street – Ming Thein | Photographer

Photoessay: Life in the fishbowl

May 11, 2019 by Ming Thein

With the amount of glass (all flawlessly clean, of course) in Tokyo, the number of tourists and the close proximity of everything…I can’t help but wonder if the residents sometimes feel like they’re living in a giant exhibit, periodically interrupted by gawking visitors with cameras from another realm. They take it with remarkably polite stoicism, unlike say, Venetians, who suffer the necessity of paying tourists with the bare minimum of tolerance. I suppose having industry other than tourism helps; that feeling of the ability to say ‘no’ – even you never do. Even if they didn’t – I certainly felt like I was part of the show. If not diving with the sharks, then at least snorkelling in the aquarium. MT

This series was shot with a Nikon Z7, 24-70/4 S and 50/1.8 S. No post processing, just the monochrome picture control from the Z7/D850 profile pack…

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: life, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, people, photoessay, photography, street, thein, tokyo

Photoessay: Life, observer and observed

April 23, 2019 by Ming Thein

Alternative title: observing people observing the world. Actually, I feel about as detached from these images as the subjects feel detached from their surroundings. In a strange way I feel this coldness of mood works quite well for the given subject matter and creative intent; on top of that, color would have inevitably suggested moods or emotions that are neither appropriate nor sufficiently sangfroid. Actually, on second curation – I can’t help but see can alternative interpretation in a lot of situations. Missing is that feeling of intense focus implied by observation; rather there’s just a sort of blank mechanised obliviousness. This is probably not helped by the predominantly low key tonal palette; I’ve always liked that possibility of ambiguity and mystery suggested by it (regular readers will probably notice a distinct lack of high key monochrome here) – eyes you can’t see tend to mask the thoughts of the individual. MT

Shot over a period of time with a Nikon Z7, Olympus Pen F and various lenses; images are SOOC JPEG using my Nikon Z7 picture control pack, or specific Pen F settings.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: life, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, monochrome, people, photoessay, photography, reportage, street, thein

Monolumpur, part III: Robin’s take

March 17, 2019 by Robin Wong

When I started street photography, I gravitated towards black and white. It’s not difficult to figure out why, when you look at famous and successful street photographs from legends such as Henri Cartier-Bresson as nearly all prominent street photography is presented in monochrome. As I slowly developed my own style and vision I found myself drawn towards color photography as it more effectively represents the reality I capture. Nonetheless, the love for black and white has always been there and sometimes, I find it liberating to strip all colors away and go straight to the core of the image – the idea, the message or the emotion.

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Filed Under: On Photography, Robin Wong Tagged With: mingthein.com, monochrome, robin, Robin Wong, street, street photography, wong

Photoessay: Monolumpur, part I

March 11, 2019 by Ming Thein

Today’s set is an anonymity-bringing-scale field test around the old part of Kuala Lumpur (Robin’s usual hunting grounds, though I’m sure you’ll see we came back with very different material) of something I’ve been working on for the last couple of months: an attempt at tuning a universal monochrome profile to my preferred style for the Nikon Z7. Whilst the Z7 doesn’t have a direct curve adjustment in-camera, it’s possible to add your own if you use the ‘Nikon Picture Control Utility 2’ software. It takes the place of the contrast and brightness sliders (my guess, ‘contrast’ pushes down the midpoint of the curve, ‘brightness’ brings up the upper quadrant). However, be warned: it seems the mapping is much more aggressive than the input/output controls suggest, resulting in much more contrast than you’d expect, so go easy on the curve. The only explanation I can think of this is that it’s acting higher upstream in the processing chain than we are used to with a curve in post processing. This is a good part of why tuning a profile has taken so long; it also seems that you need to apply some d-lighting (Nikonspeak for fill) to get the right lower midtone luminosity. All in all, I’m pretty happy with the results – and light was absolutely spectacular while I was shooting, which doesn’t do any harm either. Is the Pen F retired? If not yet, its days are certainly numbered. Now, on to the greater challenge of color… MT

This series was shot with a Nikon Z7, AF-S 70-200/4 VR and MT’s special sauce in-camera monochrome JPEG profile.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: kl, kuala lumpur, malaysia, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, monolumpur, people, photoessay, photography, street, thein

Street-style wedding portraiture

February 9, 2019 by Robin Wong

When Sarah, an old friend, shared news of her engagement and related visit to Kuala Lumpur, I could not help but ask if she was interested in a pre-wedding shoot here. I told her this would not be a typical engagement shoot at the park or by the beach. I wanted to do something unusual and different for Sarah by bringing her and Gregor, her fiancé, to my usual street shooting grounds and do their portraits there. Outdoor street-style pre-wedding is not new to me, I have done a few rounds with other clients but this was the first one I did around the Petaling Street area.

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Filed Under: On Photography, Robin Wong Tagged With: mingthein.com, portrait, robin, Robin Wong, street, wedding, wong

Robin in Bangkok, part II

January 31, 2019 by Robin Wong

Continued from Part 1

Since it was my first time in Bangkok, I decided to spend a full day at the Ayutthaya historical park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. I knew that the temples and general landscape have been photographed countless times before, so I challenged myself to shoot these tourist attractions in my own style and avoid making a a clone of the many images already out there.

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Filed Under: On Photography, Robin Wong Tagged With: bangkok, mingthein.com, robin, Robin Wong, street, wong

Robin in Bangkok, part I

January 28, 2019 by Robin Wong

I planned on visiting Bangkok some time at the end of last year, but with the South Africa trip in December, I decided to make Bangkok item #1 on my agenda for 2019. This was my first ever visit to Bangkok and was fully intended to be a personal holiday, but somehow turned into partial work when Olympus Thailand invited me to conduct a street photography talk. With half a day blocked for the talk and me visiting the usual tourist traps and temples of Bangkok, I was left with little time for street photography. I did manage two full morning sessions of shutter therapy around the Bangkok Hua Lamphong Railway station and surrounding areas leading to Chinatown, and I shall be sharing my images here.

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Filed Under: Robin Wong Tagged With: bangkok, mingthein.com, robin, Robin Wong, street, wong

Photoessay: nocturnal impressions of Hong Kong

January 19, 2019 by Ming Thein

You know a place has something on you if you want to go out and shoot to relax after spending the whole day…shooting on assignment. In this case a very different sort of work, and the kind of thing one can shoot in flow/ stream of consciousness; you react instinctively and don’t think too much about the scene. I look at the structure and the main highlights – note, not subjects, since the image is more of a vignette of a feeling than a specific description of a subject – balance the composition, and then shoot accordingly. There’s one kicker: I shot everything at ISO 64, handheld, relying on the stabiliser of the Z7 and the large amount of ambient light. I must have been inspired by Robin’s experiment some time back, but in this case I was deliberately seeking out motion, layers and wimmelbild to convey the impression of busyness and activity, but with the sort of surreal detachment that a monochrome presentation suggests. The emotional impact of color is not present, and one feels a bit colder and more objective or separated from the scene; an observer rather than a participant – which matches my feelings in places like this. I shot something like 500 frames that evening. This is my selection. MT

Images shot with a Nikon Z7 and 24-70, and post processed with The Monochrome Masterclass workflow. There are also one or two camera JPEGs in there, and I now have a very similar SOOC picture control pack available here.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: hong kong, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, monochrome, night, photoessay, photography, street, thein

Low-ISO street photography by night

October 16, 2018 by Robin Wong

High ISO is usually a necessity for shooting on the streets at night without using a tripod but I thought why not have a session, for fun, where I stick to ISO200 throughout? I was near Petaling Street with some friends and we all chose to employ different shooting methods. One friend went the usual high ISO hand-held route, while another friend had a sturdy tripod setup. I was the only one crazy enough to run around without a tripod and irrationally stick to ISO200…

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Filed Under: On Photography, Robin Wong Tagged With: low iso, mingthein.com, nigth, robin, Robin Wong, street, street photography, wong

Around the wet markets

September 22, 2018 by Robin Wong

If you have been following my articles for a while now you may have noticed that I shoot a lot in local Malaysian wet markets. Even my mum finds it hard to believe that I spend so much time in actual markets though I go not with the intention to buy fresh meat and vegetables but to hunt for photography opportunities. Almost every new camera or lens review has featured a few sample photographs taken at various wet market locations in Kuala Lumpur. I want to explain my fascination with the wet market and why I keep returning to the similar spots early in the mornings.

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Filed Under: On Photography, Robin Wong Tagged With: market, mingthein.com, photography, robin, Robin Wong, street, wong