So for today's post I will show you some of my favourite shots from the trip, taken with my Samsung S630. It may be a little point-and-shoot, but it is capable of good photos.

One of my favourite photos, ever. I love the colour of the sky and the sheet of clouds below.

More window-view spam...

B&W shot of an empty park in Paris, and guess what that thing in the background is...

Ah, so it's the Eiffel Tower!

That's the, uh, Trocadéro (I googled)

Sacré Coeur de Montmartre - in black and white.

13th century architecture with 21st century transport, captured together in black and white (again).

This photo of the golden gates at the Château de Versailles could've been a classic if not for the construction work going on in the background... I love how the intricate designs stand out against the dark sky, though.

Now at first look this photo might seem like a crappy one. Well I admit it's not a brilliant photo but it's not lousy either. Because although the building is underexposed you can still make out the silhouettes of the statues on the roof. And the most in-your-face thing in the photo, the reflection of the sun in the glass, leads your eyes to the design at the top part of the window, which is perfectly exposed. And once you see that, you notice the design in the other window, and then you realise there are 2 more similar windows in the picture.

This photo isn't terribly excellent or anything but the reason I'm posting it here is to show you people how awesomely blue the skies in France are. In fact, there was nary a single cloud in the sky that afternoon in Avignon. Here in Singapore we'll be lucky to see even a bit of the sky; there are so many goddamn clouds over here, it's annoying.

One good thing about having cloudless skies is that plane contrails are clearly visible. In fact, I saw more planes in France in a day than I did back home in a month. Here you can see the contrail of an airliner painting an orange streak in the sky over the statue of Louis XIV in Place Bellecour, Lyon. (I googled the name of the statue) And in the right of the picture, glowing orange, is the Basilica of Fourvière (I googled it again, haha).

We visited a silk factory and this is my favourite shot from the visit.

Some church in Geneva. I like how the main building and the steeple are lit but the background and foreground are in the shadows. It gives the picture a ghostly feeling, I think.

La Fête des Lumières (the festival of lights) in Lyon is a photographer's paradise. Basically, on 8 December every year, the whole town lights up in gratitude toward Mary, mother of Jesus (I totally wiki-ed that, teehee). So at night there are colourful lights all around and I imagine there are many photographers rubbing their hands together and grinning idiotically on that day. I am not kidding - the photography opportunities are amazing.

Des bougies sur les fenêtres - candles on the windows. Something the people of Lyon do on this day. And from outside, rows of buildings with their windows lined with candles is a sight to behold.

Half second exposure. It's still blurry though. Not much I could do about it.

Some fountain in central Lyon.

View of the other side of the river. I love those colourful lights!

Another view of the river.

And now, my favourite photo EVER......

There are just so many things about this picture that make it my absolute favourite of all time. #1 - I hadn't planned to take it at all. I just happened to be by the river when they started firing. I had no tripod, I could only lean against the stone barrier to steady my hand. Sometimes the best photos are taken without planning.

#2 - The amount of fireworks in the sky. Not too much, not too little. At the last National Day, I tried shooting the fireworks but didn't get a satisfactory one. In most of my shots there was just a mass of white in the centre. But in this one, you can see the individual light trails of each burst and even those of the following bursts. They are like flower stalks, joining the 'flowers' in the sky with the ground.

#3 - The camera I used. I only had my S630, which, thank goodness, had some manual controls, albeit very limited. Still, I doubt I would've taken it with my 450D. This is a 3 second handheld exposure. Yes, there is still camera shake, but not so bad it destroys the picture.

I remember reviewing the photo afterwards and going - 'wow shit I can't believe I took that'.

So there you are. Photos that kick-started my photography hobby. And it is now 5.30pm, which means I spent almost 3 hours on this post, including editing photos. I hope you enjoyed them! Now excuse me as I go tidy up my room! See you!

The trip was unfruitful because I took a record low number of photos. There really was nothing much to photograph... Or it's because I still haven't got that 'eye' for composition yet. Maybe I never will. There was a photographer among us and he was using a D700 with a 50mm prime and a 14-24 wide. He lent me his camera for awhile and my was it heavy! It is built like a rock. And I had no idea how to use it! There were so many knobs and buttons and dials and the stuff on the LCD screen made no sense. But I got used to it after some time and the photos it took were amazing. Especially with the kickass 14-24. All of a sudden, my 450D looked like a silly point-and-shoot, like something picked up from the dump heap at a flea market.

Sorry, camera. Didn't mean to talk about you like that. I still love you, y'know!

We didn't go parasailing at the beach, much to my dad's disappointment, no thanks to the downpour in the afternoon. So we went shopping. Then we went to our hotel and at night we had the dinner in the ballroom. Plus a lot of lame games. Don't ask.

Day 2: Played mini-golf, had lunch, bus broke down, changed bus, went shopping, went home.

That's pretty much it. Now for the pictures... (They aren't terribly good, but then neither are my photography skills.)

... You know, this trip is such a failure, photography wise, that I don't even have a single decent photo that I can show you guys. I usually have at least one photo that stands out from the rest of the batch whenever I go out photographing stuff. As for this trip... No. All I can say is... Epik failure!

Harbourfront in the morning. Resorts World Sentosa in the background.

Our ferry, Wave Master 3.

Dragon statue on the roof of one of the temples we visited.

Event of the day: QF 380 flying over us!!! I regretted immediately that I had left my 55-250 at home...

We couldn't take photos inside the temple but I took this one from outside so it doesn't count. It's my favourite photo from the trip. Says a lot about the quality of photos I took.

Granite (?) statues outside another temple we visited. Heard it's the biggest temple in South-East Asia built for a certain buddha.

Hopped off the bus to retake this picture when I realised my previous shot had part of the motorcycle cropped away. Don't know why I bothered though.

At least the hotel was awesome. Holiday Inn rocks.

That bed is fooking comfortable. I could sleep in it all day...

The Sijori resort, where we played mini-golf. Oh gosh the sky has such an unnatural colour. Don't know what's wrong with my circular polariser :(

Event of the day: Finnair MD-11 flying over us!!!!!! As Finnair is no longer using MD-11s for passenger service, I believe it's a cargo plane. How awesome! I mean, how terrible that I didn't bring my telephoto lens!

Come to think of it, Batam is a good place for planespotting... Provided you have super telephoto lenses.

After lunch we had a poll to see who wanted to visit a certain bridge and who wanted to go shopping. The bridge people vastly outnumbered the shopping people. But along the way our bus broke down right in the middle of a busy road. So we had to get a replacement bus. But by then it was getting late so it was decided we only had enough time left for shopping. Off to the Megamall we went and it was where I got myself the pink purse. (For the second time, don't look at me like that! It's a really awesome purse and when I saw it from a few floors above I knew I had to get it. Stop it! It makes me nervous you know.)

The trip back to Singapore was uneventful. The seats were more comfy and the ferry was cleaner. I wished the sea were rougher though. Haha.

Back at Vivocity, I was determined to use my tripod because I didn't have a chance to use it in Batam and I didn't want to have brought it for nothing. So off to the upper level I went and sadly, out of the dozens of photos I took, I only found one satisfactory...

Oh yes. I just remembered I missed last week's Photo of the Week. Well I'm saving the second-best photo for last. (Remember the best photo was that of the lanterns)

Sunset at Harbour Bay. When we were boarding the ferry my camera was already in my bag and I couldn't take it out in time to photograph the gorgeous sunset. In the cabin, I was so miffed I kept looking out of the window and then I couldn't take it anymore so I jumped out and spent a few precious minutes photographing the scene. I was lucky the departure was delayed due to a customs cock-up.

So there you are. A report of my boring trip to Batam plus a Photo of the Week to boot. I won't be blogging for the next couple of days because I have to attend a school camp from Tuesday to Thursday. I hope it's going to be fun.

At night, some kids at the chalet were setting off fireworks.

1s exposure.

And compare these buildings to those in Colmar Tropicale, Malaysia:

I'd say they're pretty similar, don't you think? This photo was taken from our hotel room! (f/8, 1/160s @ ISO100, 18mm)

We left Singapore pretty early, at 6am on April Fool's Day. Actually I had already been up since 2.30am to watch the Arsenal-Barca match. All I can say is... wow. Arsenal was shit in the first 15 minutes (30-70 possession, wtf!), but our comeback was amazing. We can definitely beat Barca if we played like that for the whole 90 minutes.

We stopped by a roadside coffee shop for breakfast. I took another moonshot.

I shot this handheld! (f/5.6, 1/30s @ ISO100, 250mm)

Spent close to 6 hours in the car. We took a wrong turn on the highway and ended up in downtown KL. We were stuck in the traffic jam for almost an hour, and when we finally got back to the highway, we missed the turning to E8, the highway that would take us to Colmar Tropicale. So our arrival was delayed by yet another hour, but we made it in the end!

First view of Colmar Tropicale. (f/8, 1/250 @ ISO100, 55mm)

We went to our hotel room after check-in. It's a double-storey room!

f/3.5, 1/50s @ ISO800, 18mm

Upstairs. (f/3.5, 1/25s @ ISO800, 18mm


Stairs.

We walked around the resort for awhile... then went to the Japanese Village nearby.













The Japanese Village was further up, so we had a nice view of the hills around.


We went to the nearby botanical garden first.










We went to the Japanese Tea House next. We didn't attend the tea ceremony because it was too expensive. So we fed the fishes in the pond. Or rather, my parents fed them while I took pictures.





When we went back to the hotel, I fell asleep for goodness knows how long and it was dark when I woke up.


f/9, 25s @ ISO100, 25mm


f/3.5, 1/13s @ ISO1600, 18mm

We had dinner at this posh French restaurant, La Cigogne (the Stork). It's so posh that we couldn't go inside because I was wearing flip-flops and shorts. Haha.

I ordered Alsatian sausages while my parents ordered duck and salmon. The food was good! However they didn't have foie gras and escargots! They used to have, but it was difficult to import from France!

While waiting for our food, I went to watch a Chinese acrobatic performance nearby.

The 'Head-in-Crotch' move. Not comfortable at all.


View of the interior of the restaurant. There weren't many people dining here. In fact, there weren't many people in the resort itself. I think it's because it's not the school holidays yet.

The next morning, I went to the top of the tower with my dad and took pictures.





I even managed to take a photo of a helicopter!






Tiles on a roof.


Beautiful clouds!



I want to live in those houses!!!


View of Colmar Tropicale from the tower.

We left Colmar Tropicale at around 11 and began our loooooooooooong journey home.

The end! I hope you've enjoyed the pictures!