Canon Photomarathon 2009

Saturday, 10-10-2009

Photo credits : SY and friends
Mine are mostly widescreen view.
The rest were all taken from High Guan & Azu's DSLRs

Annually, Canon launches a day call Photomarathon
to gather every photo lovers in the country.
Professional ones ...
Semi-professional ones .......
Cam-whores XD
and simply anyone who is interested and loves photography.

Screw the thought of only professional cameras can join.

Even a simply Powershot or a camera-phone can participate !

First time I heard about it was last year,
Brother of mine just came back the night before from Singapore.
Was supposed to attend it in Times Square.
But due to the insider information that it was too packed, we canceled the plan.

So this year, Kar Hoe msg-ed me.
Asked my brother who told me this
'Yes, You should go !!! . .. Go collect the T-shirt'

SY : ....................................

College buddies, either Nikon camera users OR simply not interested
Highschool friends, pretty much pre-occupied with classes/ busy.

Thank god for facebook.
Managed to find few old friends to join me for this event.
*Thumbs Up*

(The view from the centre right from the backrow)

Held at Sunway Lagoon this year.

Woke Up at 6 am this morning T_T
Thanks for the wake up call =)
Somehow everything was kinda restricted cause there's nothing much to take in SL.
And trust me the headache begins later ..



We changed into our Canon official shirts which was Red.
It really felt like ChineseNewYear spirit when you entered the place LOL

My BigBro joined the one in Singapore. Theirs - black.
So I guess every country has a different colour.



(Participants walking to the starting point)


There was around 1000 people here I think.
Cause it was packed.
I pity students from my college
cause the Police literally directed all the cars to park in SunwayCollege.

(HG actually use this for Theme 3)

Browse below , you'll understand better what all these themes were !

Once you're inside this crowd,
you'll feel the spirit to take photographs.
Is like everyone is holding a camera. (Worse part : 95% were all DSLRs)
I was kinda shy to even take out my camera in the first place.
Everyone was like coming with big backpacks filled with lenses, tripod,
you name it.



My New Facebook Profile Picture =)


(Taking the overall view)

Alright so here is how this event runs.

You come with your camera (regardless of any brand)

You are either catogories in Compact Cameras or DSLR (pro)
(I was using a Compact only btw =P)

You register and wear your shirt.

There will be 3 themes. You need to summit 3 photographs by the end of the event.

There were 100 computers for all to summit the photos.

Of course, all the photos belong to you in the end =)

The 3 themes for this year were :

• Theme 1 : Splash ~~!
• Theme 2 : Red
• Theme 3 : Shooting in Progress

You will then be judged based on your skills and creativity of intepretating the themes.

And the hardest thing was , NO EDITING!!

What you snap is gonna be a final product already.

So you can't go photoshop do adjust your colour balance, curves, anything !

As for the professional ones, you can't shoot in RAW formatted file.

All photos must be in JPEG.

We were each given 6 hours to take 3 photographs following the themes.
But of course I think we were all done by the first 3 hours.
And because we have full access to the ENTIRE lagoon,
Some went to enjoy the theme parks and all.. LOL

But literally visitors was asking us ..
'Are you all from a school coming for a project work ?'
Cause the entire Lagoon was filled with people wearing red coloured T-shirt LMAO



(Waiting at the starting point. Sean's gonna make noise about my face now lol)

Know what was the headache about the themes ?
With restricted place, this was what happen ..

When you're trying to take a photo,
There are tons of people around you taking the SAME shot !
And all the DSLRs are scaring me LOL

I have never seen so many DSLRs all together in my entire life. LOL

My 3 photos which I summited to the Canon server was :

THEME 1 : SPLASH !
Trust me, it isn't easy taking SPLASH because my shutter speed is slowwwwwwww

And somehow,
this was taken when Azu was taking photographs of me for Theme 3.

THEME 2 : RED !
Something red.
I thought that most people would take photographs of the Canon participants.
Mainly because that's the only thing red you could see easily in Lagoon?

But I did saw many people uploading photos like these in Theme 1.

And my last theme,



THEME 3 : Shooting in progress
The funny part is He was photograph from front and back.
And the people surrounding him was like backup actors ,
because NOBODY was looking at 3 of them. LOL

Thought it would be something different cause it did caught my eye from the top.


Other photographs ...

One of the photographs I wanted to summit for Splash.



This too =)

Friends : SY, The theme is RED ! This is BLUE !
YOU'RE RUNNING OUT FROM THE THEME.
OUT OUT ..ENOUGH ..STOP TAKING PHOTOS OF HIM . LOL

SY : His eyes are gorgeous .. LOL
(Don't know if you can see it from the photo)

I didn't expect this photo to turn out so nice though
But the colour is beautiful isn't it =)

Azu used this for Theme 3 =)
Yesh, it's my hands and camera there. LOL
I'm waiting for someone to come out from there & SPLASH !

~ At the top at the bridge ~
It was around 1 and actually it was burning hot up there LOL

HG's photo for Theme 2 =)

..................................................................................................

Made friends with some photographers too.
Veterans who took stunning photographs. *respect*
I'm not surprised if they actually won for the DSLR category.
The results are only out tomorrow.

So we came back to the stage area early to summit our photos.
Place was empty so photos were easily uploaded.

I was talking with the Canon people in Cantonese,
laughing and joking together along with the other Canon pros,
My friend came to me 'You know them ?'
SY ' I just did ? LOL'

They were nice enough to borrow the computer to transfer photos from my friend's memory card into my memory card. Imagine transferring via MSN or flickr. One photos is like 10MB. *gulps*

With free time, we went to the Canon counter.
There was plenty of DSLRs or compact cameras you can try
together with add-on lenses.

So HG decided to try adding on a 8k lens onto his DSLR,
and the effect was ...

The canon guy was nice enough to enlighten me about the ranges of add-on lenses. And the professional photographs & HG was kind enough to give me tips on Manual Focus and some other photograph skills. I gotta admit, I'm still noob in everything LOL Till now I haven really used all the features in my camera eventhough it can shoot in RAW formatted.

One thing was,

SY: Ohh the photo looks nice ....
HG : This lens is mad !! MAD !
SY : So how much does this add-on cost in the market?
CanonGuy : Rough estimate around RM8,000.
SY : No wonder the photos are nice .. LOL

I'll get one soon in the foreseeable future.
When I'm working or perhaps a funky lottery strike ~! XD
Wait & see !

So overall, it was a very fun event.
I do recommend anyone to join if there will be one again next year =)
One thing, wear comfy shoes cause you'll be walking the entire day !

SY is listening to : Run This Town - Jay Z ft Rihanna & Kanye West
SY is watching :
SY is busy doing : I was into this Canon Photography Event since morning till now.
Talking about trial exams in less than 10 days. LOL Screw MOCK ! XD

Signing out,
SY,
The photos just indicate how bad I need a haircut LOL
Perhaps after trial exams XD