Morning Walk Part 1

It was too early for the boys, and Anita was still asleep. A quick peek out the window and as predicted by the weatherman, the morning would be overcast. No chance of setting up the GoPro for the sunrise capture.

So, I bide my time and once the morning broke, I took my camera gear out and headed towards Lebuh Armenian. Nice breeze, although a blue sky would have been great. Due to the cloud cover, I decided to go telephoto. I attached the 56mm on the X-T1, switched on my GPS and started walking.

I walked from the hotel towards Penang Road via Lebuh Leith, reaching the intersection with Lebuh Chulia. Walked further down taking a left along Lebuh Kimberley, later turning north at Lebuh Carnavon to join Armenian Street.

There was plenty to concentrate on on this walk. With the lens, I mainly did close-up of the windows and building facade. Colourful, gorgeous architecture, a mix of the later 19th Century Chinese influence and a later Art Deco styling. Eclectic mix to be quite honest, wishing that I was better versed in the arts.

It was still early in the day and being Saturday, there was hardly many cars. Plenty of tourists though with their cameras on tow. Some of them already settled for breakfast at the cafe alongside the streets, outnumbering the locals.

At the end of Armenian Street I took a left turn up Lebuh Pantai and another left at Lebuh Ah Quee. Plenty more subjects and mural here.

More stories from this trip here.

Sunday Afternoon

After a hectic week, Sunday could not come much sooner, and surprisingly, I had some time to enjoy for myself. I had been a chauffeur for Anita earlier in the day, driving her for her college meet-up in Cheras. Had lunch there after doing my ward round, and by 3pm, things were already sorted for the day.

So, Anita and I went to Bukit Bintang, and more specifically Pavilion.

There were a couple of arts event happening in KL last weekend. One was at KLPAC, The Inaugural Sime Darby Arts Festival. I wanted to go there but the combination of bad weather and bad timing just made that trip difficult. So, I went to the alternative - KakiSeni Arts Festival held at Pavilion. The Kakiseni event ran until Malaysia Day, so I could've catch up with that later in the week. Shame that the KLPAC event only lasted the weekend. That actually looked much more interesting to be quite honest.

But, able to go to one was better than nothing. I couldn't hang around for too long though as my in-laws would be out for dinner and somebody needed to stay home with the boys. I preferred an early night as well since United was playing later that night and I would be on call the next day.

So, I managed to catch a couple of performance. The problem was space at Pavilion was a premium. Getting one spot to another could be a pain since Pavilion was essentially a shopping mall. The outside terraces got crowded very quickly once an event start.

Hopefully there would be similar events organised for next year. And hopefully it was on separate weekends ....

The Afternoon Walk

After doing my duty - of chauffeuring Puan Anita to meet her friends in town - I had some free time to spend with my camera. With the gorgeous weather and all, I thought I'd go to Pavilion. I get to do some street photography, and also to had a quick walk around Low Yat.

Not much to see as next week would be a big one in tech world. Motorola and Sony had made their announcements of new product earlier in the week. Next week would be Apple's turn, the rumoured iPhone 6, and maybe some wearable products. A much anticipated announcement since the original iPad.

What did I notice? The street vendors were peddling selfie sticks everywhere! Something expected I supposed. Kakiseni would be holding their street art exhibit next weekend, so around Pavilion, there was not much going on. Off to Low Yat then ....

Surface Pro 3 was finally released, but according to the vendors, the sales were pretty slow. It was either due to the price or buyers were waiting for the Apple announcement next week. Either way, it was not shifting. Neat product though, and as I mentioned, I would have snapped it if it was available with LTE option. But since it was carrying an Intel rather than Tegra chip, the chance for that would be pretty small. The vendor suggested using a dongle. But that would just reduce its portability. Once you've used an LTE tablet, there was no turning back.

The Merdeka spirit was still palpableI suspected that this had something to do with the lantern festivalThere was not much alternative when it comes to laptop with built-in LTE chip.

I wonder what it would be like a month from now, after we got the announcements out of the way ....

The Track

I had still to use my Fenix 2 for fitness. With the combination of busy days and hazy weather, I had yet to take the watch out for a spin.

Maybe I would be using it a lot more when I walk in Penang. With my camera of course. Hopefully the weather there would be nice ....

So, once the watch record the walk, the data would be uploaded into the cloud and could later be shared using a GPX file format. That way, you could open it in Google Earth, or in this case, an app called ConnectStat. You can then track your activity at the click of a button.

Experiment!

The walk around Bukit Bintang this morning was a first for a couple of things. First it was the first proper walk with my brand new Fujinon lens, the amazing XF 56mm f1.2. On the X-T1, it translated into an 85mm on the 35mm full-frame conversion. Ideal for portrait, and in my case, a great length for street candid.

The wide aperture would help to isolate the subject while throwing some serious bokeh in the mix. I only managed around 50 snaps this time as I was out for some errands. I would definitely be using this a lot more during my Penang trip this weekend.

The second first was using my fenix 2 GPS watch for photo geotagging. It was a success.

As soon as I left Pavilion where I parked my car, I switched on the GPS tracking - after synchronising the time on the watch and the clock on the camera of course - and just fired away.

I left the GPS tagging on for more than an hour. It lost the signal every time I went indoor, but soon locked on again the moment I stepped out. No need to touch the watch at all. It did the hunting automatically.

At the end of the walk, I still got 92% power registered on the watch. I then downloaded the GPX data onto my laptop - can also be done through cloud synching - and booted up my usual geotagging program, Photolinker. Let the program pair the photos and location as registered on the time stamp together and everything was hunky dory.

Definitely useful if I was abroad, as the watch also used the satellite data to set the time. Again, more experimentation this weekend in Penang.