Seeing Bold Colors

Every time I am walking around, whether I have my Olympus camera with me or not, the ever trusty smartphone camera is on standby to capture something that catches my attention. Usually that something will be visually striking, and I am particularly drawn to interesting and bold colors. Most of the images I am showing in this blog entry were taken when I was strolling around Brickfields in KL, and the buildings there have walls in vivacious combination of colors, I just cannot help it but capture frames after frames. Some images (the obvious one with the fallen road sign, Jalan Sultan) were shot in Petaling Street, the epicenter of street photography activities in Kuala Lumpur. I must admit the Motorola's humble smartphone camera does pretty well in such well lit environment and the colors do pop (with a hint of over-saturation) and come to live.

Looking at these images, they were far from what I would usually be satisfied with coming home from a typical shutter therapy session. Nonetheless, I also have to brave myself to explore other styles and approach when I shoot on the street. I am a fan of color photography and Malaysia is such a colorful place (literally). It does not take much to open my eyes to the wonderful variety of colors splashing all over the city streets. Maybe these are not qualified to be called street shots, but who cares. All I wanted to do was record the beauty that I saw.

There are times that we just have to set aside our gear obsession and not worry too much about technical perfection. Start seeing the beauty around us and shoot with whatever tool is at hand. I think visual artistic appreciation does not have to go too strictly with ever-increasing megapixel race and larger format war. Just be happy, use what you have and enjoy the beauty around you!