Photography and me

I am interested in science, especially Physics. The pin-hole camera really attracted me. Although it can be made using a box and a translucent paper with a pin hole in front, yet it can capture the image of an object in front of it. I also used it to illustrate how the image of an object is formed at the retina when I was teaching science in Jerantut, Pahang then.

The first camera I bought was a box camera. It cost me only RM4. The film was quite expensive then but only black and white photos could be taken with it. At that time I simply took photos of my family members and scenery. I have no idea how to take good photos. Later I started to read books about photography. For example, the horizon should form one third of our scene. There is to be a frame when we want to take photos of other objects and so on. The control of aperture is also important when photographing an object or a scene.

When I was a student at a teacher’s college I joined the Camera Club and had a chance to develop the films myself. However, we only printed black and white photos but they were good enough for me. I still had some of those photos which I printed myself in the dark room.

Now I own a Sony Cybershot digital camera which not only allows me to take still pictures but movies too. I still like the SLR that I once owned because I can control the aperture and speed to achieve what I want to produce.

Top-spinning

Playing with tops was my pastime when I was young. I made my own tops using guava wood. You need skill to carve a top out of the hard wood. After that, I smoothened the surface with the edge of one of the thick glass fragments thrown onto the top of coconut tree stumps by my parents. Then it was the job of driving a nail into the lower tip of the top. The nail had to be driven in vertically erect and not sideways so that balance could be achieved when it was spun. It was not an easy job to do that. The top was tested for stability when it spun and the nail hammmered to alter its position until it could spin smoothly.

Top-spinning was popular among my childhood friends. We used to 'pangkah' (split the top of the opponent) my friends' spinning tops. At other times we would see whose top could spin the longest.