Oh Winter How I Miss Thee

Oh my, Malaysia is such a hot country, I almost forgot that I used to live in a place where it's cold 7 months of the year. A place where snow could fall even in May, and rain is like a mist spray to the face.

Ann Arbor, Michigan would rank as one of my favorite places to live over in the States. There's hardly any serious crime, the traffic isn't that bad, public transport is efficient enough to take me where I want to go. Everyone's friendly and welcoming, and the ethnic diversity is such that people who are racists are a minority.

One of the things I miss most about living in Ann Arbor, or a four-season location for that matter, is the snow. Here in Malaysia, people have to pay to get to experience snow. Actually not even snow, but fake snow. Back in Michigan, I remember when I used to be so excited over the first snowfall of every year, and getting sick of snow after two weeks. Back then I took snow for granted, especially my first two years of living abroad, until my third year when I first took up snowboarding. The wintersport pastime made me appreciate snow much more during my last few years, and now that I live in a country where snow is almost impossible to be found falling from the sky, I miss the powdery icy cold hexagonal minute microscopic crystal precipitation even more.

Photo above was taken during a trip back from Indianhead Mountain, where I spent a weekend snowboarding with my friends. I was standing on the shores of Lake Michigan which was frozen and covered in a thick layer of snow such that the boundary between the shore and the lake was invisible. At the time, the temperature was not that cold, probably around -1 or -2 Celsius, so I was able to stand outside without a winter jacket.

Some of you might've seen this photo of me before in another post. This was taken when I went snowboarding on Mt. Breckenridge in Colorado, winter of 2004. I was lucky that day to get to borrow a snowboard instead of renting one, which would cost me more than a day's worth of decent meals.

My fifth trip to Chicago was during winter of 2007, and it was my last Spring Break trip with my good friends Kristen, Cassie and Ivan. This photo might probably be my last photo with the Chicago skyline, taken in front of Adler Planetarium.

Oh, and when you live in a country with an Equatorial climate, you don't get to see this phenomenon happening:

 

Grass and trees encased in ice. What happened was that it was raining the night before, then somehow the temperature dropped such that it became cold enough to freeze everything that was wet or covered in water. That morning I woke up to a crystallized icy wonderland, almost everything that was out there was encased in ice, the result of a freezing rain - something that I probably will not get to experience here in Malaysia.

 

Frozen berries!

And icicles everywhere.

Oh winter. How I miss thee.

-ihsankhairir-

Disclaimer: All photos were taken by ihsankhairir or taken by someone else using ihsankhairir's camera.

A Road Already Taken

Today, 3 May 2011, marks the first anniversary of me being employed here at Sri KDU.

I still remember getting that phone call inviting me to come for an interview. I did not apply for a position here, instead they called me to see if I can replace Mr. Chong to teach Mathematics to form 4 students.

I was desperate for a job at that time, because for the whole of January until April 2010, I was working without pay as a research assistant. Basically the research fund ran out, but I still stayed and worked without receiving any salary for four full months before that fateful call from Sri KDU came.

To tell you the truth, I also got offered a job at Help University College the same time as the offer from Sri KDU. Given a choice, I was leaning more towards Sri KDU, but being such a filial son I decided to let my mom have a say, and she suggested Sri KDU. And that's how I ended up working here.

Before coming to Sri KDU, I already got to know or known of some particular students from my incessant blogwalking trips. Chien Teng was the first Sri KDU student I got to know from these blogwalking trips, and I once randomly commented in Tiffany Khoo's blog. I also knew of Ysabella and Waihowe because Chien Teng mentioned them in some of her blog posts. All these students I managed to meet during my first day of school because I ended up becoming their Math teacher. It felt a little bit weird seeing these students in real life, since I've read bits and pieces about them for almost a year before coming here, and yet they knew almost nothing about me.

First few months of school was tough. I was immediately in the middle of Mid-Year exams and had to mark tons of papers with little preparation. Preparing the comments for the reports proved to be quite a challenge since I did not know most of the students. After that came Paramount Championship finale and Winners Nite, and then preparations for Shine the Musical began. I was in charge of the combo band, which I feel I was very unqualified for since I know almost nothing about how to play any musical instrument, let alone how to manage a band. But Melvin Chong and Mr. Andrew was quite helpful and they did most of the work, which made me feel redundant and useless, but nevertheless I learnt a lot from that experience.

But the icing on the cake was that I was given the task of taking photos for the event, which I gladly took with pleasure. Being able to practice taking photos of an actual stage event with ever-changing lighting conditions was a great learning experience. I learnt to change settings on-the-fly using two cameras, a Nikon D90 and a D60. I took more than 2000 photos that night, although only about 30% of them were usable. Prior to the event I also got to have one outdoor and some green screen photoshoot sessions with the cast and crew.

Towards the end of the year came the interclass competitions, for which my class, 4 Aristotle, won overall champions. We won champs for basketball (the whole team consisted of school team players, duh) and creative arts, and also the overall championship. I remember feeling so proud of my students when we received the many hampers we won for the interclass events.

This year has also been quite eventful, with me suddenly being appointed Housemaster for Blue House and teacher advisor for the school basketball team. So much had to be done in order to prepare for Sports Day, and all the hard work by the students and the teachers paid off when Blue House became Sports Day champion this year. The basketball team managed to go further this year than they had ever been, and they received medals for making it to the semifinals.

My class this year, 4 Mozart is full of amazing and talented students. They compete in almost all of the Paramount Championship events and won medals for quite a number of them. They are also the favorites to win the singing and band events, and are contenders for the upper secondary Champ trophy. I feel so thankful and blessed to be given the opportunity to be the homeroom teacher for this group of young and talented students. They never ceased to make me proud every day for their many impressive achievements.

Anyway, beginning today, the cycle repeats for the first time. Mid Year exams is coming soon, the preparation for which was exactly the first thing I needed to do the first day I arrived here last year. So from today onwards, I have no excuse for being a newbie. Beginning today, I no longer tread on fresh ground. Starting today, I walk on a road already taken, with a year's worth of experience to guide me.

May this year be as eventful and as amazing as the past 52 weeks I had in here Sri KDU.

-ihsankhairir-

[Photos] From Shooting Hoops to Shooting Pics

One of the things that I am thankful for after getting accepted to teach at Sri KDU is that I get to be assigned to the basketball team. Basketball is the sport that I enjoy most; I used to shoot hoops and play ball almost everyday since I was in secondary school, never mind the weather or if it was fasting month or not. My main disadvantage is that I am pretty short for a basketball player, and there are many situations where I just can't beat that 6-foot guy to a rebound. But I made up for it by training myself to be able to jump really high, and I remember at one point in college when I was able to jump high enough to touch the bottom of the rim.

I was captain of my basketball team for two years in a row; even though I was not the best player, I was probably the most passionate baller in the team. We were also not the best team out there, and we lost most of our competitive games in the national stage, but we had fun nonetheless. Our best result at the 'national' level was getting into the quarterfinals during my first year of captaincy. Can't remember the team that beat us, but I remember it was held at Purdue University, West Lafayette in Indiana. It was one of my proudest moment as a basketballer playing at the 'national' level, albeit in a foreign country (United States is considered foreign to me).

Now I am quite overweight, still short, but my love for basketball hasn't died. So to be assigned to handle basketball CCA in my first year as a teacher and the school basketball team this year is like a favor to me. Apart from getting to shoot some hoops during training or in between games, I was also able to entertain my other passion --- photography. Shooting sports is a big challenge and no easy feat, and I enjoy the times I get to try my hand at photographing high school sports. I have gone from shooting hoops to shooting pics of people shooting hoops.

Here are some photos I took from a recent friendly tournament held at the German School Kuala Lumpur.

Next week the school teams will be competing in the MSSD Petaling Utama tournament. I wish all the best for my players and hope they can get a good placing this year.

Expect photos of the tournament within a fortnight or so.

I Heart Photography #3 - The Random, Unexpectedly Wonderful Shot

Part of the wonders of dabbling one's dry feet in the cold waters of creative photography is that you sometimes don't know when or how you suddenly fall in and make a big splash. Most of the time, you just see transient ripples on the surface that fade away and disappear as quickly as they come. The only way to keep the water moving and active is to keep making many and frequent ripples. Sooner or later, or at least once in a while, that big splash will come.

This is more or less true for me. As an amateur self-taught photography hobbyist, I depend on experience and criticism to improve my technical skills and creative eye in preserving images. For the longest time, I had my camera with me at all times like a shark's remora, ready to pounce on that suddent moment of opportunistic feeding. In my case, my camera is there so that whenever I see something that is worth remembering and sharing with everyone I know, I have something ready to capture that moment and preserve it so that other people can see what I saw and maybe share the same feeling I had.

My used-to-be frequent random shots and sharing of photos on Flickr, Facebook and this blog has often created those transient ripples, but one shot in particular created my big splash for me. Though the nature of the splash is still transient, the impact was much much bigger, which is why this shot, though random and partially unplanned, remains one of my personal favorites and my most popular shot on Flickr.

Catch the Sun, by ihsankhairir

This shot was captured while I was waiting for a taxicab in Singapore, sometime May of 2009. I was struggling to find the correct exposure settings to capture both the sky and the silhouette of my hand when I suddenly had the inspiration to try to shoot the sun through the peephole in my hand. Because I tried to not overexpose the sky by using a smaller aperture in combination with the correct gap size and distance of the focal plane from my hand, I managed to create a sparkle with sufficiently many spokes. As I mentioned before, this was partially unplanned because I did not perform any prior calculations nor was I privy to such technical knowledge prior to this shot. It was a random and unexpectedly wonderful shot, one that I almost immediately dedicated to a special someone (that someone remained anonymous in the dedication).

Creating random and unexpectedly wonderful shots like the one above is one of the many reasons why I heart photography :)

How about you? Have you had any random, unplanned shots that become your big splash?

---

Other articles in the I Heart Photography series:
I Heart Photography #1
I Heart Photography #2 - My History of Photography

Vomiting Spider

I remember bringing in this spider for an impromptu photoshoot almost two years ago. It was just chilling there, underneath the ping pong table when my little bro spotted it. I immediately took a white printing paper and scooped it up, brought it to the coffee table of my living room and started taking photos of it using reverse lens macro technique. I think I did more than ten shots from different angles, all with undiffused flash, before I noticed something peculiar.

The spider vomited.

Probably because of the endless bursts of blinding flashing lights that I keep bombarding at a small creature with eight eyes, and a makeshift white studio made from white paper definitely did not help to comfort the little arachnid from the confusion and dizziness I might have caused it.

I felt guilty and took the spider out and let it free in the front yard of my house. Still felt bad afterwards, but at least I did what I can to not add to the poor guy's suffering.

I Really Miss Snowboarding

Mt Breckenridge, Colorado, Winter 2004

Wish we have snow-capped mountains here in Malaysia. But we do not.

So it will be a long time until another self-photo of this sort can be taken.

I Just Need to Shoot Something!

I can't help it. I like to shoot. I like shooting anything and everything: children, furry little mammals, blossoming flowers, and even exotic cuisine.

Image by Nationaal Archief via Flickr

No, not that kind of shooting.

I mean using a camera. Anyone who has read this post of mine, or have been reading my blog for some time, would attest to this.

For quite some time, I have been deprived of opportunities or even free time for me to delve further into my photographic explorations. The fact that I now work full-time means that I had to resort to shooting events/happenings to quench my thirst and alleviate my haven't-been-taking-pics-for-a-while withdrawals.

So far, the events/happenings are:

An Under-10 and Under-8 international football (soccer) tournament at Alice Smith School...

 

An Indonesian family's first visit to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore...

Mr. Chong's farewell dinner at TGI Fridays One Utama...

A Teacher's Day telematch and football (soccer) game...

My college housemate's engagement ceremony...

Paramount Championship Finals at Sri KDU...

The reception dinner of the wedding of two Wolverines: Mike and Poh Yi...

A student clearing tables at Fullhouse Cafe, Sunway Giza to pay for everyone's lunch...

Winner's Nite performances in Sri KDU Secondary School...

KDU College Invitational Basketball tournament...

among others.

But these are not the kinds of photos I miss taking.

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy taking photos like these... where to capture photos I can and at most times have to be quick, careless and random in my shooting. But in all truthfulness, it doesn't do much in my exploring the finer details of the art of photography.

Shooting these kinds of photos don't require me to prepare specialized lighting setup, direct the subject on how to pose, use long exposure settings, set-up a rear-curtain sync flash, reverse the attachment of the lens onto the camera to achieve magnification and shallow DOF, etc etc. Plus, the randomness and suddenness of taking pictures as the event goes along prohibits me from utilizing props like reflectors, gobos, and off-camera lighting, unless I have an assistant or two who can run around with reflectors and umbrellas at hand, ready to bow to my every whim.

Every now and again, I will talk about the kinds of photos I miss taking.

And I shall reserve that for another post. As for now, I shall be doing more event photography as they keep coming along my way.

What can I do. I just need to shoot something!

-ihsankhairir-

...

p/s: The next few up and coming events would be a field trip to a pewter factory, a school running event and carnival, and a Malay wedding reception.


p/p/s: Expect a post about the kinds of pictures I miss taking coming up next. Soon. When I have the time.


p/p/p/s: I am not good at event photography, which is why there's not much aesthetic qualities nor evidence of skill to be found in most of my event photos.

Salmon Binge

All-paid-for, all-you-can-eat lunch...

Part of the menu?

Smoked salmon...

Salmon skewer...

Heavenly.

Seconds? You betcha.

I had my salmon binge during the buffet lunch session for the 8th International Conference on Fracture and Strength of Solids held at Hotel Istana last week.

Best lunch buffet ever. When will I ever get to have a (free) buffet like this again...