Author: Ethan Chua
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A Failed Photo Walk That Taught Me Something
I came home with almost nothing. The memory card was full, but the photographs felt empty. I had spent an entire afternoon walking through Singapore convinced I was chasing good light. Chinatown. Everton Park. A few quiet streets where I usually find something worth noticing. I kept pressing the shutter because it felt like I…
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Singapore Photography: How to Photograph Shophouse Architecture
Singapore is a small country with rich buildings and pretty streets. It was a wet morning on Koon Seng Road in Joo Chiat, one of the favourite photo spots in Singapore for capturing pastel Peranakan houses. I’d woken up early, hauled my camera down there, and then the sky opened up. My first instinct was…
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Photographing People Without Interrupting Their Stories
The best photographs of people often happen when they have forgotten the camera is there. Not because they have been tricked into being candid, but because nothing about the moment needed to change. A man reading the newspaper over kopi. Two friends laughing beneath a block of flats. A hawker wiping down a table after…
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Mobile Photography Accessories Worth Buying
My first real photography purchase after my phone was a lens kit. You know the type — a little pouch with a fisheye, a macro, a wide-angle, all clipping onto the smartphone camera. It cost me less than a nice dinner, and I was convinced it would transform my photos and enhance my mobile photography…
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One Week of Photographing Singapore With Only My Phone
I left my camera at home for an entire week. Not because I wanted to prove that a phone could replace it. That has never interested me. I simply wanted to remove the quiet excuse that I was waiting for the “right” camera before making a photograph. Singapore did not seem to notice the difference.…
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The Essence of Singapore Photography: Documenting The Culture of Hawker Stalls
It was a Tuesday morning at Old Airport Road Food Centre, one of the favourite photo spots for street photography in Singapore. I’d gone there to shoot char kway teow, the usual glistening plate, the wok hei, the kind of picture most tourists and photographers take, the kind the world wanted to see. But my…
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The Stories Above Eye Level
Most photographs begin at eye level. It is where we naturally look. Faces. Streets. Shopfronts. The rhythm of people moving through the city. There is nothing wrong with that—it is how we experience Singapore every day. But some of the city’s quietest stories have never asked to be seen straight ahead. They have always been…
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The Only Mobile Photography Apps Worth Keeping on Your Phone
The best photo I took last year came from my smartphone cameras, not a professional camera. It was a wet Tuesday in Chinatown. I’d left my proper gear at home, and I almost didn’t bother stopping. But the rain had just eased, the red lanterns were glowing against the dark pavement, and something told me…
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The Art of Photographing Leaves, Light, and Stillness
Some photographs ask you to react. Others ask you to wait. I have found that the quietest images—the ones I return to most often—belong to the second kind. They are rarely dramatic. They don’t depend on a striking skyline or a perfectly timed street scene. More often than not, they begin with a patch of…
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Ethical Street Photography Explained by Street Photographers
The first time someone confronted me, I was standing outside a provision shop in Chinatown. I’d just lifted my camera toward an old uncle stacking oranges into a pyramid. The morning light was gorgeous, soft, gold, sliding along the shopfront. I got greedy. I stepped too close, framed his face too tightly, and pressed the…
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