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Sunday, 30 October 2016

Photography With AAF: Creating Blue Sky Using Lightroom

Hello and good day. On October 9th, I was hired by UniKL RCMP to be one of the photographers for Memory Walk and Open Day UniKL RCMP 2016. I was hired through Kamal & Co, a freelance company led by my friend, Kamal. This is the second time I covered the event, with the former year being just for fun.

Memory Walk is a public awareness event organized by The Dementia Society Perak and Universiti Kuala Lumpur Royal College of Medicine Perak. The objective of the event is to raise awareness about dementia, a type of mental illness caused by brain disease or injury which is characterised by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning. The participants will walk throughout a 6 km track crossing through various places starting from UniKL RCMP to The Dementia Society Perak building and ends back at the college.

Picture by www.rcmp.unikl.edu.my

But I'm not going to write about Memory Walk 2016 today. Instead, I want to write about a new technique of post-processing I learned from that day. Throughout the day, I took many photos and do post-processing (editing) like I always do when I returned home. One interesting thing to note is that I was able to create a more vibrant, blue-sky while editing some of the photos. Here are some example (note that the left side is before editing and right side is after editing):

Beautiful, isn't it? From dull,plain white sky after shot and I turned it to a more vibrant sky. Looking at it makes me feel like wow much beauty, such awesome doge loves photography XD.

Okay, now I'm going to tell you how I do this so that you can try it out yourselves later. Note that the photo must be shot in RAW-format or it won't work at all. I'm sure you can ask me or the photographers later or find it on the internet about why it needs to be in RAW-format. I can't write here, too long you know.

Using the RAW photo, open it in Adobe Lightroom and look at the HSL/Color/BW section. You will see there are several different color with its HSL(Hue-Saturtion-Luminance) modifiers bar. That is what I used to create the above effect. Let us take a look at this photo:

To make the sky in this photo from all-white (before) to blue sky with clouds (after), I modified the Saturation and Luminance of Blue and Aqua HSL modifiers, as shown on the right sidebar. This will differentiate the color of the sky from the clouds. Now let us take a look at the other photo:

I used the same method as above but I also modified the Purple HSL modifiers. This is because after I used the Blue and Aqua HSL modifiers, the color of the clothes the participants are wearing turned light blue. To counter that, I used the Purple HSL modifiers as shown above.

In short, to create the blue sky effect, you will need to use the HSL modifiers in HSL/Color/BW section in Adobe Lightroom. There is no specific range for the modifiers to do this effect. It will be up to you to manipulate it to get your preferred result. Besides, this is my first time discovering it so there are flaws and imperfections in the pictures above. Well, never to late to learn, eh? There are always room for improvements. Will improve more on post-processing later.

If you have any comments/questions/suggestions, leave it at the Comment section below and I'll try to get back to you. Of course, if you want to hire me as your photographer, kindly contact the freelance company I worked, Kamal & Co at kamalcophotography@gmail.com.

That's all for now. Thank you for your time.

P.S.: ignore any typos you find. I'm quite sleepy when typing this.

How to Question A Simulated Patient During ILA Case Presentation

09:11 No comments

Disclaimer: this post is specific to MBBS UniKL pre-clinical students.

Greetings, readers. In this post, I wish to share with all of you on a proper questioning techniques to a simulated patient during Integrated Learning Activity (ILA) Case Presentation. Before that, let me quote an excerpt regarding description of ILA in UniKL RCMP.

"Integrated learning activity (ILA) has been introduced as a learning method to first and second year medical students at the Royal College of Medicine Perak (RCMP) since 2007. The ILA is introduced to draw together the teaching of basic sciences through lectures, practical, demonstration, problem solving sessions and integrate them within a clinical framework. There are eight ILAs (2 ILAs per module). Each ILA runs over a two or three week period. It contains the essential components of an introductory session followed by a small group discussion (SGD1), SGD2 and a closure and feedback session.During the introductory session, all the students (100-200) are introduced to a real or simulated patient by a clinician in a large group setting. The students are encouraged to ask questions pertaining to the case scenario for about 30-45 minutes. They are then divided into smaller groups (8-10 per group) and are guided by a tutor in small seminar rooms. During the SGD1, the assigned tutor will guide the students through a process of brain storming to establish the appropriate learning objectives (LOs). Two weeks later the students reassemble in their respective groups to discuss their findings on the LOs together with their tutor. The tutor's role is not as an expert but as a facilitator. At end of SGD2, a set of 10 extended matching questions (EMQs) are given to students as a formative assessment. The final Closure and Feedback session takes place in a large lecture theatre. Answers to EMQs are discussed, gross performance of EMQ is displayed and relevant feedbacks and response from students are highlighted by the ILA coordinator. The clinician concludes the session."

-Excerpt from Introduction to ILA by Dr. Muniandy-

Okay, now that we know what is an ILA, here are the proper techniques to question a simulated patient, given by Prof. Dr. Myo Than.

The order of questions to ask the patient is as follows:

Name, age, race, sex and occupation. (All these must be asked first before other questions.)
Chief complaints. (The reason why the patient comes i.e. pain, fever, dizzy etc. Might be shown on screen before start of question. If so, it is advisable to ignore this section.)
History of present illness. (What happened that preceded the complaints, disease. Refer below if patient comes with pain.)
History of past illness. (Other major illnesses the patient had i.e. heart disease, diabetes, gout etc.)
Personal history. (Includes lifestyle, medications, smoke/alcohol consumption, places visited etc relevant.)
Family history. (Diseases contracted by any family member, hierarchy, background etc relevant.)
Menstrual history. (Asked only if the patient is a female and have lost blood i.e. leukemia.)

If the patient comes with pain, ask these:

Site of pain. (Where does the patient felt the pain?)
Nature of pain. (Mild, sharp, dull, blunt. Can ask to rate the pain between 1-10 like Baymax in Big Hero 6 movie.)
Frequency of pain. (How often the pain comes? The patient may tell it happen at certain time or when doing something specific and related to the pain.)
Duration of pain. (How long does the pain felt in each frequency?)
Severity. (Any signs or manifestations of the pain such as the cardinal signs, infection etc.)
Radiation. (Does the pain radiates? If so, to where does it radiates?)
Aggrevating factor. (What the patient did that will increase the pain i.e. doing certain works or exercises.)
Relieving factor. (What the patient did that will decrease the pain i.e. taking drugs, icing the pain area.)

I hope with this guideline, all of us can question the patient with professionalism. Or else the ILA lecturer/doctor-in-charge won't be pleased. Of course, if there are any questions, feel free to leave a comment below or ask the lecturers/doctors at the college for consultation on the matter.

Happy Malaysia Day 2015

08:31 No comments

I've just returned from dinner. Quite late, right? Not quite but rather too late actually. Finished at 10.45 pm. On my way back home, I passed through a concert for Malaysia Day at Indera Mulia Stadium. Many people attend it. From what I could see and here from the road, at least more than a thousand attend it. I could hear people singing but I can't tell whether it was a real artist singing or just a cover artist. As I was writing this, I could hear blasts of fireworks. It must be spectacular to watch, even spectacular if I could be there and take photos of the fireworks and show it here.

Back to the main idea. Malaysia Day is celebrated every 16th of September every year since 1963. It commemorates the day of the union of Semenanjung Tanah Melayu, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak under a single coalition known as Persekutuan Malaysia. Though not as important as Independence Day, it is important nonetheless as it has the power to remind us that we are and should be looking each other as a single identity: a Malaysian regardless of ethnicity and religion.

Though tomorrow is going to be another hazy day (thanks to those who burn thousands of kilometers of forests in Sumatra for personal profit of logging), I expect the spirit won't be affected much. Take the concert I mentioned above as an example. People come and enjoy the celebration, way I see it. Well, I just want to say may we not forget this important day and unite under a single banner of Malaysia. To end my entry, I want to share with you a video my friends and I made.

This video is about racial unity in Malaysia. Originally intended as assignment for our General Studies' subject, this video has been put into my Youtube channel because I believe it has the power to send message of unity to the people. Feel free to watch and support our video by giving comments about it and recommend it to your friends!

Happy Malaysia Day 2015.

Merdeka 58: Where Did The Spirit Gone?

10:29 No comments

August 31st. To others, it meant just another new day to them. Another day for a living but to Malaysians, this day meant a special thing to them. This was the day when Malaysia (back then it was known as Tanah Melayu) achieved its independence from the British. They call it Independence Day. Since then, this land has progressed from just an agriculture-based minor country up until what we and others see it: one of the top, most respected third-world country. Every year, Malaysians would celebrate this day as the day the country began its first steps as an independent country, ever progressing forward, enduring all odds and adversaries up until today. The celebration would be in a grand-scale, with fireworks, parades and festivals all over the country. The people are in high spirits of celebrating it to the extent of raising Jalur Gemilang, the national flag at their homes and vehicles. Some would even sing the patriotic songs. One of the most popular song was Tanggal 31 Ogos by the late Sudirman.

Today, August 31st 2015 is the 58th time the celebration being held. Usually I would be in the spirits of celebrating the Day. However this year, I don't feel the spirits. "Why?" I wonder to myself. It's not just me who doesn't feel it, but other Malaysians too. Over the social medias and online news portal, people are expressing their hollowness of their spirits to celebrate it. There has to be at least a reason to it. Over time, I finally realised the answer to the "Why?". The recent events has made us all in this state. Our emotions are too bruised to be in the mood of celebrating the Day. Too bruised by recent events happening to the country. Tax issues, increase in living costs, political figures vying for power over the need to help the people, big sacndals over the Prime Minister, loss of faith to the government, press medias from ministers that hurt people's feelings, racial and religious provocations...all these things and many more that might not be mentioned, all of them kills the spirit.

I wondered, "Why lose the celebration spirits just because all these things? Shouldn't this be the day to commemorate the deeds of the past instead of lamenting over the present?" Well, try to take the analogy of having break-ups. When you have a break-up with your boyfriend/girlfriend, you will be sad, right? You are sad because all the happy things that have happened before are now gone, and won't be happening again after that. And break-ups don't happen in an instance and without reason, right? You break-up because of bad things such as arguments, misunderstandings, problems, fights etc. These bad things will break the remaining ties you had in each other in form of hatred, distancing each other away. This makes you sad when you have to face it. Even if there are happy things/events going on at that time, your sadness consumes the happiness. Now back to the situation. Everything that happened to the country as mentioned above, that made us sad. Sad because we miss the good days when everything is in order. Sad because now we have to face all these bad things happening to the country. This feeling consumes the spirit of happiness. Happiness to celebrate the Day as we had always before.

Some say that lamenting the past won't change a thing...unless one knows to learn from it. To learn from it means to move forward. Therefore, life must go on forward. Every problem must be solved. Every obstacle must be removed. We need to go forward until the day we give away our last breath. The recently held demonstration "Bersih 4.0" just before the Independence Day is a means to move forward. To solve the problem. To remove the obstacle. To me, it won't make much of a push but even if it didn't make an effect, at least an attempt is better than no attempt just like the Malay proverb said "berpantang maut sebelum ajal". They are longing to see the light they've seen in the old days, the peace of body, mind and soul they had in this blessed land. Just as I am.

The Independence Day have just passed an hour ago as I am writing this. I just want to express what I've been thinking, what I've kept inside me. As to conclude my writing now, I do hope I can see and feel it, everything I've wanted, the good things to return, to bring happiness again to me, to those who wished to see Malaysia whom we wanted always.

Pray for a peaceful, just, blessed and prosperous Malaysia. Happy 58th Independence Day.

PHOTOGRAPHING STORY - Flora at Grandparents' House

09:40 No comments

August 19th. It was a fine evening. The air is warm, a suitable temperature for a walk in the streets of Parit Belemam, my hometown where it is also my grandparents'...and so does my uncle's and some of my relatives' home. This time I was on a holiday after Supplementary Exams. Usually I would take my old bicycle or grandpa's bike and ride it through the breeze of a village or further to the hustling small city of Tongkang Pechah. However, this time I snatch my Sony A58 I had brought along and decided to take photos of the flora found in grandma's garden-compound. Why? Just for fun besides improving my photography skills.

Some photographers prefers to do Macro or close-up photography when doing taking this type of photo. Instead, I choose to do bokeh (a focused subject with blurred background) photography. Here as some of my photos taken by Sony A58 with kit lens (18 - 55 mm) and edited with Adobe Lightroom.

If you want to see full album of "Flora at Grandparents' House", you can view it at https://www.flickr.com/photos/akmaladibfadzil/albums/72157657618365136 or click the tab "My Photography Albums" at the header or search for the album "Flora at Grandparents' House.