos were taken in the house of our boatman. After a morning spent going around the Mekong river canals, we stopped at his village for some chat and rest. #1 is a mom and baby who were resting in a hammock in the house. This is the quietest and most shy baby I have seen. #2 is our boatwoman who took the baby and trying to make it laugh or cry.

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photos.

3 views of clouds in different parts of the sky on a morning. All are taken at the same time with the same lens (at the same focal length since it's a 50mm prime). #2 is in the direction where the Sun is rising.

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photos.

Lots of lines in the frame, the main diagonal, lines along the wall and lines on the floor. A wider lens would've helped though.

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photo.

Seen one morning on my way to university. The skies are like an infinite palette to me, every day I look up there's another beautiful cloud formation up there! The shot was a bit restricted since I had only the 50mm with me. A wider angle would have brought more of the sky into frame.

Curves adjustment and sharpening applied on the photo.