Early morning in Singapore

Sometimes jet lag can be great. Especially for a photographer.

Waking up without effort early morning is not something that happens often. But while traveling, embracing jet lag is an advantage. The best time to explore a new city is before sunrise. Starting during the blue hour. Everyone is still sleeping. It’s quiet. There is no traffic and only very few people come out. The most interesting people actually.

On our first morning that’s what we did. Woke up, got dressed and went to explore this exciting city. Luckily we were close to the Marina Bay. A beautiful area and probably the best place for photography.

While taking some photos we ended up chatting to a very nice, local gentleman. Turns out he usually hangs out at the bay, early morning watching the sunrise (not a bad idea). He was very knowledgeable of the history of Singapore and gave us some tips about where to go for great views of the city.

It’s awesome when it’s possible to talk to locals. Just strangers who truly know and love where they live (and are not trying to sell you anything).

Technical information

As for this image, it was taken handheld. 14mm is wide enough that a slow shutter speed along with in body image stabilization can give a sharp image. The tricky part was to get both the flowers and the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in focus. Because the flowers were very close to the camera I took two frames, one focused on the flowers and one on the building.

Post processing

Both images were edited in Lightroom and later combined in Photoshop. It’s usually easy to blend when there is an empty area where the focus planes meet. In this case the water which was slightly smoothed by the long exposure.