“A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence.” – Susan Sontag
I can’t post photos for awhile because my MacBook Pro is at the Apple Genius Bar. The screen was flickering and problematic so they’re giving me a new one. I’m thankful I have AppleCare; it saves all the cost. I can’t wait to get it back because I have so many photo ideas brewing.
Recently, I started posting photos from my iPhone on a separate blog at http://www.jacquelinechang.tumblr.com – I wanted to keep it separate because I think the whole thought/motivation/action process of capturing a photo from an iPhone is very different from using a camera, whether analogue or digital. I am still contemplating whether one process constitutes more of an art form than the other.
I’ve not had the chance to update my blog in awhile because I’ve had wonderful relatives visiting me in London, so yes I’ve been eating a lot. In the past 2 weeks, quite a bit has happened. I went to Bath for the first time, Paris for the forth time and am now in Liverpool for the first time. The street photography experiences in all three are very different. I think revisiting a place and shooting it always opens up a new way of looking at things. It is the whole concept of learning, unlearning and relearning.
On a side note, I am in Liverpool attending an Interactive Digital Media Forum organised by btween09 and I’ve got so much to absorb.
The last time I saw a pretty sunset like that, which you can only get on planes, was probably in 2000 on my way to or from USA, from or to Singapore. I’m still up working on a presentation that starts (and ends) tomorrow. Thankfully, I finish soon. But it’s silent times in the night like this, at strange hours when I’m caught in a float between sleep and wake, that I feel like I’m in a space just like the photo above.
2008 is ending which means my birthday is here. Leaving Paris in a bit and heading back to London. This is one of the few years I spend my birthday in 2 big cities. Think the last time I did that it was Shanghai and Singapore or something like that. Got some nice photos here in Paris so I’m pretty excited to share them soon. Moving to a new place in London (good friends are welcome to visit any time) then heading over to Austria for skiing. Will be back to update my blog when I’m back in 2009! Happy New Year everyone! And happy eating (:
I’m moving house and leaving for London all in the span of the next two weeks. I’ll be taking a break from blogging for the time being until I settle my stuff. Do check back again for updates!
Since I came back from Guangzhou, I’ve been doing a photography internship/apprenticeship at The Pond under fabulous photographer Tan Ngiap Heng. I am very blessed to have been offered this opportunity to work there. It’s only been just over a week but I’ve learnt so much and still look forward to learning more.
Tomorrow, or rather in a few hours time, I head off to Batam for church youth camp and I am so excited about it. Once again, I’m very blessed to be one of the photographers to capture the moments over the four days of camp. I feel that a lot of things in photography, or in life, is about being at the right place at the right time. This is why my faith is what triggers the wonderful progress and personal sense of satisfaction I get from photography because only God can put me at the right place at the right time.
Where: Walkway/concourse stretching from Kopitiam to Accountancy
What: Lying down for 3 minutes just chilling, talking to friends, sleeping…basically, anything done lying down
How: Rosh and I will suddenly start laying our picnic mats on the floor and lying down. This is the trigger for everyone to follow suit. Spread yourselves out randomly across the entire walkway.
Who: All seniors, come on down!
What to bring: Picnic mats, pillows, outrageous wigs and outfits
Things to note for girls: Might wanna be careful with the skirts and dresses cause we’re lying down
Just had the most awesome and fun presentation yesterday on Global Warming. We had a few segments, 3D-model + explanation, kids’ video, interpretive contemporary dance + photo montage with music, individuals’ video. The process of working towards this presentation was so fun as well, constantly laughing at everything with my project mates Daphne, Michaela, Roxanne and Sara. The cool thing about this project was that even though it was about a scientific topic, we could include so many artistic elements into it, including dance, music, photos and videos. It’s great to combine so many of my artistic interests into something that is usually purely academic.
Thanks to all who starred in our videos! Do check out our videos at my youtube site.
I went for a dance photography course today by Tan Ngiap Heng. It was really eye-opening and gave me an entirely new perspective. It’s just so beautiful to see the human body as an art form, as a sculpture. Indeed, God is amazing with the way he created us.
Thanks to Joanne for recommending me, I got a message at the start of this week inviting me to capture the event. It was held at the SMU sports hall and swimming pool. It was a three part relay with three participants per team. The first segment was cycling on stationary bikes, the second segment was swimming and the last segment involved a guy carrying 40kg of weights and running round the sports hall. Considering it’s my first time attending such an event (even though it’s my last term in school), it was pretty fun to watch and shoot.
The sports hall is on the third floor and the pool is on the sixth floor. Unfortunately, the lift was not working on that day so I had to climb up and down the flight of stairs with my cameras three times (because there were the school, cca and open categories). I realised I’m not as fit as before. Will be posting some photo highlights from the event soon so do return to check out my future blog posts.
“Hi, meet Meg and Jack. Meg is a Diana and Jack is a Holga. They’re plastic but not superficial. They’re what dreams are made of as they create surrealistic images. Meg and Jack are audiophiles and have collaborated with The White Stripes. Meg and Jack have also recently revamped their spring/summer look with tinges of red and white in true peppermint-fashion.”
P.S.: Dianas and Holgas are plastic toy cameras that use medium format film. If you still don’t get it, explore the cool link at the start of this post. If you dig them but don’t know where to get medium format film, leave a comment and I’ll share the gospel of good shops to get film from in Singapore.
I never really liked short films and short stories. I always felt they cheated me in a way, like cut everything just that tad too short causing the original plot to lose essence. Today I watched a short movie, and it really is more powerful than any movie I’ve seen in ages. The storyline is amazingly transformational. But emotions aside, it was such a beautiful movie in terms of the way it was filmed. The combination of the framing and the choice of classical music birthed a movie that was really to me, an artistic creation.
I especially loved the color tones they used to perfectly match the mood of the show. Just like in the still shot above, the blue they picked wasn’t just any blue, it was just the right kind of blue to convey the heaviness of the air at the railway track that can somehow transcend boundaries and ooze into your soul. Think it’ll be great if every single shot I took could just seep so much emotions into the heart and mind of the viewer.
“I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside the Baghdad Theatre one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.”
Happened to stumble upon some excerpts from this book that I was surfing around for after a recommendation from one of the Hillsong Church London podcasts. I fully agree with what the author is saying and I guess that’s how photography is to me. Not in terms of the never liking it before but more of the relationship I have with it now. It’s more than a passion – it’s a relationship, something I can get lost in or immersed in. Something that provides me with a different perspective on life.
I once had a conversation with a friend, about how it’s easier for people like “us”, ie: people with a passion. When the down moments in life arrive, you can turn to that passion. Or when you get so bored with life, you know there’s that passion that can spur you on. Passion gives life a purpose. My friend said that for people without a passion like herself, life seems to be a little purposeless. Like at the end of the day, what are you made of? I never thought about things this way before that conversation. I guess I took photography for granted, assuming it’s just always there.
One more thing about having a passion, it’s that you love it so much you want to share it, and you rave about it so much you love it even more. And that’s why I love sharing my photos and hearing people’s thought about my photos. Because it’s the sharing process that builds up relationships.
Took a series of photos was taken on the plane at the JFK airport in New York on departure back to Singapore. It was raining and we spent one hour in the plane in darkness, waiting for the weather to clear up a little more before the plane could take off. A rather long delay. And strange in that it was dark in the plane and outside the plane. You’re strapped to your seat with nothing to do and little you can see. Just the world moving outside and around you with random lights flickering from other planes roving the runways. Then there’s the fleeting rain, like fleeting troubles that blur your vision and make things look different. Everything is changing, yet in the plane everything is still as everyone is belted down, but yet again everything inside everyone is stirring. Stirring of thoughts and stirring of emotions. Because when you’re tied down with little control of what you can see and nothing you can do in the dark, you can only see and move everything inside your head and your heart. Everyone in the plane was surely pondering or feeling something, each a unique rumbling predisposition, just like faraway rolling thunder.
Me? I was trying to remember/forget New York and remember/forget Singapore. It was like trying to straddle reality/escape. And I was trying to forget/remember -ships. I was wondering if you knew what I was thinking and feeling and if I really knew what you were thinking and feeling. And I suddenly felt not so sure for a moment, then I thought hey, maybe you‘re not too sure either. Then I felt a bit surer, because there was the possibility that you were not too sure either.
Just back from watching the movie. I loved it because I love romantic comedies and I love weddings. The show is about how Katherine Heigl is 27 times a bridesmaid but never once a bride. There’s just something about weddings and the feel-good factor, that naturally movies about weddings seem hard to fail. That is of course from a girl’s point of view – I wonder if guys feel the same. The last movie about weddings that I remember resonating so deeply was Wedding Crashers. I guess it goes back to the essential fact that humans like familiarity. When watching the movie, I felt so comfortable because everything was so familiar.
“Love is patient, love is kind, love is slowly going out of your mind.” – I laughed so hard when I heard that line in the movie. It’s amusing in a way how a bible verse has turned into an all too familiar speech phrase at weddings, and now how a movie has put a funny twist to it. Yet, ultimately, at the end of the day, the very same verse holds so much meaning to the people who fully appreciate the depth of it.
Every time I travel to a place, I find that I soak in so much more. I leave a little of myself behind and take a little of the place back with me. It’s the strange but true interaction of culture. Ultimately, the greatest interaction is everything that goes on in my head when I go to different place. Thank God, I always get a freshened up perspective and new revelations on a lot of life as well.
I was asked by someone what my vision of New York was and I guess the montage pretty much sums it up in pictures. In words or in a sentence, I’d say New York is a soulless city. The vibrancy was amazing, there was always something to do, there were people everywhere and of course, a Starbucks at every corner was a bonus. It was a fast city. A tad too fast, the buildings too tall, the people too blurry, and the city too cold. It seemed to me that everyone was so caught up in their pursuit of everything but not life itself. Everyone always seemed to have somewhere to go and something to do but I really wondered as I looked at the blank faces around me in the sea of strangers, did they really like what they were doing and did it really give them meaning in life. What was behind the perfect opportunities and lifestyle that New York seemed to promise the world? All that glitters is not gold.
Yet once again, the new year has sneaked up on us. It’s already the middle of January and I still feel like I just came back from New York yesterday. (I came back on Christmas day by the way.) The year ahead presents itself in a myriad of changes for me and it’s going to be exciting. I’m trusting God that it’s going to be more than good – an explosion of dreams. Yet at the same time, it will be so restful. I believe in the balance of juxtapositions.
