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.

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How to Question A Simulated Patient During ILA Case Presentation

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:

1. Name, age, race, sex and occupation. (All these must be asked first before other questions.) 
2. 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.)
3. History of present illness. (What happened that preceded the complaints, disease. Refer below if patient comes with pain.)
4. History of past illness. (Other major illnesses the patient had i.e. heart disease, diabetes, gout etc.)
5. Personal history. (Includes lifestyle, medications, smoke/alcohol consumption, places visited etc relevant.)
6. Family history. (Diseases contracted by any family member, hierarchy, background etc relevant.)
7. 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:

1. Site of pain. (Where does the patient felt the pain?)
2. Nature of pain. (Mild, sharp, dull, blunt. Can ask to rate the pain between 1-10 like Baymax in Big Hero 6 movie.)
3. 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.)
4. Duration of pain. (How long does the pain felt in each frequency?)
5. Severity. (Any signs or manifestations of the pain such as the cardinal signs, infection etc.)
6. Radiation. (Does the pain radiates? If so, to where does it radiates?)
7. Aggrevating factor. (What the patient did that will increase the pain i.e. doing certain works or exercises.)
8. 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.

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