THIS IS MACAU
When you get into a taxi in Macau, be sure to have your destination written on a card to show the driver. Saying “take me to the Conrad Hotel” means nothing in Chinese. Take my advice. This is Macau.
I travelled to Macau purely out of curiosity. I must say I was completely blown away. In fact, I loved Macau even though I know nothing about gambling.
The casino lights in Macau flash outside like you’d expect to see in Las Vegas tho’ Macau is not flashy.
The queues of people waiting to play casino games is unbelievable. People literally wait in lines for hours to play a slot machine. Speaking of slot machines, they made no sense to me. If I ever do gamble my money away, it’s on a slot machine. I took one look and told myself no way. I’d have lost everything with the first pull.
Needless to say I find Macau more than fascinating. But, there is also a genuine side to Macau that is well worth exploring. Only blocks away from the bright flashing casino lights you’ll find where the locals live and work. Macau is entirely safe so don’t allow any sort of apprehension keep you away.
Some of the best photos I captured of Macau were amongst the real and genuine city. I also felt more at ease.
For your trip to Macau, consider the following travel photography tips.
The good news is you don’t need to have a great camera to take great photos. In fact, your iPhone is sometimes all you need.
Here are 6 simple tricks to help you take beautiful photos (smartphone or not)
1 Declutter: don’t try and capture too many things in your photo. Simple is best.
2 Close up: kind of the same as above, but zoom in to crop out the excess clutter.
3 Focus: tap the specific item in the frame that you want the image to focus on (see below for more focus and exposure tips).
4 Take your time. You might get lucky just pointing and shooting, but if you’re taking a scenery photo, for example, take your time to move the camera slowly and studying what you are capturing in the photo.
5 Try different angles. Sure you can stand right in front of the flower and click, but try tilting the camera above or below it and see what results you get. Or put the subject to one side. Avoid the middle.
6 Make eye contact. Take the time for your subject, whether it be human or animal, to look at you. Do whatever it takes to get their eyes looking down the lens.
5 iPhone camera tricks you might not know
1 Turn on your camera three ways: unlock your phone and hit the icon, swipe up and hit the icon OR THIS TRICK: when your phone is locked, just swipe from right to left and the camera is open. A great tip for averting the panic of needing to take a quick snap but not having the time to click through the other steps.
2 Use your headphones to take the photo. Open the camera app and let’s say you want to take a discrete photo or you are taking a low light photo at night time, you can put your iPhone down on the table or on a tripod (so you don’t shake it) and line up your shot, then using your volume + or – buttons, with the iPhone headphones plugged in, you take the pic.
3 Burst mode feature. This is great for action shots. Just hold your finger on the shutter button and it will rip off several in a few seconds and you can just delete the ones you don’t like that. Note: it bursts quickly! I held my finger down about 3 seconds and it took 24 frames. Whoa Junior! Stop. That’s what I was thinking.
4 Manual focus. Yes you can manually focus in your iPhone. Just tap the part of the screen you want to be in full focus and voila. This is great for a food shot or a close up object when there is a busy background and you want that to be blurred out a little. If you don’t do this the iPhone will choose what to focus on itself and you may end up with a fuzzy flower and a sharp leaf.
5 Increase or decrease the exposure. You can play with exposure on your trusty iPhone and I do this all the time. Just tilting your phone will cause it to change exposure so you might be able to find the brightness you want that way. Otherwise the same technique you use for focus also alters exposure. Just tap the area you want to be bright (or darker) and as well as the focus square you’ll see a little vertical yellow line with a sunshine. Just move your finger up or down and what the image get brighter or darker.
If you want the focus AND exposure to jump back to the default setting after you’ve take one photo (cos you spent a bit of time getting it just so!), just hold your finger on the screen for a couple of seconds and AE/AF Lock will appear in a yellow block meaning you are good to take a whole lot of images with that setting.