Uploading Photos with Model Release to ShutterStock

To upload photos to ShutterStock, I find doing it this way will be more organized.

If you have a series of photos of the same model from the same shoot, upload 1 photo first. When you submit the photo, you will be asked to upload the model release. Once the model release is uploaded to ShutterStock, then you can use the 'use archive' feature to attach the same model release to all your subsequent photos.

If you upload many photos of the same model the first time, you will be asked to upload model releases many times, and you will end up with many model releases of the same model, from the same shoot in your archive, which is going to make things messy.

Ok, just my thoughts. :)

S.A.M Machine Upgrading...For Your INCONVENIENCE!

Yes, the title is correct, for your INCONVENIENCE! Recently most of the S.A.M. machines at various MRT stations have been upgraded to the new generation machine. With the upgrade, I expect it will be more convenient for the users. However, to my great disappointment, this upgrade seems to have taken out some convenient features of the old machine.

1. With the new machines, only at selected locations there is a weighting scale for people to weight their parcels to determine the postage.

2. All the new machines only allow NETS transactions, which imposes a minimum transaction amount to be S$2.00. If you want to buy a 26 cents stamp, then you have to buy more to make up for the S$2.00. The feature to use coins has been removed.

I don't understand why people want to replace functional machines with less convenient machines. Sigh...

Everything you do is wrong...

Starting the day at 6am, arrived in office at 7.45am, then left office at 10.20pm. A long and tiring day. Guess what I did for the whole day? Well, I spent most of the time doing checks. Some genius wants us to everything right, so he/she came up with a check that will check for our mistakes. And we have to go through all the mistakes one by one, to make sure that our work is perfectly done.

When we talk about mistakes, we are not talking about tens or hundreds, but thousands and thousands. Basically everything that we do is wrong. The check is very thorough, it checks all combinations that is possible, making sure that whatever you do, the check will flag an error.

After checking hundreds of the so-called mistakes, I decided not to bother about it anymore. Whoever thinks highly of those checks, please verify the errors the checks flag himself/herself. I am not going to spend my precious time doing such idiotic things.

Some may argue that there may be some genuine mistakes being flagged. Yeah, right! Even if there is one, are you sure you will not miss it in the hundreds of thousands of falsely flagged errors?

The only sure thing in this world is human stupidity :P

TFCD with V. E.

Did a TFCD with a very nice young guy V on Sunday morning at Tanjong Beach in Sentosa. The shoot was more difficult than I had previously estimated. The sun was playing hide & seek with us, sometimes it was shining brightly; sometimes it was so shy that it hid behind all the black clouds :( It does not help that Tanjong beach was strangely crowded on that day. People looked at us with great curiosity, wondering what these two guys were doing. And considering that Straits Times featured a not so positive article about photo-shoots in Clubsnap on that Sunday too.

Anyway, the shoot was enjoyable in general. We tried many things, although many failed. The beach is a lot more cluttered than I thought, and I under-estimated the difficulty in avoiding all the clutters.

V was very co-operative and willing to attempt all the funny stuff. I think he must be cursing me for asking him to jump numerous times, and had to face the shining sun, making it painful for his eyes.

I learned quite a lot through this shoot. There are some other shoots in the works, but before that, I need to settle something much much more important in life, something good and I am looking forward to :)

AI Focus vs AI Servo vs One Shot

This is a note to myself. I learned it the hard way, that means I made mistakes to learn this.

AI Focus is for you to focus on something originally stationary, then it starts moving. If you focus on a static subject, and then you move your camera away, the focus will continue to change. There is no focus lock. This mode works very poorly if you are thinking of focusing on a static subject, lock the focus and then point to something else. In the Canon 20D, the focusing points will continue to light up, signalling to you which area is in focus.

AI Servo is for you to focus on something that is ALREADY moving, and you want to continue to focus on that subject. The camera's focusing points won't light up. You will have no idea which point is in focus which is not. The use of this focusing mode can be quite terrible, and many pictures will turn out out of focus. If you use this mode to shoot static subjects, you might kick yourself for not even being able to focus on some simple, static subjects.

One Shot is for you to focus on static subject.

All the above are actually written in the camera manual, just that I don't really understand everything after reading the manual. Nothing is better than practice to learn something, although it may be the hard way.

As I used the wrong mode in a recent shoot, many photos are out of focus, even some simple ones. Sad, sad sad...

Handsome Suits

This is a Japanese comedy about a fat & ugly looking chef, who transformed himself into a handsome guy after wearing a magical 'handsome suit'.

A very typical preaching of the old values of putting more emphasis on a person's internal beauty rather than a person's external beauty. Go deep instead of superficial.

The story is quite cliche, the funny ideas are not really that funny. Well, if you have nothing better to do, and want to have some laughters, then give it a chance :)

My rating: 2.5/5

Departures (Okuribito)

This is a multi-award winning Japanese movie. The story goes around Daigo Kobayashi, starring Masahiro Motoki, who lost his job in Tokyo and moved back to his hometown Yamagata with his wife Mika, starring Ryoko Hirosue.

He found a job as someone who does the cleaning, make-up, and changing the clothes for the dead, hence the name of the film - Departures.

The movie is a bit on the heavy side for me, emotionally. The director did try to mix in some humours and light-hearted moments, but still they don't diffuse the heaviness of the theme.

This is not really my cup of tea.

Suspect X

Suspect X is a continuation of the popular TV series of Detective Galileo. The same cast moved from the small screen to the big screen. However, this big screen debut is very much a let-down for me.

The weakest link in the big screen debut is the story line. First 3/5 of the movie has been used to lay down the plot, or the mystery. It is so successful that I actually feel very bored when I watched the first 3/5. A simple murder story, and I already know who the murders are, how it happens, totally no suspense at all. Then only the last 2/5 of the movie makes a 180 degrees turn, and presents to the audience a surprise. However, the surprise is not that big. It is like you walk up a 100m hill and then walk down. You do have a turning point and a peak, but the peak is not that high.

Further more, the fun elements in the TV series is almost completely gone in the movie. It makes the movie even more boring.

My rating: 2.5/5