My Second Pair of Eyes

Project Speech 8 - Using Visual Aids. This project was delivered on the occasion of the a club's humorous and evaluation contest, as a test speaker. The experience of having 5 evaluation (4 from contestants and 1 from silent evaluator) was simply refreshing, especially when you hear differing opinions  of the contestants. This is certainly the true spirit of the toastmasters program - evaluations that reflects the evaluators' personal views that are sincerely presented for the benefit of the speaker. All photos are copyright to the author.

Contest chair, distinguished guests and fellow toastmasters, a very good evening to one and all. Recently I acquired a second pair of eyes and an extended brain. What? You might say, did I do an eye surgery or something? And did I get myself into an accident and crashed part of my brain? No, no, nothing that exciting and sensational. I simply bought a Camera (prop), a Digital single lens reflex camera, DSLR for short.These are typically used by professional photographers. Now, how is this thing my second pair of eyes and an extended brain? Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to show you the magic of photography!
 
A camera is gadget that operates similarly to our human eye. It makes photos just like how we human eyes capture images around us. Take a look at this diagram 

Source: Pasadena Eye Associates, http://www.pasadenaeye.com/faq/faq15/faq15_text.html

This is a camera (point) and this is a drawing of a human eye (point). When we want to take a picture, we press this button, and this opens the shutter, very much like us opening our eyes. Light from the object enters through our pupil (in the camera's case - the aperture) and our brain begin to see the image as it was formed on the retina, similar to the camera film in the past and of cos the memory card in the modern digital format. When we release the button, we shut the eye again, and the image is being blocked out. So isn’t this wonderful gadget my second pair of eyes or what?
 
And how does this gadget become my extended brain? It is because the photos that I took at that point in time are saved in the memory card or subsequently in the computer me allow me to store it forever! Well, not forever, but certainly longer than my leaky memory could last. Sometime down the road, when I needed to recall a place, a time or an event, all I have to do is to check my photos and it would trigger the memories of that wonderful moment. So, this gadget helps to create an external hard disk of the most precious memories in my life. And it is precisely for this reason that I took up photography in the first place – to capture the fleeting moments in our lives.
 
About one year ago I picked up photography, and decided to take this hobby seriously so armed with my newest camera I joined my first basic photography course to learn how to operate this thing and of course, how to take a good picture. I found out this second part of eyes can do certain things better than my original pair of eyes!  There are camera tricks that I can perform with ease.
 
For example, in camera, we can set the depth of field to make your picture looks either crystal clear or in a state of dream. Let’s take a look at this first example – this is a stock of flower taken in Bangkok Thailand before I took up photography class.

This is a very clear picture with everything in focus, the flower in the foreground, the pagoda in the background and everything else as well. It is a well-take picture, for my very first attempt at taking flowers. I was quite pleased and was patting myself on the shoulders. However, after taking photography class and got more exposed to what a camera can do, I realized that this is actually a very boring picture! It is nice, but not fantastic for it has no specific selling point. Everything in this picture is screaming for your attention – The flower, the pagoda and even the green textured roof! So how can I improve this picture? First, I have to decide what is the focus, what exactly do I want people to see – the flower, so everything else is not important, so I somehow have to make the rest disappear! The way to do this is to change the depth of field by adjusting the aperture, represented by a F-number in the camera. The aperture is essentially the hole at which light travel (point to lens), and as we explain a min ago it is very similar to the pupil in our human eye. When you reduce the F-number, it allows less light to come in, and therefore, creating an image that focus only on the subject that you wanted people to see. This (picture) is the final result - an example of having only one area being in focus. 

This is a stalk of flower taken in the Singapore Garden Festival held last months, but really it does not matter where, it is this particular heart of flower that matters for this picture. Magical isn’t it? The camera created this flower in a dreamy state and froze it in the moment, to be captured on film.
 
The second camera trick I can perform with this gadget is to capture more than one thing at a time! This is a fantastic feature that our human eye cannot do. You know how we always say that we cannot turn back time? Certainly we can’t, but we can capture time using the camera. Take a look at this fireworks photo, I took this during last month's NDP. 

It captures one burst of fireworks, which is great. I am very pleased with myself. However, consider this. What if I can capture more than one burst of fireworks? Our human eye can only see what is presented to us at that moment and never anything prior or anything after. Therefore we have to rely on our leaky memory to remember what we saw during the entire session. But hey, guess what, the camera can do this for you... Like this! 

This picture is taken during the previous year NDP and it captures a total of four bursts of fireworks. Isn't that a neat trick? How do i do that you might ask, well, with a use of a black card (demo) and wallah! You got each moment captured at precisely the right moment on the same image!  So you see, there is no need to rely entirely on our own memories, the photos will serve as extended memories to us to capture the whole splendor of the fireworks display.
 
Ladies and gentlemen, there are many more tricks I can do with the camera, and I am barely starting out. So far I have been very pleased with this second pair of eyes and extended memory, something which I will certainly exploit further. As Eudora Welty, the award-winning American author in the 19 century said "A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away". That is exactly what I wanted to do, and I hope you would join me to pick up this pair of eyes to capture the beautiful moments in our lives.
 
Thank you. Contest Chair.