The Malaysia International Fireworks Competition currently held at Putrajaya is no longer a new story. Beginning from 18th Aug 2007, a series of fireworks displays are executed at Jambatan Seri Gemilang to light up the August night sky.
A theme park was setup at PICC (Putrajaya International Convention Centre) as the official viewing deck. But, the entrance is quite expensive! Even with entitlement for discount, each person will still need to pay about RM40 for entrance!!
“What if we go in a group of 20 persons? That gonna cost a whopping RM800!”
Luckily, this is a fireworks event. By the nature of it, fireworks are meant to be viewable from miles away hahaha.
Thanks to
Joe Seah and
John Lim, they have scouted out the Cyberjaya area on 25th Aug when Italy was performing fireworks show, and concluded a super dooper strategic location – Cyberjaya Perdana Lakeview.
You may refer to this map for its location. It located within a minute of driving distance from Cyberview Lodge.
The roadside lakeview is furnished with long-stretch of corridor and some seats. The closest landmark caught in sight is the magnificent Jambatan Seri Saujana. Towards the right, is where the fireworks firing zone located – Jambatan Seri Gemilang. All are clearly visible across a lake without obstacle. Without paying a single cent and we enjoyed the same fireworks display, only without musical pleasure.
A Troop of 25 Youngsters
Don’t get a shock, but we actually went Cyberjaya Perdana Lakeview on Merdeka even in a group of 25 people! If you were there, and you’ve seen a big crowd making noise on a strategic ground laid with plenty of posters as mats, that was me and my friends haha
After work, we left office in a few cars between 6.30pm to 7pm, and most of reached our destination by 8pm. There was quite a jam in LDP and Subang Jaya, but the traffic from LDP Sunway toll towards Cyberjaya was smooth.
No Toilet
At the Cyberjaya Perdana Lakeview, no public toilet was caught in sight. So, the first thing we did at Cyberjaya, was to “settle our business” at MDEC headquarter :p
Picnic and Entertainment
At around 8.30pm, some small crowds were spotted at Perdana Lakeview. But, soon by 9pm, the roadside is already full of double-parked cars.
Some of my other friends (didn’t join us one) were questioning how we could spend our time till 12midnight from 8pm. But seriously, no worry for boredom when I’m with this gang of friends. When we are around, we will definitely have lots of craps to share and do, even for 5 hours.
On the Merdeka eve, we’re all organized into a few groups with varying tasks:
- Foods and beverages
- Entertainment and birthday bash (make sure we never cornered into boredom till 12midnight)
- On-site convenience (prepare things like mat and resolve as many convenience issue as possible)
In summary, this is how we spent our time from till fireworks display started:
- Laid out plenty of posters on the ground as mats
- We’ve ordered pizzas for dinner, and prepared Carlsberg beers and 100 Plus in ice-box.
- Watched ‘Just Follow Law’ and Taiwanese entertainment shows with notebook PCs
- Played Big Two (Choh Dai Di) card game
- Camwhoring at the lake side
- Celebrated birthday for Janet (31st Aug), Calvin (1st Sept) and Paullie (5th Sept)
Now you know how easy we could spend our time? ;)
First Attempt to Fireworks Photography
For a year as the owner of Lumix FZ30, this is my very first attempt to fireworks photography. Though I’ve learned some best practices from online resources, but theory is never fully applicable in practice. I didn’t put too much expectation on this first attempt of fireworks photography, but trying my best to learn another new photography domain.
At 11.30pm, I started setting up my camera on tripod. But I did a silly offence. Being too excited, I didn’t realize that I was blocking the view of another 2 girls sitting behind me, but they didn’t hesitate pointing out my mistake as well :) My apology to the 2 girls, if you so happen to read this post haha
These are the initial setting I prepared before the fireworks display started:
- Manual mode - F/5 aperture and 4 sec exposure
- Manual focus
- ISO100
- Landscape composition
The exposure works well when the fireworks first started. But I was soon proven wrong, when the fireworks were getting brighter and fired in more combinations. 4 second was too long and resulted in over-exposed shots.
Then, I have to quickly bring down the exposure to 3.2 sec, then later 2.5 sec, and 2 sec when firework explosions were getting even brighter and patterns were changing at faster pace, and even down to 1.6 sec when it came to ending.
Composition wise, landscape was fine in the first few shots. However, soon I realized the fireworks were fired only from one end, and thus leaving my shots loosely composed! Ended up no object of interest is found on the right side of the landscape composition.
Again, I got to quickly reacted and adjusted the tripod head to fit portrait composition. Yes, from my shots, most of the acceptable ones were composed vertically.
Overall, I’m not satisfied with my fireworks shot. There’s only about 20% of success rate in this first attempt hahah. But, none the less, it is a great experience. It’s not easy to stumble upon 20-minute fireworks display.
Skills aside, weather condition of the day has slightly ruined up the shots as well. There was no decent wind-blow on the Merdeka eve fireworks night. Thus, layers of thick smokes were accumulated and stationed in the air. Quite a number of my shots towards the last 7 minutes were “artistically and naturally” brushed by the smokes.
Yooooo Merdeka~! We met a group of people carrying Jalur Gemilang, and so they joined us for this group photo to add in Merdeka element to the shot.
Jam Jam Jam
As highlighted in newspapers and blogsphere, there was massive jam right after the fireworks show. Instead of rushing into the jam to waste petrol, we again, stayed at the lake side and camwhore.
Our friend's FTO also got to snail on the road :p
But it doesn’t take a long time for traffic at Cyberjaya to be leveled. At about 1.10am, the lakeside road was almost totally cleared from traffic jam. However, traffic was slow moving at the joint from Putrajaya side, after Lim Kok Wing campus.
