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Revisited Gabai Waterfall last weekend with MaxxX, as he wanted to try out taking slow-shutter speed pictures and wanted to ask some tips from me also. No problem lah, just get me in the car and hit the road !! yeah !!! There's nothing like 'too far' or 'too early' for photographers ler ~

We started the outing slightly off plan as when I called him at 540AM he was still in the bed, damm ....

Anyway. Things goes smooth all along bisides me looking for a place to park my car and a little lost just before we reached the water fall.

We reached there abit early, just have enuff time for us to set the camera and do some test shoots before 'actual' start. Good thing about going there early is that there'll be NO ONE at all before 9AM, and the dim sunlight are essential if you want to capture the flowing water of the waterfall. So If you are planning to go there to take picture, please be abit early. And make sure you don't jump inside the water before 10AM, I can guarantee that you'll freeze your balls ...

Early sunlight thru the trees and mist. I just love to look at that Mysterious and Surreal look. So fast fast captured a few before it goes off ( didnt last for even 5 mins, be quick ! )


The key to get these kind of picture: Wake up bloody early ....

I think Gabai was the most beautiful waterfall I've been to. No much people around to kacau ( that's early in the morning before 10AM), the water is crystal clear, the environment is clean if you compare to streets in KL, also the air was amazing, there's still mist around untill 9AM. Nice ....

I'm not sure if I can find anything like this back in Sabah, but I will however try my best to take some pictures during my holiday trip back to Sabah coming September, for about a week.


This is the kind of picture that MaxxX wanted to try out and learn from me. Seriously I am not master in this but there're some basic I can share lah.
1. Wake up as early as you can. Maybe 530AM and get ready.
2. Ask someone to go together, going alone will be so bored that you might want to suicide.
3. Get a steady tripod, which means those RM35 ones will not be good enuff.
4. Switch to A mode ( Aperture Priority ) and put on the smallest aperture the lens can go.
5. Try to set ev +0.3 so the picture can be abit brighter, coz the water will fool the cemera and hence over exposed.
6. If you smoke, make sure you have enuff. For smoking and chasing the mosquitos and bugs away.

There are 4 waterfalls in total. Lowest one will be pack with people around 900AM~1000AM, we skipped that to avoid the people and the BBQ stove in our pictures, smoke from the BBQ may not look nice in my the pictures too, but you may have a different thought. Second one is kind of impossible to swim or 'play water':

Picture taken at the second waterfall. Please dont risk you life here. I think it's at least 50 feet tall, not so tall but tall enuff to kill if you fall from there. So please before extra careful. I think the third one is the best among all, the first picture in this entry was taken there, and there's were we spent most of the time. The last one we didnt go explore coz it looks creepy and nothing much to shoot also.

So while taking the usual "water flow" pictures. I was trying something else also :

A cool tone, water from the water fall splashing on the biggest rock there. I kind of like it. The Rock solid against The Flawless water, guess who'll win.

And another approach:

A warmer tone to show the energy of the water. Also zoomed out abit to show more rocks and water flow. As I'm not so good in taking landscape pictures, why not take something I'm familiar with (still life pictures), so I won't fell that I wasted the effort coming all the way from PJ to Gabai.

Here's another experimental pictures:

Higher contrast in the picture to make it more dramatic. But I think most people wont like it ...