olympus | Tiara in Transit

Hari Raya Haji – Tips on how not to take an underwater photo

Hari Rya Haji in Malaysia is the Festival of the pilgrimage – The pilgrimage being the journey that each muslim needs to make to Mecca once in their lifetime – During this time, cows are sacrificed in the mosque, and the meat given to the people – Poor cows 😦

This years Hari Raya Haji, my family in Malaysia opted for the more western style celebration of pasta by the pool, and I found this the perfect opportunity to test out my waterproof Olympus.

Tips on how not to take an underwater photo.
Remember, everything is enlarged underwater, well that’s what I thought until I saw a picture of my cousin in law (Ian) with his daughter (my niece Tia) and they looked completely normal if not more gorgeous! Where as all my photo’s became X-rated. (anything already large became MASSIVE..)

1) Use a small person, or child, to cover your body – This way the otherwise porn shot becomes one for the family album.

2) Do not hold your breath in your mouth – Try to relax and smile without a mouth full of oxygen. Unless of course what you’re going for is the bloated ‘I can’t believe I’m underwater’, robot being short-circuited look.

3) Your typical sexy land pose does not look good underwater – But is much more humorous! Being underwater posing rookies, each time a photo was taken, it was followed by howls of laughter, then a reassuring ‘you don’t really look like that’, followed by more can’t breath, tears streaming down face, hands slapping the water ‘look at you!’ laughter.

4) When doing the ‘lets take a photo of all three of us jumping in the pool’ action shot – Make sure the heaviest jump is slightly delayed from the lightest – otherwise you might miss the heavies completely as demonstrated in this photo which had 3 of us jumping in the pool at EXACTLY the same time.

Personally, I think the photo’s came out purrfectly and made for a memorable happy Hari Raya Haji!

Big thanks to my cousin Liyana for being a good sport 🙂

Day 2 – Backwater tours – The adventures of Jaspreet & T

We joined a 7 hour backwater tour on a house boat with a deck large enough to cater for the 10 tourist on-board. The scenery of coconut tree covered islands and rivers filtered with canoes catching mussels and chinese fishing nets was very pretty. My first move was to whip out the camera, which wouldn’t switch on, and after 15 minutes of wishing hateful shit on Olympus, I finally asked a nice Malaysian man with a 2 foot long impressive looking lens if he could kindly send me some of his photo’s.

Our tour guide, Srijiv (or something like that) was a funny little fellow, very informative but would end every sentence by repeating the last word questioningly, with a slightly confused look on his face, seeking assurance that he had indeed selected the last word correctly. It was a great way of engaging his audience, though it did make us question whether he knew what he was talking about.

Srijiv prided himself in being an uncertified Ayurvedic practitioner, grabbing each girl (only the girls mind you) by the wrist, and informing us of our health issues.

Srijiv to Jaspreet – ‘You have a problem from here to here’ gesturing between her right knee to her right ankle

Jaspreet – ‘Well, I do have a big cut on my left shin’ displays a deep cut on her left leg

Everyone raises an eyebrow – sure, he picked the right leg instead of the left leg, but at least he chose the legs region correctly.

Srijiv, to T holding her wrist in concentration, then finally saying – ‘I’m too embarrassed to say your problem out loud’

T, curious – ‘Can you at least tell me what area its in’ thinking it must be in the neck but wondering why that would cause any kind of shame.

Srigiv – ‘It’s in this area’ indicates between under my belly button to the top of my thighs.

T, quietly to Jaspreet – ‘Great. It seems I have a problem with my vagina’