Timeless Takes

This was taken against the light and given a conservative 2/3 stop underexposure at the time of capture. The image was then exposed to the right in post.

This was taken against one of the walls of “Claude Monet’s house” at the ongoing Impressions of Monet in the Flower dome here.

A kitty enjoying the purr-fect holiday in Malta. Photo credit: Sarah Chua.

Nelumbo nucifera, sometimes called the East Indian Lotus, baring its reproduction system to visitors in the Chinese Garden. Photo credit: Eleanor Chua.

This was taken two years ago. I was then more accustomed to the evaluative, multi, matrix or whichever other equivalent metering names adopted by the various camera manufacturers. Recently, I’ve switched over to center-weighted metering as the aforementioned was a little difficult to use in high contrast scenes.

This image was kept low key to let just the key elements stand out better. Lighting around this spot was quite poor giving a shutter speed of a mere 1/20 second. Thankfully, the image came out sharp with no handshake artefact.

What’s in a name? The first part of the scientific name of this thief palm is apparently making reference to its pinnate leaves while the second part is rather interesting. It is “referring to the fact that an early specimen was stolen from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.” (source: palmpedia.net) While the epithet “borsigianum” honours the renown 19th century German tropical plant collector, Albert Borsig.

Flora apparently still looked alright but things weren’t so rosy for example when I tried to catch what a dragonfly was eating.

They were all brilliantly opened when we passed by them in the morning. But some hours later in the hot afternoon when we walked by again, all of them were already closed up.

These were named after Rev. Georg Kamel (1661–1706), pharmacist and missionary to the Philippines who didn’t apparently discover nor name the plant and who had actually thought that it should be a Thea (source here). Anyway, this and other Thea species were eventually re-assigned to the Camellia genus in 1818.

Dendrobium ‘Lai’s Angel’ coming down to the Cloud Forest at the “Gardens by the Bahay Kubo”. Photo credit: Eleanor Chua.