Viewing the Midnight Sun in Tromso, Norway

First post for 2017! Hopefully I can keep up with the writing and photography this year. Last year I wrote only a grand total of 5 posts for the whole year. Definitely one of my worst year in blogging, career and personal wise, hence the missing in action. I am not a person who make new year resolution or going to recap what happened in 2016 but hopefully this year I can start moving towards achieving some of my long time dreams. Now back to writing business.

View of Tromso

One of my biggest wish travelling to Norway is to witness the midnight sun. During summer, the sun never sets in parts of Northern Norway, at the Attic Circle and since I could not stand bitter cold winter, I have to settle for midnight sun instead of Northern Lights.

Did some research and set on flying to Tromso from Helsinki. What I did not expect was the epic coldness and wind chill which can make the temperature fell below 5 degrees and stupid me for not bringing a pair of gloves. We spent two nights in Tromso and the town was pretty small but fill with stunning scenery and that's how I fall in love with Tromso.

Cold and feels like winter

view from the harbour

The town is practically surrounded by mountains

On the first day, we decided to take the cable car up to the viewing point at night to see the midnight sun. Instead of the sun, we were 'rewarded' with windchill and I practically ran back and forth between the viewing point and the waiting room to warm myself. Scenery wise; astounding and eerily beautiful.

The next morning, we took the city bus day ticket costing NOK110 and went out of the city center. We went to Telegrafbukta to see the amazing mountain view and Prestvannet for the lake and it was quite easy to navigate around using the bus.

View from Telegrafbukta

And we are the only two person there

From Prestvannet

Even the view from the airport is amazing. While many travel guide would recommend coming to Tromso for the Northern Lights, I would say ditch that and come here for the midnight sun. It's less colder, less tourist plus the sun never sets!

Amazing scenery even we were about to fly off 

We actually walked out from the airport after checking in to take more photos

Qing Xin Ling 清心嶺 @ Ipoh

Qing Xin Ling at Ipoh

So, over the weekend the photography gang decided to throw a farewell for one of the gang who is leaving for the states in a month's time. After much deliberation, we decided to head to Ipoh for the weekend, for food and for photography as requested by Bee. As she is the queen of the gang and also the one that we were celebrating, we booked two rooms at Sekeping Kong Heng which is smacked in the middle of the Ipoh old town complete with food and plenty of photography opportunities.

Initially, we did not have any idea for photography until I saw some photos from my friend who went to this place called Qing Xin Ling near to the Gunung Rapat. It's actually located quite near to a few famous temples such as Sam Poh Tong and Kek lok Tong and not too far away from the Simpang Pulai toll plaza.

Models of the day

Mirror lake

I can see a bit of Krabi plus Gui Lin 

Qing Xin Ling is located in the middle of some taman perumahan and hence it's a bit difficult to find without the GPS. We managed to reach the place at noon after stopping in Bidor for breakfast. Seriously, the food in Pun Chun restaurant is getting more expensive with the amount of mee that they gave. I would not go back and pay RM 7 for a fraction of the wan tan mee and it's not even like the best mee in the town.

The entrance fee to Qing Xin Ling cost RM 4 and they have chalets in the village which can be stayed overnight. Qing Xin Ling is more like a cultural village with lots of old antique stuff dated years back and the whole place is not very big but there's plenty of things to explore and take photo. And hence started the craze of flipping hair and turn around portrait shots. Haha. Trick that I learned in Hanoi.

Reenactment of a shop scene from the 60s

Bee basking in the attention given 

Love this shot of the gang.
Too bad I am not in the picture

We spent about 2 hours in a place taking numerous ridiculous shots and stopping at each corner, haha. The whole village is very vintage and there is even an old juke box playing oldies. We spotted so many vintage things along the way. Oh, do walk up the hill which displays most of the vintage stuff along the hill. Although it' kind of creepy some parts but it's a very good view. There's even an antique place for washing clothes.

Kind of glad that we manage to see this place and enjoyed it so much even for my non photography friend who tagged along. Most of the time, she had to be the model of the day, haha. The cultural village looks a lot like a scenery from China.  With the limestone as the background, it does have a bit of Gui Lin's vibe in it.

Those colourful houses are actually chalets

If you stayed inside the cultural village, entrance fees is free

After Qing Xin Ling, we went to the old town to check in and time for makan makan. That will be another post in another day.

Photobomb

I am sure many of us have heard or at least experience once photobomb incident before. I still remember when I was young and went to China, or more like Shenzen for travel, I got a lot of photobomb from tourists and somehow like to get into my view. And imagine there was no digital camera that time and after deveoping the photos, it's heart sick to see such photos being photobombed by so many people.

Nowadays it has become a normed for photobomb even during big ceremony events. The one that I remember very well was the photobomb by Benedict Cumberbatch during the Oscars this year. And who can forget the best photobomb of the year by Prince Harry during the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow this year. Epic!

source from parade.condenast

source from popdust.com

Come to think about it, I kind of accepting the norm of photobomb and sometimes it's quite funny when I looked back at photos that I had been photobomb, for example the time I had in New Zealand (photobomb by my tour guide in a very funny way while the 3 of us were so serious).

Another time would be in Peru when a llama suddenly came into the picture and not forgetting the time when a cat photobombing my pre wedding photos which later on we decide to include him/her in the photo. 

Bomb by a Llama in Peru

Bomb by my guide during my New Zealand trip

Bomb by the cat who decided to join in the photoshoot

Sakura Fever

I just can't get enough of sakura eventhough it has been 2 months since I came back from my epic trip to Japan. First trip to many more to come, hopefully and I am already thinking of going back there again next year during sakura season. It's something to do with the pinkness (and I dont even like pink), flowery and everyone seems to be in happy mood.

I noticed there are actually a few variations of the flowers though so far all I can distinguish are whitish pink, pink pink and reddish pink. Most of the flowers I saw in Nara park in whitish pink while in Kyoto mostly are pink pink and only in Arashiyama I can se reddish pink.

Not going to talk much of the sakura tree species as you can get a good guide at this website.

Here's some of the upclose sakura flowers that I managed to capture.

Along the Philosopher's Path

At Imperial Palace Kyoto

At Heian Shrine, one of the willow tree

At Tenryuji temple

Not sure whether this is sakura or not, oh well, it's quite pretty 

Among the red and white sakura

Hybrid colour of white and red sakura flowers at Tenryuji Temple

At Arashiyama, you can see some buds are still not opened yet

Jumping Jumping

I was looking through my New Zealand photos for the photobook and can't help but noticed that during the whole trip, we took a lot of jumping photos. As most of the time, I was behind the camera, the models are usually my two friends. Most of the jumping photos shown in my Facebook are the good takes while in actual fact we had to take numerous shots to perfect the best jump.

So here are some of the NGs of the jumping shots. Beware, many of these are really bad but they bring back good memories and the fun we had while executing and mastering the art of jumping. Haha.

Queenstown

Wanaka

On the way to South Bay

Pacific Ocean

Portrait Shooting at Sekinchan

Truthfully speaking, I was quite nervous when a friend of mine asked me whether I can shoot some portraits for her sister and brother in law. I had never done this so called 'engagement' shots before and was quite stress that I would not be able to deliver the best photos for them. And the fact that I had not actually touched my camera for quite some time!

The couple choose to have their shooting at Sekinchan, the paddy fields located at Kuala Selangor. As I had been to the place before, mentally I was trying to search for some good scenery for the shooting. After the shooting, we continued to shoot some balloon shots at a park near my condo. Never knew such beautiful place existed right in front of my condo.

These are some photos from my first engagement/ portrait photography and I hope the couple is happy with the photos. As my photoshop skills are still quite sucky, so most of the photos straight out from the camera with very minimal editing.  My photography is back but with a major sunburn from the outing!