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A worker toils along a footpath lined with palm trees in Woodlands Avenue 2 as the early morning sun casts long shadows across the grass. --ST PHOTO: NG LOR SUAN
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Straits Times photojournalist Samuel He is not a morning person, but he says the pictures he has taken for this paper's 7:59 series have helped him see Singapore in a new light.
For the past year, the paper's photographers have been catching a slice of life a minute before 8am. Over 40 of these photographs are on show from tomorrow in an exhibition titled 7:59 at art gallery L2 Space in Tanjong Pagar Distripark. All the photographs are for sale and the money raised will go to The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund.
Mr Michael Sargent, 54, The Straits Times' photo editor, says: 'There is no particular news peg to these pictures. The idea is to capture an often forgotten part of Singapore, a unique moment captured in all the richness of the morning light. This is the time when the shadows are really long and you can capture the simple things of life. The idea is to get readers to pause and reflect for a moment.'
The brief to the photographers when the column started a year ago was simple: Take pictures which capture some of these elements.
But this meant getting up early to catch that prized shot and for some photographers, it was hard.
He, 26, for instance, often goes for a run at 3am, sleeps at 4am and gets up around noon.
When he has a morning assignment, he does not sleep. It was after one such sleepless night that he took a lorry ride, which resulted in one of his 7:59 photographs.
He spotted a group of workers getting ready to leave their dormitory near his home in Jurong East. The open-top lorry was to ferry the foreign workers from India, Myanmar and Bangladesh to a reclaimed site in Tuas where they worked as soil testers. He boarded it with them.
He, who had previously spent five weeks living with foreign workers to get an insight into how migrant workers here live, says he had thought of a picture like this.
'But with all the constant movement on a lorry, I wasn't quite sure how it would turn out. Being on a lorry is very different from being on a bus or a train. It is fun to have the wind blow in your face, but at the same time it is dangerous too. I wanted to capture some of those elements in the photograph and I did it by giving the background a slightly surreal effect,' he says.
Another sleepless night resulted in another photograph. This was of a bird flying past a reflection of a blue sky at the Yio Chu Kang MRT station.
Says He: 'I had an early job that day and decided to leave early. I had not slept the night before, I was tired and was sure I would not get a good picture. Then I spotted these birds feeding on leftover food. Every time I tried to photograph them, they would fly away, till I got one with all the reflecting layers of a train station.'
Photojournalist Ng Sor Luan, 31, also captured her 7:59 photograph almost by default. She spotted a worker toiling along a footpath lined with palm trees in Woodlands Avenue 2 as the early morning sun was casting long shadows across the grass.
She says: 'Often you go looking for a moment like this and nothing happens. A lot of it is sheer luck. You need beautiful light and the weather is something you just cannot control. This picture happened by chance. I had an early morning assignment and as I was walking around Woodlands, I spotted these shadows and a worker going about his everyday job of cleaning up the place.'
Ms Yu Lei, 39, founder of L2 Space, says she wanted to showcase these images as they remind people to pause and take a fresh look at familiar scenes. 'I feel these pictures also capture quintessential Singapore moments, some of which are timeless, and some of which show Singapore the way it is - a city on the move,' she says.
deepikas@sph.com.sg
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