Garden Festival 2014 Aug 16 2014

Its Garden Festival 2014@ Garden by the Bay but not in Cloud Forest or Flower Dome... its in the Meadow in a big air conditioned tent.

Incoming crowds  

Shuttle to Flower Dome, or flower Dome to Meadow ..  you could choose to walk towards Meadow. .

Entrance to the big tent ..

Garden festival mascots posing with visitors 

Its dark inside - my first impression... not easy to get pin-sharped image of such a macro scale exhibitions.

Taking this changing color garden is a challenge  I will be satisfied to have a unshaken picture. Walking around i thought the scene belong to a church graveyard - angels and arch-shaped structure.

You need to wait for the fog generation to give an atmosphere of this stream in a jungle setting ( I think).

Angel....... spooky atmosphere

I think the three-some make a difference to this pic above...

Foreground shooting at the background - the girl in black balanced the static clumps of flora

Hey this is the childhood kampong pop pop ....first time i saw use for the floral decoration below.

Fire... 

The concept is simple - spirals structure to decorate a table...

Randomly placed here - i looked at this Dining In Mangrove and shot a couple of different view  in images below...

Aother view

To0 red and attention getter that to leave it out will be a waste

Rather than queue up i prefer to shot the photographer as well.

THe 3D - spiky structure I have seen before ..... mathlab demo?

I decided to zoom in the portions - like in this one the book sprung poisonous toadstool.... ( my interpretation)

Incomplete if i dont show you how the head look like right?

Here is the sequence of looking at this exhibition. 

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Dining in Mangrove. Here  you could see the mangrove supporting roots, high back chair and the sliced-logs meal.

Static versus dynamic 

Flying machine for mounting a camera beneath

Calabash tree. 

GO and take sometime to read this... great capture of how children interact with trees!!!! ( Conceptualized by adult and shot by prof i thins)

Let there be light....the spirals resembled a flying machine 

I remembered seeing the same theme in last Garden Festival ..

For the outdoor when light is plenty.. zooming in or close up is never a problem...

On hindsight i should have focused on the other one....

Kampong shrub. Castor plants and i didn't recall i ever saw them flowering....The seed contains racin - one of the most potent poison.

I shoot three version of this.. this is the pulled in version. 

Looking at holes through the foliage and saw this..

I waited for the person to move away letting in the sun to illuminate the match-head pollen sags

She lents a helping hand to right a drooping Lily's head 

Ficus carica (Turkey fig) 

The reflective overhead plant-container gave a diffuse look of the photographers

National Aug 9 Holiday Sat @ Bukit Timah Nature Reserve

August 9 2014 - Singapore National Day.

Red is the in color today and many wear the red tops and so does the Crimson SunBird here.  I took the usual path climbing the stairs at Seraya and continued the jungle fall path up to summit to see a big gathering of red-shirted youngsters. My other agenda is to test out the macro function of this camera on images within handheld distance.

This crimson Sunbird  is keeping me busy. I am trying very hard to follow his/her jumping-about and chirping away. 

Taken at Taban Valley Loop off-shoot from South view Path. The centre tree with straight trunk - Joseph Lai told me this tree flowered once every so 20 years. It had completed the flowerings i can see the wilted brown petals littering the forest floor.

Taken from the Main road and trying several different angles to get to it minimizing the obstructing foreground foliage.

SO another view above

On Quarry Road ( after Simpan Hut ) i spotted this miniaturize durian on the forest floor. It had very densely packed sharp spikes  typical of the wild Borneo orange or red durians.

This was the first macro shot - if you didn't notice my finger on upper left you wont have guessed  correctly the size of this wild fruit.

I turn it around so that the colorful and the rather longish shape instead of the rounder durian we all familiar with

It had segments like other durian. I looked around but the trees above are not bearing with tons of these type of fruits. Nearby i found the tag to a tree. So the tree is ID. I crank my neck looking straight up trying to pick out any flower or fruit which had orange or red coloring.

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I went back the next day, with brighter sunlight ( v slight drizzle) i spotted the three opened petals with black seeds.

This is the red coloring i seen up in the tree uisng x50  or 12000mm equivalent zoom. The open red petals matches up with the flowers of this durio graffithii in the internet.

At the entrance not far away from Kruing Path located several Chng Tng wing-fruit. The fruit is still intact and attached to the boat-shaped wing. And when i drop it from height the wing-'fruit' spins like a top. Positioning and playing with the sun light to lit up this pretty boat. Below is another arrangement so the interior texture is not washout like above.

I went back the next day ( Sunday) and you can see the difference between the winged seed and the normal leaf - they are different and serve different purpose.

Picked up from the forest floor - did i yanked it up? A wing-seed had germinated.

THe central trunk was clothed with body hugging creepers with big leaves.

Green tattooed

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From Quarry Path ( next to the Singtel tower) looking down to the Hindhede Quarry. Can you spot the group of people in the look out hut? 

This is the look-out hut to the Hindhede Quarry. From here you can see all the cliff faces below the Singtel Towers and the cave entrance connected to one of the Cave in Cave Path. THis view is from the Quarry Path looking down.

FIshes swimming in Hindhede Quarry water.

The morning is still cool  and i walked towards Wallace Education Centre... while this Simpoh flower is less than perfect but an exercise in zooming in look.

THis fellow or the other pair was making noises .. i dont have chance for another shot before it disappearing into another branch in Wallace Education Centre

Wilder view of the fern

 

It was still in the tens hour morning. Spotted a fern head was still damped with morning dew. The head is waiting to be unfurled and rolled over some time. The following Monday I was there again but this patch of grass was gone..

TRied the big forest ants - still need some way to freeze the moment... may be one day.