childhood dreams

Magic The Gathering x Final Fantasy event at Suntec City

I remember when I was still in primary school, when me and my friends would be eating in Long John Silvers, we would often see a bunch of older teens playing a card game that was not Yu-Gi-Oh or Duel Masters. The only name I remembered seeing from that card game was Swamp, and I remember it so clearly because the art on the Swamps were so beautiful to me. But we never played the game, I just thought it was a card game for uncles at the time. 

Then in 2017, Randell brought me to attend the Amonkhet (or Hour of Devastation) pre-release in Dueller's Point. That was my first real introduction to Magic the Gathering. We got steamrolled pretty quickly, and I didn't pick it back up for another 7 years. 

In 2024, I woke up one day and texted Randell, I wanted to learn Magic proper. Naturally, he asked me why the sudden interest. My genuine answer was, I think I'm an uncle now. So he taught me to play the Commander format, introduced me to some Youtube channels, and started bringing me to every pre-release event for each set. I was drawn to the art on Magic cards, how every card felt like a piece of artwork by themselves, and I quickly fell down the rabbit hole, and the rest is history.

I think there is something so beautiful about being able to afford the hobby that I never could over the first twenty years of my life. Randell and I often hoped that Avatar: The Last Airbender could come to Magic, and true enough, it really did come to us. And being able to go all in on the collab like we did really felt so satisfying and touching to me, given how big of a fan I was of the Avatar series. 

Other than photography, this is how I have been occupying my time the past 2 years, and it has been beautiful. 

We played twin headed giant sealed for Bloomburrow

We steamrolled everybody

Getting a print and signature from Julian Kok

We made a commander deck for each other

Randell getting his cards signed

A Chandra cosplayer gave us free packs

Dragging Guan and Edgar down the rabbit hole

We bonded over our love of card games on our last semester in Poly, and now we bond over Magic the Gathering

First ever Command Fest in SG

We played some Final Fantasy sealed and redeemed some packs

Our dream Universes Beyond - Avatar the Last Airbender

Battle of the blue mages

We love pre-releases

plus four years

 

Four years ago, in my last semester in university, I decided to take black and white film photography as a module. In part because of my last photo series, yearning, was entirely in black and white, and in part because I wanted a reason to engage photography on a deeper level. 

I thought printing my digital photographs was satisfying, then I realised how satisfying developing my own roll of film photos was, and how satisfying printing those photos through light exposures and chemical washes was. 

As I worked on the same photo series for months, my perspective grew and sharpened as I repeated the process of shooting, developing, printing, and comparing each print with each other to see if they fit together. At the end of the module, I had discovered a liking towards landscape photography as well as just cinematic photography in general. 

With my first few paychecks, I decided to take a leaf out of the DigitalRev book and bought myself a Fujifilm X100F. The goal was to be able to shoot the landscapes easily whenever I travelled (and also because the X100 series has always been a dream camera of mine). And the X100F has indeed lived up to its name, because it's such a lightweight camera that still delivers on quality. For the past 2-3 years, I have been bringing it with me on every overseas trip. 

The more I shoot, the more I enjoy taking these landscapes casually. Some shots I take on a snap, some shots I pause and frame with a lot more intention. This is not to say that I have grown out of portraiture, I still do enjoy them. But I think I'd placed a lot of pressure on myself when I used to do portraiture, and I was chasing after some sort of recognition that I had taken really good photos. Because of that, it often put me through creative slumps. 

And as I was scrolling through some of my now-archived photos on Instagram today, I realised, boy do I take real good photos. But I realised that my favourite photos were those taken casually, especially on a disposable film camera. There was just something genuine about those photos that still speaks to me. Unfortunately, shooting and developing film has gotten way too expensive now. So maybe the only way to replicate that feel now is with my trusty X100F. 

I don't really know what I'm trying to get at, but I just wanted to share a bit on my reflections as a photographer in the last four years. 

(photos are from my recent Taiwan trip)