So, with a choice between sitting at home and feeling guilty about not doing my chartership reports, or going and having a stroll along East Coast Park, the answer was obvious.
East Coast Park is a narrow strip of mostly re-claimed land which runs along the entire southeast coast of Singapore. I believe you can get all the way from Changi Airport to the centre along it. It's also ten mins walk from where I live.
It is the sort of place that doesn't really exist in England, certainly not in the land-locked suburbs of Birmingham. The park is fully lit to make it nice in the evening, and has a range of restaurants, hawker centres, and bars. They also provide camping grounds, BBQ pits, and fitness equipment. This evening I only walked out onto Bedok Jetty, the aim was to take some nice shots of the area, some of the better ones are below:
The view of town from the jetty. The circle thing in the middle is the Singapore Flyer, which is a version of the London Eye (just a bit taller).
A bit more detail on the centre. The three towers in the middle are Marnia Bay Sands, which is a new casino resort... Looks quite nice, but also looks quite a rip off
Looking seawards you don't see miles of sea. Merely miles and miles of ships. This caused problems two weeks ago when two of them collided and spilled 2,500 tonnes of oil. Although the beach did aparently go quite black, and appeals for assistance cleaning animals, and it made the whole country stink like a petrol station, the beaches seem to have recovered quite well. Somehow I don't think the same can be said of BP's little embarrassment in the Gulf of Mexico...
The beach is just beyond the other ECP; the East Coast Parkway, which allows me to play tricks with the Dodgess' camera and get some cunning blurred shots of cars.
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Those of you with even slight interests in photography will probably realise that these shots are taken with the aid of a tripod and long exposures (1.5 to 4 seconds in fact). This fiddling around with cameras has all happened within the 18 months or so, and comes from one of the best presents (probably the best present) I've ever given. I'd noticed that the Dodgess like to experiment with photos, and so I bought a slightly advanced camera which allowed such messing around
The camera was a 25th birthday present to the Dodgess. I picked it up on my way to catch a plane with her to the USA and by the time we had gotten back over 1000 pictures had been taken. The total is now well over 6000.
It has been very succsesful partly because it has not only captured but also made events. Most memorably, having set up a beautiful tripod shot of the Eiffel Tower reflected in the Seine, from the portal to the Alma Tunnel (of Princess Di infamy) with river traffic flowing beneath the Tower's fairy light show started. Whilst we had a nice position next to the Seine, it was the optimal position, at Place de la Trocodero.
The Dodgess decided that we simply had to record this event from the optimal position, so off she shot over the Seine, with the camera. I followed dragging the tripod (a bit of an exaggeration, it can hardly be described as heavy) and we ran like paparazzi down Rive Gauche.
We didn't make it, the fairly lights turned off as we reached the foot of the Eiffel Tower, 3 minutes from the Optimal Position. Not to worry, a quick enquiry established we had an hour to recover, have a drink, take a few more shots. They are among my favourite photos so here are a few:
The fairy lights taken from the sub-optimal position near the Alma tunnel.
One of the photos taken whilst waiting for the second set of fairy lights to come on
Another photos that would never have been taken without the mad dash for fairy lights
And finally, a version of fairy lights from the optimal (almost) position at Place de la Torcadero.
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