Travel, On a day out in a wild and secluded corner of Singapore, you might have come across what appeared to be a hiker taking a rocket launcher for a stroll. The hiker suddenly aimed the rocket launcher at things you couldn’t see and started firing; you decided to stay away because he didn’t look as if he was in the mood for a chat.
That hiker was probably me, and the rocket launcher was one of those massive camera lenses that people never use without tripods. Well, almost never. When a dragonfly began to lay eggs in flight before my eyes, the only option was to manhandle the lens with my arm muscles, lock on to the target quickly with manual focus override and shoot before it was too late. I came home that day with an aching back and a prized medal in my bag – a permanent photograph of a very fleeting moment.
Photography is exhilarating because all the rules can be broken at liberty. Like shooting dragonflies with lenses designed for cheetahs and F1 race cars. There is, however, one rule I never break: ‘always try to think of ideas no one else thinks of’. It has, of course, been applied to real life.
