Surabaya: The Arrival

Greeting friends,
I would like to share with you our 4 days 3 nights trip to Surabaya recently and it was on April 20th to April 23rd to be exact. Though it was tiring but enjoyable and fulfulling for us the first timers to Surabaya beside we have a very talented, energetic and resourceful tour guide whom we known as Ms Kimi. The Ridy Indonesia Tours which we engaged for the trip is also very good in their logistic management, meal time and their selection of the tour guide is very commendable.

All images taken with Nikon D7000 and lens Nikon 50mm f/1.8G and Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC.



At KLIA LCCT before departure

SIC2013 Form 5: Confirmation

On Saturday. April 27th a group of 114 Form 5 student had gone through the Sacrament of Confirmation at St Ignatius Church(SIC), Kelana Jaya with was celebrated by the Kuala Lumpur Archbishop Tan Sri Murphy Pakiam and assisted by SIC Parish Priest Father Lucas Ng.

Four photographers were alloacated for the event namely Ken Cham, Daniel Khong, Aaron and I. Daniel Khong and Aaron incharge of taking photos of those with the Archbishop and I am alone with Father Lucas Ng. While Ken Cham as our chief and Web-Editor keep an eye on us from some where.

Advantage of being alone is no double flash and you are in control of your shots. Disadvantage is you may missed the shot due to wrong camera setting or batery power run out. But I still like being alone and I treasure everyone of my shot. Most of the time I capture more than one shot at one scene and select the good one. I shoot in RAW format as a security of my image.

All images taken with Nikon D7000 and lens Tamron 17-500mm f/2.8 VC.

(Note: All of the photos had been uploaded to my John Ragai Flickr in ORIGINAL form so that ALL the confirmed can download their photos in their own time. )

Group Portrait with the Archbishop and the Parish Priest

Sacrament of Confirmation started with prayer by the Archbishop

Spiritual Retreat Schedule at Maranatha Retreat House

Dear Friends,

Maranatha Retreat House will be organising the following retreat for the rest of the year 2013.

This image was taken using Olympus UTough 8010 during my first Spiritual Retreat  at Maranatha Retreat House back in year 2010. During those days, my photography knowledge was zero and my friends used to say, "my photos suck! and they can take better one." Now my photos are still not to 'my standard of good photos' but I will shoot thousands more to get my vision materialize on the photos I have taken and touch the viewer attention as I want it to be.

First Shutter Therapy with a Flickr's friend

I always wonder how is it to do shutter therapy as Robin Wong called this exercise with a partner as I always walked the street to shoot as a Lone Ranger and I shoot at will. Actually I am very excited to walk the street and shoot with others as sometime I can lost in my own world when the camera is in my hand. I can be very focus and passionate in what I am doing until I lost the sense of the real world even the pain that I endured. That's the magic of camera which can transform me into someone else completely.

All images taken with Nikon D7000 with lens AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G
All images captured in RAW format and convert to JPEG format using in-camera preset setting.

Last Saturday, I walked the street with my talented Flickr's friend by the name of Foxsama aka Ivan Tan.  Actually we never meet before and I do not know how he looks like. In this suspense time, I started my shooting alone.
 

Street Transporter

(I captured this image using a direct attack method where I run from the other side of the road. Then squat in front of his on-coming route, compose, frame and shoot. Give a thumb up and walk away. Later I was informed by Ivan that he is a bit nasty some time.)

Hopefully I will capture him on my camera in the process.