Reflections prt2 + Asian-Australian Project

Part 2 of reminiscing.

In Malaysia, I stayed with my mum's family first. Whilst there, I shot a few videos of my Grandma preparing dinner. She was making Yeung Dao Fu, or.. the best way I can describe it is Stuffed To Fu.

Grandma in the kitchen.

I loved the natural light that the kitchen had, with the sun coming in through the back door. The wall int he above image is a little blown out, but I like that, especially in the videos.

This brings up something that I have noticed lately - I have noticed this general difference in preference of image quality between video and photography. When Changas was over, I showed him this awesome new plugin developed by the awesome guys at Video Copilot, called Optical Flares. This plugin allows you to add, yup you guessed it, Lens flares into your video footage so you can achive certain looks. The plugin is so comprehensive that it allows you to imitate flares from real lens irises, and even adding Chromatic Aberration, which Changas was quite surprised and impressed with. Changas is a photographer, and he says that most photographers go for the cleanest look they can, choosing lenses and photoshopping to remove any sort of Chromatic Aberration in their images, as well as removing grain. Whilst int he video world, you can find plenty of plugins that allow youto imitate certain film stock grain, and generally making the footage more dirty. I wonder where this difference of preference comes from?

Anyway going back on topic, I filmed my Grandma preparing dinner, and the footage I got was quite extensive and looked great. I am currently editing it into a short doco that I am making as part of my Honours project on finding Asian-Australian stories. I am intercutting the footage with footage of my mum cooking Chinese New Year dinner. The doco is currently titled 'Tastes of Home', and is just an exploration of my mum and her cooking. Themes I'm looking at exploring are generational influences, senses of home, how cooking is used by displaced peoples to recall home, whether it actually means that to the older generations of migrants, etc. I have the style already, just need to do a few more interviews, and I am considering introducing my sister into the story, so that I can explore the themes from 3 generations of Chinese-Malaysian women.


Changas was over to help me film some things on his newly aquired Nikon d3s. The above image was taken by him, me and my mum as subjects.
My k7 is currently non-funcitonal because I damaged my lens on the last day of the trip. It's in Japan now, getting fixed... I hope. But yes, Changas' d3s is a beautiful piece of equipment. Check his stuff out on his blog here: http://iamchangas.blogspot.com/
Thus I am stuck using uni gear, though the z1p is still a very ncie camera. But I'm waiting to test out the newly acquired z7p.

Back to Malaysia. Below are pics of the end results of my Grandma's cooking, and the relatives consuming the fruits of her labour. *note the box of roast duck was brought from take away :) *

Resting after the meal.

Getting all artsy... but i quite like the photo. I love the light.

Since my Grandma was already there, decided to do a kind of portait.
Shopped one in b&w for kicks.

Not sure if they're good though, seems way too dark in her face. What do you think?

Some more photos from my first stay in Malaysia.
This beautiful, succulent sambal sting-ray. My god I miss it...



Stay tuned for more next time