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American photographer Berenice Abbott: "Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.”


To me, photography helps me remember little things from my past, long after I've forgotten everything.


Allow me to share with you some of the images from my past, moments that could never be revisited. These images were captured during my trips abroad; Luxembourgh, India, Sudan, Australia. Some were made during the family's outings in Malaysia.


All the images were captured using inexpensive cameras; either point-and-shoot ones or single-lens-reflex equipment. My point here is that decent images could be captured with cheap cameras but the more expensive ones, hi-tech equipment with great glasses or lenses offer room for manipulation. More importantly, good cameras combined with great glasses enable you to be creative.


Such an equipment would enable you to make good exposures. Just what constitutes a good exposure? To my understanding, it's when you record as wide a tonal range of light to dark brightness values as possible with your camera, given the lighting conditions at hand. This exposure should have it all - true colour, detail in the highlight and shadow areas and, most importantly a range of values that can be manipulated further for even greater image enhancement.


A photographic image is a continuous range of brightness values; a continuous tone is a large part of what makes for the illusion that a photograph is "real." Rich tonal values and a range of colours allow us to more easily buy into its magical illusion.


Until and unless I own a good set of photographic equipment, the above will remain a theory for now. At the moment, I'll continue to make decent photographs, as decent as they could be, with my cheap glasses and inexpensive point-and-shoot cameras. I will flip through photographic magazines and gawk at those high-end lenses and camera bodies, the likes of Canon, Leica, Nikon.