Light of the Merlion - iLight Marina Bay

The Scene:

As promised, here is another shot from the iLight Marina Bay Festival and this time we present to you the iconic Singapore Merlion. 

This is one icon that is instantly associated with Singapore - it has kinda become the Eiffel Tower / Golden Gate / Opera House - you get the drift, right - for Singapore and every time you set foot in the Merlion Park, there are hundreds of tourists wielding their brand new cameras and capturing their "I was there" moments. While I have I've been in Singapore for about 9 months now, I shot the Merlion only once. It was the day I got my ND Grad filters and I ventured out early in the morning to get a few glimpses of the early morning rays and beat touristy crowd. I over-used the filters a little bit on that shoot and the fact that I didn't have a grey card handy in that shoot meant that I had to "color correct"  my shots manually. If you have been following my posts all along, you must know by now on where this is going - Those set  of shots never saw the Internet. The only frame that in which you can clearly identify the Merlion was one of my very first from Singapore - something that I grabbed while waiting for one of the National Day Parade rehearsals.

Given this back-story, there had to be something unique happening for me to get my lazy bum amidst the day-trippers and shoot the Merlion - What better than the fact that it was all dressed up colorfully for the iLights Festival. I convinced myself and headed back to the Merlion Park back on Sunday.

I was probably ill prepared for this shot since I sold my trusted Canon 10-22 when I upgraded to the 5D2 due to budgetary constraints. The original idea was to use the cash to fund a 17-40, however that never happened partly due to the fact that I read that the 17-40 was optically mediocre on a full frame cameras. I know that it is a very tough to use the word mediocre, but heck the 10-22 and the direct competition 16-35 f/2.8 L II are truly kick-ass lenses. With only my 24-105 L left - and that btw, is my ONLY zoom lens, and it caters for my widest and the most tele focal lengths! - I couldn't get any wider. So I had to settle for this composition instead of what I had originally in mind. I should probably get back there again and re-shoot it this weekend in a different composition.

The Art:

Its name combines "mer" meaning the sea and "lion". The fish body represents Singapore's origin as a fishing village when it was called Temasek, which means "sea town" in Javanese. The lion head represents Singapore's original name — Singapura — meaning "lion city" or "kota singa".

The credits for the Merlion itself goes to 2 people - Fraser Brunner who designed it as a logo and then by a Singaporean sculptor Lim Nang Seng who commissioned the statue in 1972. While this one is the original, there area a few more replicas around in Singapore - including one that is 4 times as big as this one!

As part of this festival, the statue was decorated by OCUBO, a Portuguese Art and Multimedia Studio. 

The Shot:

Canon 5D Mark II with the 24-105 L @ 32mm | f/16 | ISO 100 | 30 sec