Chingay Parade 2011, Singapore

The word “chingay” is from the Hokkien dialect, meaning “the art of masquerade”. Hokkien dialects are spoken in southern Taiwan and by many overseas Chinese throughout Southeast Asia.

The festival began as a neighbourhood parade with only Chinese elements in 1973. Today, the Chingay Parade has evolved to be the grandest street and floats parade in Asia, showcasing the rich, vibrant multi-culturalism of Singapore and exciting cultures all over the world.

The parade takes place on two evenings next to the Singapore flyer. I went there twice to catch some shots of the diverse people and costumes. Although there were thousands of people the festival and atmosphere was without stress and squeezing crowds. This is one – beside many others – of the positive aspects I noticed in Asian countries.

Botanic Gardens, Orchad Road and Chingay 2011, Singapore at EveryTrail

Impressions of the Fürstenfest 2009

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Fireworks on 1st August in Romanshorn

We went to Romanshorn at the Lake Constance to take some pictures of the fireworks which started at 10:30pm. It was also the Summer Nights festival and therefore there were lots of people. But we had a pretty good location because the fireworks were actually let off on the sea (a few hundred meters apart from the coastline). With a wide angle lens we could capture the whole fireworks display as well as the reflections in the water.

Some hints for taking better firework pictures:

• use a tripod
• use a aperture of about f/11 ,  should be high so that the amount of incoming light is limited
• use lowest ISO value
• shoot in BULB mode

If  the camera is in BULB mode the shutter is open for as long as you hold down the shutter. This is very convenient and gives you a lot more flexibility compared to the predefined exposure times.

Below are some of my favorite shots:

More pictures in the gallery.

Slideshow of the fireworks in Romanshorn.

Locarno Film Festival 2008

The town of Locarno unites the splendour of the Alps with the serenity of the lakes. It’s Mediterranean climate and luxuriant vegetation contrast dramatically with the ruggedness of the Alps. The region enjoys the most hours of sunshine in Switzerland (2300 hours yearly) with warm summers and mild winters.

Locarno is also a convenient starting point for a variety of excursions into the the valleys and in to the heart of the Alpine chain. In addition the cultural life of the city is rich and varied, offering a program of colorful events.

Piazza Grande is the heart of the town where all the cultural and business life of Locarno happens. In recent years the piazza has become well known not only thanks to the International Film Festival, but also thanks to the prestigious open air concerts. It’s north side is characterised by typical arcades in authentic Lombard style, dating back centuries. 

More pictures in the gallery

Film Festival 2008
The Piazza Grande program for 2008 has 17 feature films, including 9 world premieres. The selection is marked by a strong European presence, with five French and five German films. The English language panorama varies, with three American films, two from the UK and one from Australia.

We saw two of the films. The first was “Chaos Theory” by Marcos Siega and the second one was “Berlin Calling” by Hannes Stoehr.

Chaos Theory

Chaos Theory (Summary from IMD)
This comedy features Frank Allen, an obsessively organised time efficiency expert, author of the famous book The Five Minute Efficiency Trainer. Frank Allen runs his life with a complicated filing system. His task lists are as famous as his lectures, since if there’s one thing Frank doesn’t believe in, it’s spontaneity. Every decision he makes is thought through, evaluated, designed for the extremely ordered life he has built for himself. His wife Susan accepts these obsessions in small doses, but one day she decides that enough is enough, and tries to get her husband off his dependence on his timetables: she decides to put his watch forward by ten minutes. But in her hurry, Susan makes a mistake and actually puts it back… What follows is a series of incidents that will completely overturn Frank’s life, to the point where he renounces his self-imposed principles.

Berlin Calling

Berlin Calling (Summary from cineuropa.org)
Berlin underground composer and electro DJ Martin (known under the pseudonym of DJ Ickarus) is on tour with his manager and girlfriend Mathilde. The two of them spend their nights in clubs, and are preparing to release a major electronic music album. However Mathilde finds it increasingly difficult to deal with Martin’s drug addiction and the album release is compromised when the DJ, following an overdose, is held in a psychiatric ward. While Martin gets to know the other patients and starts to write music again, Mathilde falls into the arms of her former lover, Corinna, and the album release remains on hold. With the internationally known hit DJ Paul Kalkbrenner in the lead role (who also composed the film’s score), Berlin Calling depicts the nocturnal world of the electro scene at 100,000 beats per minute.

Mittelalter Spectaculum Hohenems

It was the first time this event took place in Hohenems, Vorarlberg. I think it was a smaller version of the original spectaculum in Germany because I didn’t see any horses let alone some knights on horses. They promised everything but we got nothing except some gold coins . No it was not that bad.

Drummer in HDR

It was more or less a medieval market with lots of fantasy products like dragons or faries, food stalls, sword & shield stalls and a vast variety of unusual goods.

They had some fakir shows in the afternoon which was not for the fainthearted. With an iron hook in his eyes a man was pulling a woman over the stage…stay tuned to see these pictures in my gallery.

Shooter in HDR

They also had some nice one-on-one and group combats in the late afternoon where I took these pictures. They are HDR versions of my RAW files.

Group in HDR

It was a group from the czech republic I think. They did an enjoyable show…

Western Sydney International Dragway

Western Sydney International Dragway Details

In February we watched some drag races on the Western Sydney International Dragway. There are different categories the cars belong to. The most interesting and also the loudest is the Top Fuel category. In this category the cars run on a maximum of 85% nitromethane and about 15% methanol (racing alcohol) instead of gasoline!

The cars are longer and narrower and they have thin front tyres because they are built only for one purpose: To get as fast as possible from A to B on a straight line.

Top Fuel cars compete in a 0.4km race. The fastest cars complete it in less than 4.5 seconds which is about 530km/h! The acceleration of a Top Fuel dragster from 0 to 160km/h is less than 0.8 seconds. There are huge forces (about 5.7g) the driver has to compete with during this acceleration.

The power of these engines is between 7000 and 8300 horsepower’s and estimates suggest a torque output of 5100-6750 Nm which is a lot. I think the Viper has about 700-900 Nm.

Of course they are not only very fast but also very, very noisy. They create at full throttle a nearly deafening amount of noise (over 150dB), enough to cause some peoples eardrums physical pain. Months after this event I still remember this intense level of sound. It is so intense that it is also felt as vibrations all over one’s body. I tried to take some pictures and to record the burnouts which wasn’t easy because your body automatically reacts to this level of sound and so some of the material is partly unsteady.

Now turn on the volume of your speakers and watch this to get an impression of the Top Fuel cars. Double click the video for full screen mode.

NOTE: You need to install the Silverlight PlugIn if you can’t see the video. I wanted to test the Streaming Service of Microsoft, and so far it works pretty well.

Fireworks Fürstenfest 2007 in Vaduz

The 30 minutes firework is every year the highlight of the event. This time we watched the spectacle from the swiss side of the Rhein. It was further but for taking pictures it was clearly the better place to stay. We had a perfect view of the whole castle and fireworks. There were hundreds of people along the Rhein, watching, drinking and relaxing near their campfires.

Fürstenfest 2007

The pictures I took have an average exposure of about 10 seconds so the “path” of the fireworks is clearly visible. For the very bright fireworks I had to reduce the exposure because otherwise you would only see a white area. On some pictures you can see on the bottom the castle and the surrounding wood.

Fürstenfest 2007

I like the next shot because one can clearly see the castle and the beginning of the second part of the firework. Unfortunately the building crane is also visible They had to split it into several parts with small breaks in between because otherwise the produced smoke would be too thick to have a clear view…

Fürstenfest 2007

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