My Canon M100 series concludes with a genre of photography that I have never experimented with before: Landscape and cityscape photography. The first step is finding a spot with a good vantage point, and that is not easy unless you already know a place. Step two is determining the composition and adjusting the settings to suit the brightness of the environment. And step three? Lots of editing of course!
Shophouses and Skyscrapers
I was in luck when I scaled up the roof of People’s Park Complex (without trespassing) and found this spot where an outstanding pale yellow building sits right in the middle of the skyscrapers. My intention was to have the building as the focal point of the picture, and also juxtapose the older shophouses with the modern skyscrapers. I framed the picture symmetrically, with the taller buildings at the side and the shorter ones behind the yellow building in the middle. The sun was blazing that day, so when I used the Shutter Mode, I switched it to a fast shutter speed so that the picture will not be overexposed.
This shot was taken from an HDB block near the food centre. The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum has always been an icon in Chinatown, but let’s not forget how beautiful the rest of the city is. My composition is slightly different from the former picture. Half the picture is of the brick-red roofs of the shophouses in Chinatown, the other half is of the white, teal and grey skyscrapers blended in the blue sky. Increasing the saturation helps the colours look more vibrant, but editing is based on personal taste. I like the colours to be striking, but others may not prefer this edit and think it’s too harsh.
Geometry in Architecture
I conclude this series with a building that’s close to home (or rather, the office), and that is Bugis+. I walk by it every day but I rarely appreciate the beauty of the hexagonal geometry of the exterior. What makes it even more special are the trees sprouting out from the roofs at different levels, making the building look like a capsule full of flourishing plants trying to penetrate through its tough shell. One thing that ticks me off is the unsightly lamp post, but I did not get a chance to take the building from an angle where the lamp post will be less obtrusive. The only editing I did for the picture is to make the plants look greener and more prominent with an increase in saturation. Other than that, I think the geometry can speak for itself.
