Singapore's Marina Bay at night
Last week I got to spend 30 hours or so in my favourite city in the Far-East, Singapore. Officially called the Republic of Singapore, this multi-cultural city state at the Southern tip of the Malay peninsula, consists of 63 islands.
It had been more than 6 years, since I last was in Singapore and the place still looks as clean and organised as before. Architecturally it got a lot of new places of interest!
Being close to the equator ( only 135km to the South), means the place is exposed to a lot of tropical weather. It rained for most of the time I was in Singapore so I unfortunately had to limit myself to photographing some night cityscapes.
The Marina Bay area has clearly changed the most. Quite a few people have by now seen images of the amazing roof top infinity pool of the "Marina Bay Sands" hotel. Beside the pool, the hotel/casino which opened in 2011, also has a 340m long Skypark which is open to visitors. On my next visit I plan on paying the S$20 to have a look around.
Just a little bit more to the South-East in the same bay, one finds one of the oldest buildings in Singapore, the Fullerton building, which was converted to a 400 room hotel at the end of the 20th century.
I particularly like the mix of old and new architecture in Singapore and the way how they blend in.
The last image I'll share is of the Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay; A concert hall and theatre which can both accommodate about 2000 people each.
For the photographers amongst you, some more technical details...
All of the images above were shot with my new Travel camera; the FujiFilm X-E1 with the 18-55 lens. They are my first HDR (High Dynamic Range) images shot on the camera. While I normally use Photomatix to develop my Tone mapped HDR images, I'm presently experimenting with using a 32bit file in Lightroom 4.3. A new technique where one after a quick "Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop" ( see in the Lightroom edit menu), can stay in Lightroom to do all of the HDR developing. This leads to much more natural images with a great dynamic range. For more info please watch the following tutorial here.
Remember, " In photography there are no shadows that can not be illuminated" - August Sander
BJORN
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Marina Bay