Save for the ANNOYING haze, the Octobers and Februaries of the year yield the best blue skies in Malaysia. So if there’s heavy rain the day before, high chance for you to get blue blue skies during these times. Keep your camera handy!

This was shot after I got up from a nap last Saturday 6pm.

This is my effort at the channel mixer conversion with the red channel boosted up after taking a blue sky with a CPL.

From the top of the Malvern Hills, you can see the rest of the series at my blog.

The sky is the photographer’s friend. Most of us love blue blue skies and it certainly helps in making a photo ‘prettier’. Grey nimbus clouds can ruin a scene of blue skies and fluffy white cumulus clouds. Predicting the look of the sky is essential if you want to make the best use of it.

1) Under normal circumstances, the sky will look best in February or October. However, with the rainy season being unpredictable lately, this may not be true.
2) Normally if there is hot sun after a few days of rain, the skies will be pristine.
3) If it’s a grey muggy day, I normally like to shoot in B&W where the colour of the sky won’t matter so much
4) Magic hour (the hour right after sunset) is known as such because the sky is always a nice tone of violet and blue and is an excellent backdrop for landscape or architectural photography.

Learn the cloud formations and they will serve you well…

Cloud formation information at Wiki

Anyway here are some samples of how the sky can be the main subject.

And a couple of shots I took yesterday evening (it was such a glorious sky)…

With a CPL (circular polarizer), you can get deep blue skies and if you use the B&W conversion technique I mentioned earlier, and turn on the Red filter in the Channel Mixer to 100%, you will turn these blue skies into a deep shade of grey or black. Should there be white clouds in the sky at that time, they will really stand out.

However, you may want to use this effect with some moderation.

While waiting for ST/DS to add a calendar module to this site, I’d like to share the fact that there’s a landscape/flower festival at the Lake Gardens until 16/7/06. I’ll be going early morning this weekend. Hope to see you there!

Details at http://www.laman2006.com

Hi, my name is Michael. Normally known around the net as Michaelooi, the unscrupulous guy who writes inane stuffs on his blog for his sheer twisted self absorbing pleasure. Whatever.

But there’s one side of me that not many people know of - that is my naturally given aptitude in arts and photography which have made me millions of bucks. Alright, I lied. I’m just another guy who’s very compassionate in arts and never became good enough of it to be a professional. And it has been 8 years since I’ve been doing this - capturing the sights that I love with my cameras, or any photography equipment I happen to lay my hands on.

But that’s not important really. What’s more important, is that I’ve been given a chance to showcase amongst the worst of my work here to torture your mind, and we’ll have to thanks Digisniper for that. Constructive feedbacks will be appreciated.

My cameras : Canon EOS 350D, Nikon FM2, Sony F707, Canon Ixus 500, Minolta Riva Zoom Pico (sometimes even disposable cameras…)
My photoblog : Capacity Overload
My blog : michaelooi.net

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This picture was taken outside my apartment a few months ago. It’s the same view I see when I go to work every morning. It was on that morning, that the shutterbug bit me and got me into capturing this view…

Canon EOS 350D F8 4″ ISO100