Lost in Saigon

Yesterday, while i left the school, imagine my surprise when i couldn't turn left to come back home. Indeed, i get informed by a "xe om" that i have to turn right, go straight until... i can turn and then find my way.
I was sure, i gonna be lost in Saigon...

Like the first month in HCMC, isn't great? So exciting!
Yet, i have been lost, i drove around the district 8 which i didn't know. It looks like the side of the river when we travel to the mekong delta. There are building over 10m height, hundreds boats are loading are unloading various goods.

Actually, it is the contrast which stoke me. The contrast between this poor district hidden between the river and the district 7 and the centre of the city.
It is like this area of town have been for forgotten and is self-sufficient from the rest of the city.

After driving for a while, i passed a bridge and find a spot which could illustrate what i was experienced.
Unfortunately, i haven't my camera so i used my phone to take this picture.
I played with photoshop to separate downtown from these building; it seems to come from underground and spring up like mushroom.

I used black and white for the "vietnamese favelas" and saturated colors for the buildings. The light was not suitable to the picture and my equipment limited the result. Therefore, saturated color seems normal.
I didn't want to use to much effects on this picture. It would spoiled the natural.

Annoyed of reading, here the picture:

Picture

I would like to share with you a picture that I took in the Caen Memorial in France there are 4 years ago. It is a museum near the Normandy landings beaches and we can admire numerous rare pieces.

One of them is that picture.
It have been taken in Warsaw (Poland) between 1942 and 1945 during the deportation. I think it is in 1942 that the internment in concentration camp started in Poland.
Unfortunately, I do not have the name of the photographer and i never could find out this photo on internet. Maybe simply because it is shown in a museum.

I feel an amazing amount of emotions in this picture: sadness and pity. the child is alone in the middle of ruins, probably after bombing. In the background, there is a woman in the shadow. Maybe it is the mother of the child. But there is almost no motion. It seems that the child walk slowly.
The contrast between the size of the destroyed building and the child make him far smaller. The shadow of buildings makes the street more dangerous. But the child goes forward toward unknown, perhaps toward the woman who seems yet so far.
The image is amazingly well balanced, the child is in the perfect centre and buildings make a destabilizing tunnel perspective. We almost want to say, no don't go, stay here, it is all dark and death.

Life

I took this picture in Phu My Hung 3 weeks ago. I like this picture. It makes me think about this life . The left side has 2 street lamps, and the right has none so the right side is too dark. It is similar to this life: bad, cruel, danger, jealous, crafty, greedy, etc are dominating. Maybe you think that I'm too pessimistic, but I just tell the truth about this life...

I appreciate when you give me some feedbacks

Colors and style

I find that 4 of my favorite colors can be suitable for each others like that and they can create a style for my design. I made this picture to show you how those colors match together:

This is another version of my color's style

Model: Tina

Photo: Zen

Stylish and design: FuOnK

Hope all of you like it!

Thanks a lot if you can give me some advice to make this style better!

PLaying with layers, filter, lighting, color and other effects in PS with photography :)

Like you guys know that I prefer to work on my photo. So I show what I play with my photo ^^ :).

This is the original one [I didn't resize, so it migh take a long time to load ^^]

And here is the result after I played with a lot of affect of PS ^^ [PS is so wonderful, fantastic and really my best friend ^^]

The background is blured. I used 2 layers: the one I blured is under another one. Then I use "mode clear" of brush to erase the background part on the layer which is not blured [the above one].

I added one more layer for the lips. This layer is under the layer which is not blured and above the blured layer.

Each layer is separated, so it's easy to edit every part of the picture.

And because the light where I took this picture was so nice, so we can see the picture's details very well :).

Photographer, model and also designer ^^: LYnn-Lee

Place: Apple room at RMIT Uni. Vietnam :D .

Camera: Sony ^^.

Tool: Photoshop :) .

Actually, I have no obvious idea for this picture.

My first idea for this was color arrangement around my photos. But after that something changed my mind to many other ways. Then I still used three colors for this design. And i still remember Maddy's talk in class about space, shape and contrast in class. So I finished it with this result ^^ :p.

Playing with color layer and my photo by PS

This is the color layer I created ^^

Hehe, this is my original photo ^^ :D ,

Then I put the color layer in front of the photo ^^

I decreased the opacity of some squares of color, then I used random some modes of photo image, mixed some effects and this is the result ^^ .

I really like blue color, so I use "color balance" to increase the level of blue color to have this below ^^.

Different versions of Wing

I took this picture when I went to Singapore with my club on 6th September(RMIT Vietnam Ultimate frisbee Club), representing for our University to taking part in a largest Tournament of Asia: Singapore Open Tournament 2007. It was also the first time that I fly and I cannot forget that memory, that feeling. That's why this picture is meaningful for me.

"Mixing and editing" colors with Photoshop CS2

I started to learn using Photoshop for 4 months ago. At that time, I thought that Photoshop was only used for cutting, pasting some items into a picture or done some basic effects like changing colors or backgrounds. But after the first lesson, I had changed my mind. I found that Photoshop was not boring; it's really really interesting with a lot of tools that I can use to design my pictures.

Up to now, Photoshop is the software I like most. I use it everyday to edit and design my photography but I prefer "mixing and editing" colors to the rest effects of Photoshop.

Taking pictures and editing them are my hobbies. I like to travel everywhere to take pictures and now, I will show you some of my pictures that I edit and mix colors by Photoshop CS2.

The first one is a picture that I took 2 months ago in my hometown, Vũng Tàu. This is the original picture

And this is the picture after "mix and edit colors".

Some more pictures that I took in my holiday in the Northern area of Viet Nam.

All photos are taken and edited by FuOnK

Hope you enjoy!

.::Michael Didonna Photography::.

View site here

Actually, photography is a big attractive topic for me. The way how we can take a picture that the viewer not only can see what they see but also can feel and carry along with it. Luckily, I found one website that nearly shows me how light and angle always keep important roles in photography. Moreover, the appearance of this website looks simple but modern and eye-catching.

You first view this website by a window with several small pictures are arranged randomly. Whenever you drag your mouse to a photo in the screen, that photo immediately turns to bright and stands out in relief. It’s really nice and attractive.

Obviously, Michael Didonna has taken numerous of photos in different catalogues such as portraits, features, travel and Australia. Those pictures really make a strong impression for me. The way he uses light, color and places the angle for each photo is really excellent.
There are some photos that I extremely like:







Furthermore, this website is designed by BOOM Design Group which is famous for designing many flash webs for lots of popular company such as Hennessy: Flaunt Your Taste; Rise Above: Chief Executive Air; Mark Morris Dance group. All of these websites are also designed impressive, modern and nice-looking. For seeing more project of the BOOM Design Group, go here.

Hope that you guys feel the same with me and enjoy the website.

My work: the Fishy Header

Meanwhile, I'm going to blog a little about the header for this template.

One of the things that makes living in Saigon so special is that the streets are so full of people doing things. You probably think this is normal, but if you grow up in a place like Vancouver, where everyone drives everywhere and no one sells anything on the street, it's special, believe me. This is what a street in Vancouver looks like. Nice. Neat. Clean. Boring! Where the hell do you get a bowl of mi? Where are all the people? Where's the life?

So I was going for a stroll down in district 1 with my trusty camera at the ready. I walked down that small street that has a market on it, that leads out onto Ham Ngi, near that famous Banh Mi store and I started taking pictures.

It's not a very big market, but there's this crazy, huge tree growing right up out of the roof of a clothes stall.

Anyway... I got to the fish sellers area and noticed there were a whole load of live fish swimming around in plastic buckets. So I started taking pictures of them. I wasn't really interested in getting a good picture of a fish, because there wasn't enough light and they were all moving around in the water. But I liked the way the colour of the buckets reflected into the water, and the way the fish moved around, making a kind of abstract moving piece of art.

The bubbles in particular made the whole think look like a crazy lava lamp. I started getting frustrated with the light, there wasn't enough to allow my autofocus mode on my camera to focus. But after a bit, I got used to that, and just started enjoying the weirdness of it all. Here's the photo that I cropped and, after a little messing around with photoshop, became the header for this blog.



As you can see, I cropped it to get a nice horizontal slice, and then I fooled around with the levels setting in photoshop, making it darker, and getting the red even deeper. Then I overlayed it with a black to transparent gradient and set the gradient layer to "multiply".