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What was supposed to be another long year-end road trip turned out to be only a day trip to the Cameron Highlands.

It was a long journey, stopped by at Teluk Intan for breakfast but the Chee Cheong Fun stall was closed. Then, I accidentally took the old windy road up the Highlands because my phone’s GPS couldn’t lock on to proper satellite reception. On the way back closed to midnight, Hilux was kissed from behind, by an idiotic drunkard who drove a Harrier. What an uneventful day, almost 24 hours on the road with my students by the time I reached home! 

Film: Fujiflim Superia X-TRA 400, expired.

1. Socks, testing out the Diana F+, which I strongly opined to be just a toy camera.

2. Flower close-up at a bee farm. Not too bad on a manual focusing lens on the FM2n.

3. Bharat Boh Tea plantation. Stopped by the roadside, and took a few landscapes.

The weather was chilling due to slight drizzle every now and then, and the air was so fresh!

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5. Everyone had a camera to play with.

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7. Taken at the look-out point at Boh Tea Plantation. It was extremely misty as the rain had just stopped.

While waiting for the make-up artist, we decided to have a short walk and our breakfast. It was a lovely Sunday morning.

1. We stopped at a playground….

2. and noticed a couple of kids were having a snail race. The kids brought along their tame Siamese cat.

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5. Shot against the sun. The AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 12-24mm f/4G did pretty well in controlling flares.

6. One of the many indispensable jeeps. Jeeps are used by local farmers to transport their produce. This particular one looked pretty tough and weathered.

7. An old man having a morning cigaratte puff. I should have better captured the smoke from his puffs.

8. Morning light entering his kitchen.

9. The local club for the farmers.

10. Coincidentally, there was a local wedding in progress. We seeked permission to enter and I shot them busy with ceremonial preparation.

10. The neighbour of the wedding house. She was peeking out shyly.

11. On the way back, we found a cute thick-furred puppy outside a house. I lured this puppy out to have a better shot of it.

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13. A pitcher plant

14. One of the many tea plantations. Time to shoot our main objective, prewedding of our friends.

Jellyikan and I were invited by Zybisko14 to shoot his and his missy’s good friends’ prewedding. We stayed overnight at Cameron Highlands to have a fresh start the next morning. However, the makeup artist took away most of the time shooting, so we did a little walking around and some street-shooting.

Planning was minimal as I had just purchased my D300 and SB 900 just a day before. Fumbled with some settings and buttons, but everything turned out to be pretty alright. 

Was pretty satisfied as this was the first time to be able to shoot beyond the flash sync speed, in order to have a balanced exposure of the sky and at the same time to be able to use wide apertures. Karheng borrowed me his ultrawide-angled lens AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 12-24mm f/4G IF-ED, but I find its distortion a bit too much to my liking.

Here are some pictures to share. I have selected those that have comical elements. 

1. We stopped our car by the road side (it was a long jam due to the school holidays), and we started shooting at a nearby tea plantation. The sky was pretty gloomy on that day, good news for some strobbing work.

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3. Getting an earful, no more new lenses without prior getting her approval? 

4. A behind the scene shot. We asked the bride to climb ontop of a giant boulder. 

5. Getting tired?

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13. Two images were used to be stacked, in order to get both couples in focused.

More images here.