Walking among the dead at Bukit Brown

I didn't have a chance to do much research on Bukit Brown before our visit, which was impromptu. I now know that it is reportedly one of the largest Chinese cemeteries outside of China, and that 4,153 graves will be affected by the new highway that the Singapore Land Transport Authority (LTA) plans to build. That's a lot of graves which means that that's a lot of space that the government is using.

Entrance to Bukit Brown (Taken with the Diana F+ with 55m wide angle lens and Lomography XPro Slide 200 film.)

I used to 'sweep' ancestral graves like those in Bukit Brown when I was a child. I remembered chewing on sugar cane while walking among the graves. I have vague memories of my uncle using a parang to cut down the tall grass and the toxic smell of burning hell money while standing in the sweltering heat. It was even considered an honor when I was allowed to help burn the hell money; it meant that I was big enough to help out. I was, nonetheless, relieved when our family ended the practice when the graves were exhumed and moved to more civilized locations.

That was then. But it just hit me that my boys will not know what it means to sweep the ancestral grave. The rituals, the laborious folding of paper offerings, the sights, the smells, the balmy heat... the whole experience is lost to them.

Who are you protecting? (Taken with the Diana F+ with 55m wide angle lens and Lomography XPro Slide 200 film.)

The mosquitoes in Bukit Brown were relentless in their attack even after a liberal spray of mosquito repellent so I really couldn't stay long enough to explore. A few things stood out, however, during my short visit there.

The sikh guards that flank some of the graves were erected to protect the resting spot of the dearly departed. I wonder what is that statue at the foot of the sikh guard. A guard dog (puppy)? The photo from The Bukit Brown Experience blog was clearly taken just after the tomb was swept and tidied up. It was looking 'old' during my visit.

The expansive rain tree. Do you have to go too? (Taken with the Diana F+ with 55m wide angle lens and Lomography XPro Slide 200 film.)

The trees, oh the trees! They are huge and they offer a protective cover over the graves.

The tiles tell a story. (Taken with the Diana F+ with 55m wide angle lens and Lomography XPro Slide 200 film.)

Some graves have really pretty tiles, and I've just learnt that they are there not merely to decorate the grave. They represent the deceased wealth and stature because such tiles were found in bungalows of the wealthy. Even the design of the tile has a meaning specific to the family selecting the tile.

The hanging roots of the banyan tree make a ghostly veil. (Taken with the Diana F+ with 55m wide angle lens and Lomography XPro Slide 200 film.)

Cemeteries are peaceful, beautiful, and historical. Bukit Brown isn just a resting place for some famous pioneers of Singapore, fierce battles had been fought there as well. If you have a chance, go see part of Singapore's history before it's gone.

What's left of our past. (Taken with the Diana F+ with 55m wide angle lens and Lomography XPro Slide 200 film.)

Blue sky. Really?

(Taken with Diana F+, 38mm super-wide angle lens, Lomography XPro Slide 200 120 film.)

I have been acting like a stalker lately, going through my photographs taken from a recent Japan trip using my Diana F+ again and again.

I like photography. My first camera is a Minolta single lens reflex (SLR) camera that my dad bought me when I was a student. Then I bought my first camera in 1994. It was an interesting choice. The made-in-China Seagull twin lens reflex (TLR) camera was all that I could afford at that time. It costs S$88. It was originally S$90 but the man gave me a S$2 discount, making it an auspicious number since Chinese New Year was just round the corner.

It was an interesting choice because I was a student then and I couldn't afford to buy too many rolls of film. We used 35mm film for our photography module in polytechnic and university, and so the bulk of our pocket money naturally went into the most common film format.

Then work and parenthood came along. Then digital photography. Bytes are cheaper than film. Later, like everyone else, I used phone apps to make lomography (i.e. lomo photographs) of my mobile phone photos.

You could say I've come full circle when it comes to photography.

One of my most favorite effects of lomography is yielded through cross processing. You can read the technical explanation here but one dumb-down example of the process is when you take slide film and process it using chemicals meant for normal print film/negatives.

That's when you get crazy, sometimes extreme, oversaturated colors like in the photo I took at a cow farm in Tokachi, Hokkaido. We were told to gather at this farm one late afternoon to see cows herded home. Good grief. It was someone's idea of fun but certainly not ours.

So I stood at the back of the crowd, trying to look interested but really I was watching the boys pretend to be superheroes by jumping off a piece of big rock. Then I thought why not take a picture of the damn cows just for the heck of it.

The sky was as blue and bright as it could ever be that day. But the result on film after cross processing was a beautiful distortion of the truth. That's why I love lomography. There's everything 'wrong' with your photograph but you can, or at least I do, see beauty in imperfection.

We would be happier if we stop seeking perfection all the time, I think. It's good to see life as it is.

Blue sky

Kit ran and ran to the end of beyond at Farm Restaurant Chiyoda in Biei, Hokkaido. It was a super sunny day, and my baby spent a happy day there feeding ponies!

I was told by Kit's pre-school Chinese teacher that all the children love to be with Kit. "Yes, I heard from his father that the girls love him," I quipped. "Oh, the boys too," she said. "They fight to sit next to him during my class. I have to get him to sit next to me."

Hilarious.

Yes, Kit reminds me of blue sky, sunshine, and happy thoughts. And everyone's drawn to blue sky, sunshine, and happy thoughts. :) This made me think of some pictures of the happy blue sky that we saw in Japan recently.

The Curb Market in Sapporo took on retro colors through my Diana F+.
(Taken with 38mm super-wide angle lens, Lomography Color Negative 400 ISO 120 film.)

If there is a pantone for retro blue, this is how retro blue would look like.

We were just standing outside the entrance of a flower garden when I looked up and saw the criss-crossing electrical wires. No birds on the wire.
(Taken with Diana F+, 38mm super-wide angle lens, Lomography XPro Slide 200 120 film.)

Dreamy blue sky. I like the graduation of light blue to dramatic blue.

The ferris wheel outside the Trick Art Museum in Furano. Its cabin was stifling hot in the summer heat.
(Taken with Diana F+, 38mm super-wide angle lens, Lomography Color Negative 400 ISO 120 film.)

Sky in blue flair. Some photographers would use a filter to cut out the glare. But lomographers love the imperfection.

Who says babies can't do great things

My 3yo has such a baby face that I always think of him as a baby rather than a soon to be 4yo. And because he is after all, the baby of the family, I am very protective of him and I am always looking out for him. Terence often has to remind me that Kit can take care of himself.

Kit had his school sports day shortly before the start of the June holidays. One of the activities required him to pour colored water from a plastic cup into a bottle. His teacher held the bottle steady for him just as he started to pour the water in. Then very shortly, his teacher let go. He never faltered. He held on tight and poured with a steady hand. All the water in the cup went into the bottle. He didn't spill a single drop.

His teacher must have been holding her breathe too because after he completed the task, we both looked up at the same time and gave each other a BIG smile. "Did you see that? He did it very well!" she said.

I started to see him as a big boy after that day.

Talking about small things that can get larger than life. The boys totally enjoyed themselves at the Mega Bugs Return exhibition at the Singapore Science Centre. Very educational and here's Diana F+'s perspective of the tunnel that 'shrinks' you before bringing you face-to-face with a butterfly and other creepy crawlies inside.

(Photos taken with Diana F+, 38mm super-wide angle lens, Lomography XPro Slide 200 120 film.)

Finding warmth in the snow

I've not altered any of the photographs here with software or any app. From the apocalyptic snow-scape here and the vintagie dreamscapes below, they all came from the same roll of film in my Diana F+)

I went to Hokkaido with my Diana F+, an analog toy camera, and just four rolls of 120 film. I came back with nine rolls. Given the unpredictability of a toy camera and that I was still trying to understand the camera, I was expecting 50-70% of the photos to be, well, very bad. But the results surprised me, and made me treasure the moments captured even more. The roll of film that I took along Shiretoko mountain pass delivered breathtakingly beautiful, dreamy results that are to be expected of lomography as we know it.

My note to Kai for his seven-year-old birthday contains my favorite photo of him from our recent trip to the famous Japanese island. Here're more photographs from that same roll. For the uninitiated, each roll of 120 film only yields 12 or 16 photographs? That's why I save them for very special memories.

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The drive through Shiretoko mountain pass started rather innocuously. In Hokkaido, you get used to the snowy landscape very quickly. (And this is early summer in Hokkaido!) So while the first snow-capped peak and field of pristine, blanket snow would have taken your breath away, you get used to the rolling snow-scape very quickly. After a while, you forget it's there.

It was foggy and cold when we stopped to see the Shiretoko Five Lakes. As you can see from the photograph above, we didn't see the lakes at all.

Disappointed, we left the look-out point. After a short drive, we turned a corner and saw the most beautiful snow-scape ever during the short time that we're in Hokkaido. Someone, somewhere, long time ago must have seen what we saw because the government had built a road shoulder just so that cars could stop for passengers to admire the view.

DSLR and traditional SLR cameras would give you snow that is pure white, glistening, smooth, and sculptured. Lomography apps, Instagram, Photoshop could give you a sepia, retro effect if you so wish.

But the Diana F+ captured the happy dreamscape my boys were in when we brought them out to play in the snow.

What amazes me is the variety that you get from the same roll of film, using the same camera setting, same subjects, and all taken at the same place. The photographs look vintage in one, dramatic the next, and bewilderingly strange in another -- like the apocalyptic look in the first photograph of this blog post.

That's why I love analog cameras. They are as unpredictable as my boys.

Somehow the photographs captured the sense of contentment, peace, and happiness I felt as I watched Kit roll snowballs and had snowball fights with Kai.

(Photos taken with Diana F+, 38mm super-wide angle lens, Lomography XPro Slide 200 120 film.)