Well I’m back in the USA from a whirlwind of a work trip that covered Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore over two weeks. At the last minute (literally the day before I left) I added a quick roundtrip to Dubai for Gulf Photo Plus 2016.
Let’s do a recap of some of my favorite pictures from this trip!
Ginza Crossing
Ginza is a very upscale shopping and business district in the center of Tokyo. This particular intersection is pretty heavily photographed (in fact you’ll probably see some very similar pictures like the above if you search) but I needed to get my version of it. The architecture of the building is a bit more classic than the rest of this ultra-modern section of Tokyo, and I used multiple exposures to capture the light trails of the various cars going through the intersection to frame the bottom of the building with a bit of modernity.
Tokyo Tower
Tokyo Tower is one of the most distinct landmarks of the massive Japanese city. It towers above the rest of the skyscrapers and adds a bit of color to all of the gray buildings. I went on a morning walk to the base of it and actually struggled to fit it all in the same picture, but I ended up being pretty happy with this one, even though there’s a huge amount of distortion from being at 16mm on my wide-angle lens.
I did some timelapses of the sunrise and sunset from my hotel in Tokyo if you want to check those out as well!
Burj Khalifa
I took a random one-day trip into Dubai at the end of my trip to see some friends and get this shot. It’s hard to overstate just how tall the Burj Khalifa is, which is why I’m so happy with this picture. I’m going to go back and tweak a few more things before it goes into my portfolio, but I think my favorite part just might be the cars on the road at the bottom right, you can see the streaks of their headlights, giving a sense of motion to an otherwise still picture. This was an easy pick for Picture of the Week.
Singapore Skyline
The Singapore Skyline is dramatic and epic, especially on a windless night. It was incredibly humid this night, otherwise I would’ve put on my neutral-density filter to get some really long exposure time and completely smooth out the water, but I like the contrast between the starkness of the skyscrapers against the smoothness of the colors in the water.
Butterfly on another leaf!
As you can tell from my article about the Butterfly Garden at Changi Airport in Singapore, I loved the Butterfly Garden! I like this picture for many reasons, but most of all because the composition is very strong. The butterfly is in the bottom third of the image with the leaves creating some nice negative space at the top of the frame. I devibranced this picture a bit in post-processing which I thought was a nice touch, since it’s easy to oversaturate pictures like this.
Supertrees
The Supertrees at the Gardens by the Bay were amazing! They look like they’re from a different planet and are simply massive! It was hard to narrow it down to a picture I liked the most but I picked this one because of the Skyway linking the trees. I like having humans in the picture to give a sense of scale to the trees. The sky was really interesting in this shot as well I thought, it wasn’t an explosive sunset or anything but there are some soft colors that make the vibrant greens of the Supertrees stand out even more.
Marina Bay Sands
The light show at the Marina Bay Sands is, honestly, kind of a letdown. That said, if you’re a photographer you kinda have to do it. I like the composition here and left a bit of negative space in the upper right on purpose. What I wish I could’ve captured were the green lasers that also shoot out from the top of the building but I can always go back to try again!
Singapore Skyline
This is my favorite picture of the entire trip! I went up to the bar atop the biggest Supertree (15 stories up!) in the Gardens by the Bay and sneakily set up my tripod for this shot. I loved the sky and the subtle yellows and purples as your eye moves closer to the horizon. Also I really liked that I was able to get the Marina Bay Sands and a big part of the CBD skyline in the same shot!
Hope you enjoyed my little photo wrap-up! There will be some more articles coming out of this trip soon, including a trip report about Qatar Airways Business Class on the new A350!
If you haven’t been, check out Level33 brewery/pub in Singapore, great views of the bay from above.
WOW.. They all look amazing, You really get the sense how large the Burj is. I think my fav is the singapore skyline. The colors are amazing.
Thanks Jonathan!
Definitely like how you composed the Tokyo Tower shot. Also, next time you go to Singapore, go to the Supertree grove at night. Absolutely stunning.
Burj Khalifa because the photo captures how tall it is extremely well.
Awesome stuff. But I like the Butterfly the most. Having tried wildlife photography many times, that pose has the highest degree of difficulty!