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This year, my family and I celebrated the festive season with a low key. No bombastic decorations, no extensive food preparations, no buying new cloths, and basically nothing much was done. What I did was to spend as much time as I could with mum, and whatever time left, I allocated for some close friends. It was interesting because as I grew older, the less excitement I felt for Chinese New Year. Perhaps that was because I was never a fan of explosive firecrackers, dramatic lion dance and unbearably loud Chinese New Year songs. Red is not even my favourite color. Kieron Long, an up and coming street photographer from Kuching. My partner in crime in one of my recent shutter therapy sessions in Kuching.  I did squeeze some time out of the mornings for shutter therapy. I have got a good collection of images which will be shared over at Ming Thein's site. Street shooting at Kuching has always been super fun.  Initially I did not plan to shoot that much but one new acquaintance th...

My photography friend, Jee Foong has been making minimalist-styled, hand-crafted, genuine leather camera straps. I have always struggled to find the suitable straps for my camera that balances both function and design. Considering the mirrorless cameras that I own actually look quite stylish, I want the straps on them to look equally elegant as well as being comfortable in use. There are many camera strap options but the premium ones that are both comfortable to use and look great are usually not budget-friendly at all. This leads me to another crucial point that makes these hand-crafted straps stand out from the crowd: they are unbelievably affordable. I have known Jee from my early days of involvement in photography. Jee was there when I just got my first DSLR. He was one of the first few people that I went photo-walking with. Together with his beautiful wife, Ann, they spent time with me and taught me the basics of Photoshop. Of course I went away for a long time, but I was glad to ...

A lot of you have stayed with me over the years, and some of you must have wondered if Robin Wong has ever tried shooting film? Why is there no blog articles about film? The short answer is, I do not shoot film. I shall explain myself in this article why I never bothered about film and why I never will. I am not against film photography in the digital age. If you love shooting film and it gives you that much pleasure and satisfaction, by all means, continue doing what you love doing. This is not going to be an article about film vs digital photography, that is a treacherous terrain that I would be suicidal to cross. I will explain myself as simple and as straightforward as I can: I just do not see the point of shooting film now. I discovered photography in the digital age.  My first ever camera I have used was a digital compact point and shoot, the Kodak CX7300 which was quickly upgraded to Kodak CX7430. My first Digital SLR was the Olympus E-410. I learned photography with digital...

If you are celebrating, I wish you a prosperous and happy Chinese New Year! May this year bring you happiness, love, good health and abundant opportunities. I am finally back in my hometown Kuching (Borneo), preparing for the coming celebration of the new year. Of course I have had my over-dosage of Sarawakian food goodness over the past few days before the stalls closed down for the celebrations. My cravings were adequately vanquished but I do wish I have more. I will have to wait until the 3rd or 4th day of Chinese New Year for some of the stalls to re-open. I stumbled upon my older blog post during Chinese New Year in 2012, when this blog first hit 1 Million page views. What a long, long way this blog has traveled, now in 2018, the counter has surpassed 20 Million views. I think Chinese New Year is the time for us to be thankful for the milestones we have accomplished and this blog certainly has earned that spot. I am so thankful for all of you who have stayed with me here over the...

So what happens when there is a newly opened cafe incidentally being smacked right in the middle of my usual hunting ground for street photography? We do some street shooting and we eat some good food there immediately after! CalleVerde is a Fillipino and Western fusion themed cafe that serves a variety of commonly available Fillipino food and also some western dishes. This is not exactly a food review blog entry, and I have no intention of doing food reviews here either. However, I am a photographer and my hand gets itchy whenever I see something interesting to shoot. It is no secret that I am a food lover (judging by the size of my physical appearance) and putting the two things that I am passionate about together, I do enjoy shooting food tremendously. Though I must admit that my food photography still need plenty of work, but it is work in progress nonetheless. What better reward for food photography than to be able to taste the subject that you have just photographed on the spot? ...

One of the advantages of being a photographer living in Kuala Lumpur is the bountiful of events and activities that are available to get myself immersed with and be inspired. Photography exhibitions happen frequent enough that we never really run out of opportunities to absorb new idea, get motivated and push our photography boundaries further. The most recent photography exhibition I have attended was the "REVISITING KUALA LUMPUR" by three local Malaysian photographers, Eric Peris, Lee Hong Leng and KF Choy. This exhibition specifically compares urban landscapes from the early scenes in 1976 versus what they have changed into in 2017. KF Choy, Eric Peris, Academician Professor Emerita Datuk Dr. Mazlan Othman, Chairman of Sutra Foundation Datuk Ramli Ibrahim and Lee Hong Leng I was invited to attend the launch on 7 February 2018 with all the three key photographers of the event present. The exhibition took place at Sutra House at Titiwangsa, and is currently on-going until en...

Thanks to Olympus Malaysia, I have had the Limited Edition Blue Olympus PEN E-PL9 for a week to shoot. My review is now published on Ming Thein's site here (click). I think it is such a lovely stylish camera, very capable when the situation calls for it, and small enough for casual every day use. I have put the E-PL9 through a series of gruesome torture tests, including a shoot at a dimly lit theater for a drama-musical show. However, do you find the Blue color attractive? I have friends who thought the blue E-PL9 looked incredibly sexy, but some people plainly got turned off at the sight of an unusual color choice for a camera. Are you a fan of small, compact cameras? I know I am.

I know the camera brand that neither me nor Ming Thein touched is Fujifilm. Although Fuji has been making splashes with their X-T series and X-Pro series of mirrorless cameras, somehow none of them made it into my grasp, or available for me to review. Buying cameras just to review is out of the question, as that is not the way to sustain a long term solution for a blogger. However, I do have friends who own Fuji and have spoken highly on Fuji imaging products. I even have a friend who is willing to loan me his Fuji X-Pro 2 for review purposes. The question is, after about 2 years since the X-Pro 2's release in early 2016, will there be still enough interest from my readers to see me review it? I have heard of the wondrous colors of Fuji JPEG files, but I must acknowledge that color preference is highly subjective, and may not be the same for everyone. From the general online photography discussion, I can summarize that the X-Trans sensor for Fuji has gained much attention, having r...

I have been using the Nokia 6 for more than half a year now. While I have had a few flings with "flasgship" smartphones before, having much more capable cameras, such as Oneplus One, Huawei Mate 9 Pro and P10, strangely I do not miss using the higher end smartphone cameras. Perhaps the main reason was because no matter how good the camera in a smartphone is, it is still a smartphone camera with small sized image sensor and there is just so much you can do with it. The fact remains, smartphones have overtaken dedicated cameras as the most used imaging device, and this is no news either. For many years now the general crowd uses the smartphone camera to do all their image shooting needs. The performance of smartphone cameras has become sufficient to satisfy the typical imaging tasks such as documentation (snapping images of documents) and immediate image transfers (imaging is a form of communication). Then why do dedicated cameras even exist? For those who care about superior i...