Bersama Lima 2011
Friday, November 4, 2011
I had some shots in mind to take already for this last trip, and one of them was of the anchor shackles located at the forecastle of the ship. Here I wanted to go for a selective focus. I realised I had to deal with rapid condensation quite often, since moving from the air conditioned confines of the ship to the humid weather outside often adversely affected the camera. I checked up a solution online and found all I had to do was keep it inside a plastic bag and wait for acclimatisation.
The next shot of the MISTRAL, or SAM launcher was one that suprisingly needed little retouching. The light was nicely dramatic, and all I wanted of the silhouette was granted naturally. The launcher, located on both sides of the ship, are meant to defend the ship against aerial attack should our escort ships fail to screen attack aircraft successfully.
My workplace is among those areas most classified on ship, and so I hesitated to put it up on facebook, even when only my Navy acquaintances can view the photos. Here's the console I work on when I close up. I had to bring up the ISO to 1000 for most all the indoor shots.
Helo ops was scheduled after some days, when we had to embark some important personnel on board. This Chinook came all the way from Singapore, I had no idea just how far a helicopter's range could extend to. Being quite senior, I had the privilege of not being the Helo Ops party, hence I was free to take this shot.
It was either later in the afternoon, or the day after, when another helicopter was expected, this time an Australian Sea Sprite. Pictured is my ship's Buffer and a flight deck officer before the Helo Ops commenced.
I was egged by the ME2 to venture beyond the safety of the flight deck shutters, and was really grateful for the chance to get photos from a much better angle. If not for the fact that my ship has quite a few people interested in taking photographs, including the ME2 himself, I might not have had the chance to go further with my camera.
The most heavily edited photo in the collection. The Sea Sprite struck an odd impression of something between oddly shaped and yet definitely deadly.
Here the flight controller motions for the Helo Ops crew to return to the hanger once the helicopter has been untethered to the flight deck.
We fast forward a few days to our few Replenishment at Sea operations, where we shifted to the West side of Tioman to refuel a number of RSN vessels in the span of a few days. Some took place in the day, others in the night and early morning. Large imposing fenders had to be lowered from our flight deck to the side of the ship in preparation, and on one occasion, we suffered an incident due to poor sea state.
The Major in the photo has posted out since this sailing, a few months shy of ORDing. His farewell warranted quite a celebration, and there was quite a lot of booze that went around. That was also in part due to one of our ship crew striking the lottery and winning cash in the zone of five figures.
Dauntless arrives for her fuel as rain clouds start to gather over the sky. Ever single time we refuelled her, it rained. Many said it was due to the large number of female sailors she had on board.
Yellow helmets and red Cherry fenders in preparation for the A/S.
The sky cleared up after the rain, and I was lucky to get a shot of the parting rain clouds. They almost seem to move aside for the protruding upper mast of the MCV.
This is perhaps my favourite shot of the sailing, with the depth clearly accentuated here. I realised all of my outdoor shots were just a slight bit too blue, so I had them tweaked.
I fast forward many more days now, in part because there wasn't much else to our role there but those operations for the next few days. Many realised that I had been logging on nearly everyday for updates on BF3 online, and indeed in the days running up to the game's release, I couldn't stop thinking about it. After some point in time though, time seemed to speed up considerably, and the sailing was over pretty soon.
The pictures here were taken on our first and only shore leave, lasting for about 5 hours on Tioman Island, a place that seemed to have taken East Coast Park and Pulau Ubin, and meshed them into a much bigger island. Leaving the ship on a fast beaching craft was truly something that I had been yearning for for a long time, and on the 29th, I had that curious wish fulfilled.
That day, we had to pick up other RSN personnel from various ships all anchored in our vicinity, for it was the end of the exercise and they were enjoying their shore leave too. Like a bus on it's daily route, we powered our way to different ships, five in total, picking up passengers along the way before heading for the beach. Sadly, we didn't beach on the island, but simply went alongside the small jetty where Australian shore leave personnel were already awaiting their return.
Men, ready weapons! Quite a few of us gamely posed for our D-Day stances as we came even nearer to the beach. You can see the speed of the craft accentuated by the motion blur of the surrounding water.
"Pillbox! There on the hillcrest! We take that objective, men!"
"Mm... I don't like the sound of that mission, sergeant..."
"Sustaining heavy fire! Push forward, men! Drive them back to Berlin!
Anyway, here's what the island more or less looked like. There were quite a few lodges for tourists, and apparently almost the whole population works in the tourist industry.
The whole island is a duty-free shopping area, so beers were as cheap as canned drinks, and the first thing we did was to get ourselves some Hoegaarden to drink while walking around. A nice one, I must say. I kept both bottle caps. We also drank some more at the eatery we stopped at, which was more or less all we had time for. Tiger cans littered the whole of our table, as you can see.
Stefan, the CBA (Chinese Born American) was glued to Fruit Ninja for most of the trip. He was quite upset when, during a previous sailing, the Buffer I mentioned earlier beat his high score in one try, scoring about 1300.
Nothing special about this photo, except that the sign board invites you to eat at a 'Shady Bakery'. Heh, not my cup of tea.
Here my camera was hijacked by the CBA dude, who showed me a light motion technique that produces pretty interesting results. Pictured is my Weapons specialist PO.
The reluctant Corporal made it up the hillcrest to take the pillbox that day. He's actually a regular, though. Weapons.
Here we chance upon a stall selling Ramlee burgers. It took some time, and apparently other shore leave personnel had to cook their own burgers because the islanders simply idled too long when cooking the burgers, and invited them to be the cook. Ours was fine, they apparently have Supermarket-packaged Ramlee burger patties ready to cook there.
The last shot of the sailing, taken in the ship's briefing room. The distortion here is accentuated by the lens and angle. The two in the photo are part of the Flotilla's 20th Anniversary team that I'm in, and we got some things done during the slow-paced sailing.
In the far corner is the Resolution Lighthouse, something I came up with and constructed for the ship. It was perhaps the most arduous effort I put in for the ship. It did get me an artfriend membership though I guess. And one duty off.
Until the next update, then.
posted by joseph at 4:09 PM
Friday, September 9, 2011
The briefing was done at the beach itself. It resembles a small lagoon, with a drawbridge in the middle. The place actually did look quite good, and the sand closer to the shore's edge was the soft, nice kind of sand. This person here is our Comms Officer, posted over recently from my RSS Brave, where Liang De is.
The fishing-rod-banana-dangling-eating game station, where two participants are blindfolded. One has to feed the other a banana tied to a fishing rod line. It was quite hilarious, seeing how some people could gobble the banana with ease, and how some others just engaged in prolonged foreplay. The person tying the blindfold is the Commanding Officer, an LTC. The fisherman is our Navigating Officer.
Here's another station, where one guy has to don a Swimmer-On-The-Watch (SoW) gear, get waist deep in the lagoon and pick out balloons with the right letter on them. The first team quickly thought to make subsequent teams suffer by throwing the balloons further out into the lagoon.
A pipe with many small holes was the subject of the next station, where the teams had to devise a way to keep the water in the tube such that one could pick a ping pong ball from its top. Some wrapped it with a trash bag provided, and some others buried the pipe partially into the sand.
I had to squat really low for this shot, recomposing a few times, but I think it was quite worth it.
Another element of the whole game involved the kidnapping of one teammate from each team. They were chained and locked up, and once all the stations were completed, a team could guess from a series of boxes which one contained their key.
So what would they do once they got their teammate back? They now had to bury him in his own shellscrape. No kidnappee was spared the creative sculpting of sand to shape obscene body parts.
Some teams still hadn't finished, though. This station required teams to coordinate quickly to form a group pose, with each pose requiring more and more people to participate. As usual, some of the poses were ridiculously funny.
The banana eating game once more, with Comms Justin using his iPad 2 to capture each 'feeding time'.
Our Chief Engineer, whose body shape resembled a stereotypical engineer build, enjoyed frolicking in the lagoon that day. Here he poses nicely for a shot.
The mayhem begins from here, with the games almost over and people starting to yearn for some havoc. A Comms Petty Officer struggles helplessly as he is brought to his grave by the shore. A few minutes later, with the shellscrape not deep enough, he was ironically digging with the rest of his team his own grave.
Some didn't give in without a fight...
... And most who were targeted succumbed to their fate in the end.
I was really scared then that someone might come up to me, take my camera away and get others to dunk me, given I was staying close by the shore the whole time photographing the fun. Didn't happen though.
posted by joseph at 6:09 PM
Grad photo op
Monday, September 5, 2011
I had at first set up the camera even lower than this, but I can't remember why it didn't work out in the end. The afternoon sun was shining in our faces, and I had to quickly compose the shot while the rest waited in the air conditioned comfort of the living room. The sky is especially darker at the top due to my use of the graduated filter.
Having felt that since everyone was dressed up nicely for the occasion, my parents felt we should try for more backdrop variations to take advantage of the moment. However, the sun was still casting harsh shadows, so there wasn't a lot to play around with. The first shot's a better backdrop imho, but this one works too.
This one was quite a funny set-up, with me squatting like a chinaman in my shirt and long pants to take the shot. My family had a few laughs, but I guess it was worth the effort pulling off a bottom-up format, which I read helps to boost the perceived importance of the people in the photo. At first I didn't give them clear instructions on where to look, and while waiting for me to compose the shot, there were quite a few funny moments courtesy of my brother. In retrospect, I realised the whole lightheartedness was great, because the smiles on their faces were genuine and came off really nicely. The flag in the background makes for quite a nice complement, too.
For some time now, I've been dying to go off to some other country so I can play around with my DSLR once more. Pretty much any country would do, heh.
posted by joseph at 9:53 AM
Let's play!
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Plans went awry, however, and two days before it was to happen, plans had to be changed.
The futsal cage at East Coast Park was the new plan, because it seems there’s no lack of soccer fans and players anywhere you go. (honestly though, I’ve never liked how soccer fans always refer to their supporting team as if they did physically belong to it. Like, ‘we’re going to trash you in this Tuesday’s match.’)
I don’t dislike soccer. I don’t dislike playing it either. But when I play it, I simply go through the motions because I suck at it. So I stay back and defend, and hope no one calls on me to play when I’m not so I can just watch the game in peace.
Bringing my camera along was half because I was wondering if it could shield me from playing, half because I wanted to try out taking shots of something I've never taken shots of before.
This is one of the more hardcore players, he kept shouting at me to play properly. He can do that since he's an ME2, which is somewhere around the 1SG rank.
Most of the action shots I got were from behind the fencing. I wasn't willing risk any part of my camera or body for better shots. The one to the left is the ship's coxswain, or the equivalent of CSM.
This shot isn't special, it just happens to have my buffer making a pretty funny face that resembles a meme. Some of us, me included, don't like soccer. He was apparently one of them, and he sat things out without anyone complaining because he had the rank to keep people quiet. I, on the other hand, don't have diddly squat with my CPL.
The person on the right is my CO, a lieutenant colonel. Looks odd when I spell it out.
Another action shot from behind the fence.
One of the ship chiefs, sitting down after a game. Another hardcore player.
We sat down to a picnic after the game, along a coastline that had sufficient shade. The smiling woman is a gunnery captain. I realised recently that this shot looks a bit odd. the guy almost looks like he's retching over something... not to complimentary.
The cake that was bought for three months worth of babies. Heh, that too sounds odd.
I didn't get to eat it, I was busy being asked to take pictures.
Group shot. I don't like taking such pictures, it's protracted, lacks much ability to innovate and just seems more of a chore than a hobby.
Photos are not in order. This is the start of the event, with the planners gathered to arrange fixtures.
People crowding around match fixtures.
The fixtures board is behind me, to my left.
First game to be played.
Looks like a classic scene at a coffee shop, except now it's as live as live can be, but with amateur players.
posted by joseph at 10:26 AM
Friday, November 4, 2011
If everything goes as planned, the two-week sailing that I just came back from will be the last time I join my ship out to sea. There are quite a few small sailings coming up from Exercise Northstar, but I have been able to clear leave on all those days, effectively giving me an eight day work month, give or take a day. I'm about to ORD, and I'm still mixed over whether to celebrate or feel slightly disappointed.
This post is more about the sailing, though. My last opportunity to enjoy the Navy experience, if you will. Also my last chance to take any photos that I want on and off the ship in the Navy, and here they are.
It nearing the monsoon season, there were only a handful of days at the beginning where the light was good and weather dry. We got there in around twelve hours (Tioman Island is located to the central east of Malaysia) and promptly dropped anchor East of Tioman. This would be where we'd fulfill our role as an overwatch for diving operations, and activate fast craft to rescue divers in danger should the need ever arise. We had the company of Malaysian, Australian and New Zealander divers on our way there, but once we reached Tioman, they left for the beach.
The seaboats that we had to launch from the very stern of our stern ramp got us soaked to the waist with incoming seawater that poured in rhythmically, and it made an impression on me how strong a force the waves could be. The rougher sea states had yet to come, though.
Our role the first few days was pretty insignificant, and we didn't do much each day but to laze around, completing watches on the bridge and finding things to do the next. This first shot I took was during Dogwatch, from 1630-1730, where people are free to exercise should they have a permitting schedule. Running around the flight deck is a staple for some, despite the small route and repetitious cycles. It offers good views but often harsh sunlight. See the small black ball next to the upper mast? It indicates that our ship is at anchor, and on which side the anchor has been dropped.
I had some shots in mind to take already for this last trip, and one of them was of the anchor shackles located at the forecastle of the ship. Here I wanted to go for a selective focus. I realised I had to deal with rapid condensation quite often, since moving from the air conditioned confines of the ship to the humid weather outside often adversely affected the camera. I checked up a solution online and found all I had to do was keep it inside a plastic bag and wait for acclimatisation.
The next shot of the MISTRAL, or SAM launcher was one that suprisingly needed little retouching. The light was nicely dramatic, and all I wanted of the silhouette was granted naturally. The launcher, located on both sides of the ship, are meant to defend the ship against aerial attack should our escort ships fail to screen attack aircraft successfully.
My workplace is among those areas most classified on ship, and so I hesitated to put it up on facebook, even when only my Navy acquaintances can view the photos. Here's the console I work on when I close up. I had to bring up the ISO to 1000 for most all the indoor shots.
Helo ops was scheduled after some days, when we had to embark some important personnel on board. This Chinook came all the way from Singapore, I had no idea just how far a helicopter's range could extend to. Being quite senior, I had the privilege of not being the Helo Ops party, hence I was free to take this shot.
It was either later in the afternoon, or the day after, when another helicopter was expected, this time an Australian Sea Sprite. Pictured is my ship's Buffer and a flight deck officer before the Helo Ops commenced.
I was egged by the ME2 to venture beyond the safety of the flight deck shutters, and was really grateful for the chance to get photos from a much better angle. If not for the fact that my ship has quite a few people interested in taking photographs, including the ME2 himself, I might not have had the chance to go further with my camera.
The most heavily edited photo in the collection. The Sea Sprite struck an odd impression of something between oddly shaped and yet definitely deadly.
Here the flight controller motions for the Helo Ops crew to return to the hanger once the helicopter has been untethered to the flight deck.
We fast forward a few days to our few Replenishment at Sea operations, where we shifted to the West side of Tioman to refuel a number of RSN vessels in the span of a few days. Some took place in the day, others in the night and early morning. Large imposing fenders had to be lowered from our flight deck to the side of the ship in preparation, and on one occasion, we suffered an incident due to poor sea state.
The Major in the photo has posted out since this sailing, a few months shy of ORDing. His farewell warranted quite a celebration, and there was quite a lot of booze that went around. That was also in part due to one of our ship crew striking the lottery and winning cash in the zone of five figures.
Dauntless arrives for her fuel as rain clouds start to gather over the sky. Ever single time we refuelled her, it rained. Many said it was due to the large number of female sailors she had on board.
Yellow helmets and red Cherry fenders in preparation for the A/S.
The sky cleared up after the rain, and I was lucky to get a shot of the parting rain clouds. They almost seem to move aside for the protruding upper mast of the MCV.
This is perhaps my favourite shot of the sailing, with the depth clearly accentuated here. I realised all of my outdoor shots were just a slight bit too blue, so I had them tweaked.
I fast forward many more days now, in part because there wasn't much else to our role there but those operations for the next few days. Many realised that I had been logging on nearly everyday for updates on BF3 online, and indeed in the days running up to the game's release, I couldn't stop thinking about it. After some point in time though, time seemed to speed up considerably, and the sailing was over pretty soon.
The pictures here were taken on our first and only shore leave, lasting for about 5 hours on Tioman Island, a place that seemed to have taken East Coast Park and Pulau Ubin, and meshed them into a much bigger island. Leaving the ship on a fast beaching craft was truly something that I had been yearning for for a long time, and on the 29th, I had that curious wish fulfilled.
That day, we had to pick up other RSN personnel from various ships all anchored in our vicinity, for it was the end of the exercise and they were enjoying their shore leave too. Like a bus on it's daily route, we powered our way to different ships, five in total, picking up passengers along the way before heading for the beach. Sadly, we didn't beach on the island, but simply went alongside the small jetty where Australian shore leave personnel were already awaiting their return.
Men, ready weapons! Quite a few of us gamely posed for our D-Day stances as we came even nearer to the beach. You can see the speed of the craft accentuated by the motion blur of the surrounding water.
"Pillbox! There on the hillcrest! We take that objective, men!"
"Mm... I don't like the sound of that mission, sergeant..."
"Sustaining heavy fire! Push forward, men! Drive them back to Berlin!
Anyway, here's what the island more or less looked like. There were quite a few lodges for tourists, and apparently almost the whole population works in the tourist industry.
The whole island is a duty-free shopping area, so beers were as cheap as canned drinks, and the first thing we did was to get ourselves some Hoegaarden to drink while walking around. A nice one, I must say. I kept both bottle caps. We also drank some more at the eatery we stopped at, which was more or less all we had time for. Tiger cans littered the whole of our table, as you can see.
Stefan, the CBA (Chinese Born American) was glued to Fruit Ninja for most of the trip. He was quite upset when, during a previous sailing, the Buffer I mentioned earlier beat his high score in one try, scoring about 1300.
Nothing special about this photo, except that the sign board invites you to eat at a 'Shady Bakery'. Heh, not my cup of tea.
Here my camera was hijacked by the CBA dude, who showed me a light motion technique that produces pretty interesting results. Pictured is my Weapons specialist PO.
The reluctant Corporal made it up the hillcrest to take the pillbox that day. He's actually a regular, though. Weapons.
Here we chance upon a stall selling Ramlee burgers. It took some time, and apparently other shore leave personnel had to cook their own burgers because the islanders simply idled too long when cooking the burgers, and invited them to be the cook. Ours was fine, they apparently have Supermarket-packaged Ramlee burger patties ready to cook there.
The last shot of the sailing, taken in the ship's briefing room. The distortion here is accentuated by the lens and angle. The two in the photo are part of the Flotilla's 20th Anniversary team that I'm in, and we got some things done during the slow-paced sailing.
In the far corner is the Resolution Lighthouse, something I came up with and constructed for the ship. It was perhaps the most arduous effort I put in for the ship. It did get me an artfriend membership though I guess. And one duty off.
Until the next update, then.
Labels: interesting, jolly pirates, navy, photography, thoughts
posted by joseph at 4:09 PM
Friday, September 9, 2011
The welfare committee for my ship recently organised another cohesion activity, scrapping the paintball idea for a day at the beach. I must say, I think the time we spent there would have beat a day with paintball anytime.
For the past few weeks, we had been staying back later to finish up our preparation for Engineering Inspection, a ship-wide inspection by the fleet to assess our hardware, in terms of safety and efficiency. The efforts put in were slowly giving rise to a sentiment of a much deserved break, and the cohesion that was to come thus had some big boots to fill.
During the planning stages, I was initially slated to be a station IC for station games, but volunteered to be the photographer for the event for a few reasons. For one, I hadn't tried a photo op at the beach before, so it would be something new.
We were to arrive at Palawan Beach, Sentosa, by 8:45, and it turns out that nobody really goes there that early on a weekday, for the beach was mostly ours for the whole duration. The crowd only started trickling in as we left at 11 that day. Here are the photos that I've whittled down.
The briefing was done at the beach itself. It resembles a small lagoon, with a drawbridge in the middle. The place actually did look quite good, and the sand closer to the shore's edge was the soft, nice kind of sand. This person here is our Comms Officer, posted over recently from my RSS Brave, where Liang De is.
The fishing-rod-banana-dangling-eating game station, where two participants are blindfolded. One has to feed the other a banana tied to a fishing rod line. It was quite hilarious, seeing how some people could gobble the banana with ease, and how some others just engaged in prolonged foreplay. The person tying the blindfold is the Commanding Officer, an LTC. The fisherman is our Navigating Officer.
Here's another station, where one guy has to don a Swimmer-On-The-Watch (SoW) gear, get waist deep in the lagoon and pick out balloons with the right letter on them. The first team quickly thought to make subsequent teams suffer by throwing the balloons further out into the lagoon.
A pipe with many small holes was the subject of the next station, where the teams had to devise a way to keep the water in the tube such that one could pick a ping pong ball from its top. Some wrapped it with a trash bag provided, and some others buried the pipe partially into the sand.
I had to squat really low for this shot, recomposing a few times, but I think it was quite worth it.
Another element of the whole game involved the kidnapping of one teammate from each team. They were chained and locked up, and once all the stations were completed, a team could guess from a series of boxes which one contained their key.
So what would they do once they got their teammate back? They now had to bury him in his own shellscrape. No kidnappee was spared the creative sculpting of sand to shape obscene body parts.
Some teams still hadn't finished, though. This station required teams to coordinate quickly to form a group pose, with each pose requiring more and more people to participate. As usual, some of the poses were ridiculously funny.
The banana eating game once more, with Comms Justin using his iPad 2 to capture each 'feeding time'.
Our Chief Engineer, whose body shape resembled a stereotypical engineer build, enjoyed frolicking in the lagoon that day. Here he poses nicely for a shot.
A beach get-together is not really complete with liberal numbers of dunkings. Four people chipped in to dunk this guy, who ORDed that day wearing really colourful clothing, with bling and flashy sunglasses to match. In the background, our Executive Officer looks on encouragingly.
Water bombs were also provided that day, and though there weren't a lot to go around, there were enough of them for many to get soaked. When I saw someone about to launch a water bomb or pail of water, I'd hold down the shutter to ensure I got a good frame-by-frame capture. Here, the organizer gets one to the butt from the Leading Electrical Control Specialist.
Some didn't give in without a fight...
... And most who were targeted succumbed to their fate in the end.
I was really scared then that someone might come up to me, take my camera away and get others to dunk me, given I was staying close by the shore the whole time photographing the fun. Didn't happen though.
The summary shot with more tags in one picture than I've ever seen. I think a lot of us enjoyed the day, and I'm really happy the pictures were nicely received by the crew on facebook. There are still some more uploaded there, go have a look if you have the time!
Labels: navy, photography, thoughts
posted by joseph at 6:09 PM
Grad photo op
Monday, September 5, 2011
My brother asked to take some graduation photos with the family the other day, taking the opportunity to do so when the family was around to celebrate my dad's birthday. We got all dressed up for the occasion, so here are the photos we took. There was 1gb worth of photos in all, and I was debating with myself whether or not to keep all of them. In the end, I decided all the candid shots, especially those ones where all sorts of screwed up faces were made, would be more memorable than just the final shots. It's like how now and then, when I browse through old photos of us in Lagoon View, there's that nostalgic, happy feeling floating around.
I had at first set up the camera even lower than this, but I can't remember why it didn't work out in the end. The afternoon sun was shining in our faces, and I had to quickly compose the shot while the rest waited in the air conditioned comfort of the living room. The sky is especially darker at the top due to my use of the graduated filter.
Having felt that since everyone was dressed up nicely for the occasion, my parents felt we should try for more backdrop variations to take advantage of the moment. However, the sun was still casting harsh shadows, so there wasn't a lot to play around with. The first shot's a better backdrop imho, but this one works too.
This one was quite a funny set-up, with me squatting like a chinaman in my shirt and long pants to take the shot. My family had a few laughs, but I guess it was worth the effort pulling off a bottom-up format, which I read helps to boost the perceived importance of the people in the photo. At first I didn't give them clear instructions on where to look, and while waiting for me to compose the shot, there were quite a few funny moments courtesy of my brother. In retrospect, I realised the whole lightheartedness was great, because the smiles on their faces were genuine and came off really nicely. The flag in the background makes for quite a nice complement, too.
For some time now, I've been dying to go off to some other country so I can play around with my DSLR once more. Pretty much any country would do, heh.
Labels: family, photography, thoughts
posted by joseph at 9:53 AM
Let's play!
Sunday, June 5, 2011
My ship’s company took a day off on Friday this week to have a cohesion activity. Ideally planned for once every month, this month’s decision was to go for a paintball session at the NCC headquarters, where the pellets can be registered with the ship’s naval account. I’m not sure how it works, but so long as we didn’t have to fork out money for an expensive day, out I was fine.
Plans went awry, however, and two days before it was to happen, plans had to be changed.
The futsal cage at East Coast Park was the new plan, because it seems there’s no lack of soccer fans and players anywhere you go. (honestly though, I’ve never liked how soccer fans always refer to their supporting team as if they did physically belong to it. Like, ‘we’re going to trash you in this Tuesday’s match.’)
I don’t dislike soccer. I don’t dislike playing it either. But when I play it, I simply go through the motions because I suck at it. So I stay back and defend, and hope no one calls on me to play when I’m not so I can just watch the game in peace.
Bringing my camera along was half because I was wondering if it could shield me from playing, half because I wanted to try out taking shots of something I've never taken shots of before.
This is one of the more hardcore players, he kept shouting at me to play properly. He can do that since he's an ME2, which is somewhere around the 1SG rank.
Most of the action shots I got were from behind the fencing. I wasn't willing risk any part of my camera or body for better shots. The one to the left is the ship's coxswain, or the equivalent of CSM.
This shot isn't special, it just happens to have my buffer making a pretty funny face that resembles a meme. Some of us, me included, don't like soccer. He was apparently one of them, and he sat things out without anyone complaining because he had the rank to keep people quiet. I, on the other hand, don't have diddly squat with my CPL.
The person on the right is my CO, a lieutenant colonel. Looks odd when I spell it out.
Another action shot from behind the fence.
One of the ship chiefs, sitting down after a game. Another hardcore player.
We sat down to a picnic after the game, along a coastline that had sufficient shade. The smiling woman is a gunnery captain. I realised recently that this shot looks a bit odd. the guy almost looks like he's retching over something... not to complimentary.
The cake that was bought for three months worth of babies. Heh, that too sounds odd.
I didn't get to eat it, I was busy being asked to take pictures.
Group shot. I don't like taking such pictures, it's protracted, lacks much ability to innovate and just seems more of a chore than a hobby.
Photos are not in order. This is the start of the event, with the planners gathered to arrange fixtures.
People crowding around match fixtures.
The fixtures board is behind me, to my left.
First game to be played.
Looks like a classic scene at a coffee shop, except now it's as live as live can be, but with amateur players.
Labels: navy, opinion, photography
posted by joseph at 10:26 AM