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Last Saturday, I woke up at an incredible 5am to get ready to take part in the Canon Photomarathon Asia 2008 that was held at Berjaya Times Square. Mikel stayed overnight at my house, as we had planned to go together beforehand, and we ventured sleepily to the nearby USJ 8 bus terminal and hitched a U63 RapidKL to KL Sentral.

On the way there, right next to our Pondok Polis USJ at the junction leading into USJ 8, we saw a police car, some barricades, several men in blue, and an overturned car with splinters of broken glass scattered everywhere haphazardly. I have no idea if the victims were still alive or not as there didn’t seem to be anyone there – might have been extracted and sent to the hospital already – but for something like that to happen at nearly 6am, the driver had to be drunk or something.

And then at KL Sentral, we hitched the Monorail to the Imbi station for our destination: Berjaya Times Square at about 10 minutes before 7am.

So here’s the rough gist of things: basically the entire event is like an incredibly micro version of The Amazing Race – we have to go around to collect three themes from three different places at specific times, and then interpret them accordingly before we snap our pics (the first place with the first theme was Berjaya Times Square, so there really was only two other places to go).

Themes:
1) Berjaya Times Square – Indulge Metropolitan – yeah an incredibly vague theme methinks, the MC even told us that if we didn’t understand the words we should go to a bookstore and look up the dictionary wtf.
2) Pavillion – Mess in Rules – ..vague.
3) KLCC – Goes Green – we figured it’s from the Canon Goes Green campaign, and obviously has something to do with the environment.

Our Malaysian themes are horribly vague compared to the ones done in Singapore: Dream, Freedom, Change. SO much easier and better to understand no?

The incredibly long queue before the start of the Photomarathon that the line snaked into a ‘U’ shape – while queueing up Mikel spotted a couple of friends of his too.

Some 30 minutes later, we were given our red Canon shirts (the smallest size for men is L), a paper bag containing our breakfast (doughnut, hotdog, some mihun, and a bottle of water), and we all sat around everywhere.

From left to right, photographer Dwayne Foong who owns his own photography studio and stays near Sunway or something, Wen Jing’s friend Shireen (sp?), Wen Jing (Wai Hong’s classmate – yeah the world is small wtf), Mikel. The meet up with Wen Jing wasn’t coincidental lah, Mikel sorta planned it through Plurk beforehand. Aaron is not in this picture.

The sea of red about to blaze off on a morning adventure.

There was a stage there, and we were given our first theme by the MC: Indulge Metropolitan.

Incredibly blue sky against the towers of steel constructs.

I can’t lay a finger why I like the perspective and light/shadow play in this pic.

A photographer sitting under the hot sun snapping pics – such was the resolve of the majority of the participants last Saturday. I submitted this pic for the ‘Indulge Metropolitan’ theme – and I like this pic for the same reason as the above.

Mikel fooling around and got scolded by an uncle in the car, “Don’t destroy public property ah!” lol.

Click to enlarge. Fascinating graffiti.

Another look at the brilliant blue with our concrete jungle.

My camera was hanging off my neck and I was looking around surveying my surroundings when this Indian dude waved at me and asked me to take a photo of him wtf. I obliged, snapping away (sigh can’t zoom because I had my Canon 10-22 attached and I was afraid there wasn’t time if I switch lens ‘cause this was at a traffic light, so yeah in the end I didn’t really have a good shot) – and after that he blew a kiss WTF much to the amusement of his friends, who were in guffaws, sitting next to him. Sigh I love these random people who light up my day with random stranger-to-stranger interaction – I waved back after snapping the photos and made a peace sign or something wtf and he gestured a thank you in return.

Suave car.

Aaron and Wen Jing were also standing in the middle of the bloody road just to snap photos. >_>

Submitted this picture for the ‘Mess in Rules’ theme, even though we didn’t get the theme until later. Also my submitted photo wasn’t post-processed like this one, as there are rules that you’re not allowed to edit your photos in any way.

Red wall with a broken basin. Aaron told me that the mamak dudes, whose wall was part of their mamak restaurant, kept staring at me when I snapped this pic, probably wondering what I found so interesting with their broken basin lol.

Fast-paced city life.

A behind-the-scenes look at what photographers would do to get the perfect shot – here’s Dwayne on his stomach to take a shot of Mikel.

At Pavillion eating our lunch at Food Republic after getting our theme in the form of small cards at the Canon concept store. And the 6 of us who had completely different food from different stalls collectively agreed that the food sucked – especially for the ridiculously high prices that we paid (like around RM7 for my claypot chicken rice which I didn’t finish because it was that bad).

We then had to walk all the way from Pavillion to KLCC.. which, under the relentlessly hot afternoon sun, had us sweating and panting in no time. And when we reached KLCC’s park, we rested for a while beneath some shades and Aaron phoned a friend who told him what the third theme was as we were a little lazy to walk into KLCC and find the Canon concept store (although we did enter to personally get the theme later on as we were afraid we may be disqualified without the cards – which wasn’t true).

A macro test shot on an ant.

Fungi or something on a tree.

My submission for ‘Goes Green’, which again wasn’t like what is depicted in this pic as it has been Photoshopped. I’m trying out a method of doing ‘selective colouring’ (making the rest of the image black & white, while certain parts of the image that you want to highlight are coloured), and I think it works – although not that pronounced for this picture.

Row of trees near KLCC. There was also a set of steps here where upon I took a short nap wtf.

We walked and walked and walked and walked past Ruums and reached the Raja Chulan Monorail station and couldn’t stand it anymore and paid RM1.20 to hitch the air-conditioned train to Berjaya Times Square again. Yeah – we had to walk all the way from KLCC back to BTS to upload our pictures. -___- That was around 3pm.

In the Monorail.

A test shot of my 50mm on Dwayne while we were resting at Starbucks BTS. We were also given another paper bag containing our ‘high tea’ food – there’s again mee, some pastry, a pudding, and a bottle of water.

At 5pm, there was an internationally-acclaimed photographer from The Photoz (forgot his name edi, but his surname was Heng) who gave us a talk for an hour. I thought he would teach us a few techniques but he didn’t – he merely showcased some photos of his, and explained what goes behind them, etc and related some inspirational stories of how he started off to become a photographer, the list goes on. He told us that prior to becoming a photographer he was actually shy, but after that, not anymore wtf. He wasn’t that good of a speaker (you can faintly detect his Chinese accent), but well, his pictures speak volumes.

Trying to bring out the lonely feel in this picture, but don’t think I succeeded.

Haha and oh, Mikel was stopped at somewhere near KLCC by this angmoh lady who was sitting in a cafe and was curious about the bunch of people wearing red running around. And Aaron in turn was stopped at Starbucks BTS by this black dude who was asking the same thing lol! Aaron also mentioned that this the locals are less likely to approach us and ask the same thing.

The results were supposed to be out at 7pm, but when the time came, the judges were apparently still judging the pics and we were asked to wait for 30 minutes. That 30 minutes became an hour, and then 2 hours+ and most of us were still sitting down on the floor WTF I dunno why we were so patient! An incredible waste of time if you ask me, and by then my butt was aching, my ears were sick of listening to the same Canon song, and a Malay dude and French? couple behind us were animatedly criticising the slowness.

We were later told that last year, there were only several hundred participants while this year we had a thousand plus – hence why they were so completely swamped and overwhelmed.

At one point we were shown some pics which we figured to be shortlisted pics – but some of them didn’t even make the cut imo. At roughly 9.30pm or so, after much waiting on our parts, the winners were announced.. and as expected, I wasn’t one of the lucky few. Not trying to sound sour grape or anything, to be honest there were several pictures which we think didn’t deserve to win – take the ‘Goes Green’ theme winner under the Compact category (for compact digicams) for instance: what he did was merely arrange some leaves and adding some props to make the words “Canon Goes Green” and he won. The picture wasn’t even good, and I thought that was mengampu as hell.

Aaron had already departed earlier halfway through the talk with a famous photographer, and Dwayne left after the results were announced, leaving the 3 of us behind (Wen Jing’s friend had already went back earlier at KLCC at about 2pm-ish). We ate at a certain Chinese restaurant at BTS, then Wen Jing offered to drive us home, as it was getting late and buses may be hard to find, which I was very grateful for.

Wen Jing’s nose bled too suddenly halfway through driving which shocked the both of us, but he turned out to be okay after a while.

I finally reached home at about 10.30pm-ish or so – Wen Jing and Mikel dropped by at my house for a while, while Mikel packed his belongings (he had to show WJ where Sunway was in order for WJ to go back to his place at PJ Uptown).

16 hours+ out non-stop – it was quite inane, the things we did in the name of upgrading our photography skills, and it has been a great experience especially as I learned quite a few things from the ‘pros’. :) ..although my entire body was aching the next morning.