Blue Hour Photography | Sultan Abdul Samad Building

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | Sultan Abdul Samad Building | 24mm | ISO 1000 | f/4 | 1/50

© 2011 Wazari Wazir | Sultan Abdul Samad Building | 24mm | ISO 1600 | f/4 | 1/30

*About the building : Sultan Abdul Samad Building is among historic building in Kuala Lumpur and become a Kuala Lumpur landmark for more than 100 years. No other building in Kuala Lumpur witnesses so many historic events like Sultan Abdul Samad Building. The building was well preserved and its original architecture still remains until today even this building been through a lot of major renovation. The building takes its name from Sultan Abdul Samad, the sultan of Selangor during its construction. Located at the most strategic location between Klang River and Gombak River meets, it’s also located nearby to Merdeka square, Jamek Mosque and Royal Selangor Club, it’s become the most important building during British Administration.

It’s was design by A.C. Norman from British assisted by another engineer also from British name C.E Spooner. The process to build this building started in year 1893 and fully completed in 1897, but the official ceremony putting the foundation of this building only happen on 6 October 1894 done by Sir Charles B.H. Mitchell the Governor for Straights Settlements. 

The design of this structure mostly influences by Moorish and Mogul architecture, the idea comes when A.C. Norman visited India and Africa, he seen most of Mosque in India using a Moorish design. Moorish design is the best design to Malaysia whereby most of its people are Muslim.

Currently the building houses the offices of the Ministry of Information, Communications and Culture of Malaysia.

It’s been awhile since I took a proper shot of this iconic building of Sultan Abdul Samad. I did not coming here just to photograph this building, in fact, I took this shot with handheld using ISO 100 and ISO 1600, I came here with my family and just wanna having fun and after there was no more light for me to photograph my family, I wait a little bit longer to left this area and spent few minutes photographing this building during blue hour.

Back in the old film days, this is a great spot for night photography and since our new Federal Administrative Capital shift to Putrajaya, this place beginning to loose a little bit of its attraction, but still there are many photographers taking night shot here, especially those who just wanted to learn about night photography or long exposure and some of them live quite far away from Putrajaya.

The light that illuminated this building keeps on changing, so that’s why you see different color shift here, sometimes it was pink and red but I like this particular color. Normally on weekend the road in front of this building is closed to traffic at night and this photograph were taken on Sunday night, that’s why you can’t see any cars passing through here, otherwise this is great place to practice shooting a light trails. To those of you who wanted to get a beautiful “light trails” created by the light that coming from the vehicles passing through this building, better coming here on weekday night and not on weekend since this road will be closed and don’t forget to bring a sturdy tripod with you.

For my foreigners friends reading my blog, it was very easy to get here, just take an LRT or Light Rail Transit, and disembarked at “Masjid Jamek Station” and from there, it was just less than five minutes walk to get here. To those of you who wanted to visit Malaysia, make sure you spend some times here. This is a must visit place for tourist and travelers alike.

The best time to visit here if you want to photograph this Sultan Abdul Samad Building is during late afternoon, since in the morning the sun is coming from behind the building and you will get a backlighting. So the best time is  late afternoon somewhere around 5 PM until 8 PM, the Blue Hour (if the weather is good) is somewhere around 7 PM until 7:30 PM, as you can see from the second photograph where it getting dark from the first picture hence I need to increase the ISO to ISO1600 because I’m shooting handheld.