Snapshots: Jason Mah

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This story was printed from CNET Asia.
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Snapshots: Jason Mah

By Damian Koh
13/01/2006
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/digitalcameras/0,39001469,39304504,00.htm

I particularly like landscape photos and what a way to begin the new year with some of Jason's blue skies and green vegatation. Like Evon Lim, both of them share a penchant for macro photography as we saw similarities in their shooting styles. In this interview, Jason takes us on a nature ramble with some really closeups of fauna and flora before ending off with some spectacular fireworks display.

The images you see from this feature have been reproduced with permission from Jason Mah. If you wish to be featured in our interviews or know any photo buffs who may be interested, email us a short description of yourself, or your friend, and we'll get back to you.

Name: Jason Mah
Type of photographer: Amateur / enthusiast
Current arsenal: Canon PowerShot A80, Nikon D70
Accessories to go: Macro lens, extension tubes, wide-angle lens and Cokin filters

What he says:
Photography always never fails to fascinate me. It all started when I bought my Canon PowerShot A80 for an overseas trip to New Zealand a year ago. More opportunities followed when I chanced upon a few photography-related forums and made friends with a bunch of enthusiasts. Photography outings let us share our knowledge and that is how I developed an interest in macro shooting. What intrigues me more is seeing small and tiny subjects up close. In the near future, I would love to experience landscape and wildlife photography.

Water lily
"Messy and distracting backgrounds are one of the factors for me to determine whether a photo is good or bad. In this case, I used Photoshop to burn out the background to make the subject stand out more prominently."

Lotus
"I took this shot with sunlight shining straight down the center of this lotus. It gave the lotus a glowing effect."

Suction
"Sometimes breaking the Rule of Thirds may just make your photo stand out. That's what I did in this image by positioning the center of this flower right in the middle."

Onions
"Moving closer into a subject allows us to see the beauty of it from the outside all the way to the inside."

Pearls
"Early in the morning or after rain is the best time to capture pearl-like water droplets on almost all the leaves."

Water droplets
"By applying the Rule of Thirds, the picture draws your attention from the water droplets all the way to the center of the lotus leaf."

Butterfly
"This was one of my first shots taken with my then newly acquired Tamron 90mm macro lens. Depth of field is essential in macro or close-up photography as it allows us to isolate the non-critical details while maintaining a sharp focus on the subject."

Cat
"This shot was taken during my short trip to Genting Highlands, Malaysia. Always remember to bring along a small canister of cat biscuits in your bag as bait and reward for the cat."

Face off
"Long telephoto lenses are best used to capture animals either in the wild or in captivity; and in this case, the Singapore Zoo."

Texture
"One of my few abstracts processed in black-and-white to give it more texture between the contrasts."

Blue
"Another shot taken during my short trip to Genting Highlands, Malaysia. Blue skies contribute a lot to beautiful landscape photography."

Kampong
"The use of a gradual blue filter and a gradual neutral density filter inverted brings out a more blue sky, but at the same time not over-exposing the foreground."

Fire
"A simple shot taken with an orange filter and silhouette of a tree. Nothing challenging except for its composition and color. So try to compose your shots with the Rule of Thirds in mind."

Sunset
"During sunset, it is best to fill around 2/3 of the frame above the horizon as the colors of the sky and the cloud formations are always quite dramatic. Experiment with both wide-angle and telephoto lens as both will give a different feel to the same sunset."

Sun, sand and sea
"The use of a gradual tobacco filter allowed me to add a different feel to a normal sunset shot. By including the sand and sea in the foreground, it completes the whole shot in terms of composition."

Fireworks
"A sturdy tripod is a must when capturing fireworks. In this case, I set my camera to bulb mode with an F-stop (aperture value) of F8 to F11 and used a wireless remote to control the length of exposure. By using a black card to cover the lens, I can choose to include or exclude certain bursts of fireworks."

For more of Jason's works, click here to go to his online gallery.