Magdalen Ng Straits Times 28 Nov 10;
Nature sometimes needs a bit of micro-managing.
Dr Chua Ee Kiam, author of coffee- table book Wetlands In A City, once spent half an hour arranging red buta leaves on the ground to make sure they photographed 'red-side up'.
'The leaves were all there, I just had to arrange them to make them look pretty,' says the senior dental consultant by profession, 57, with a smile.
More than three years in the making, his book contains more than 360 pictures of Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, its development, and flora and fauna. He took the pictures and wrote the accompanying text.
Commissioned by National Parks Board (NParks), the 176-page hardcover volume is available at major bookstores.
Testament to his passion for nature and enthusiastic eye for detail, the book is the result of more than 200 visits to the nature reserve, between 2007 and earlier this year.
Weekends, for him, were spent at the reserve. So were days off and annual leave.
At night, when he received calls from park rangers or volunteers about a rare fauna sighting, he would rush from his Bukit Timah home to the reserve a 20-minute drive away.
'My wife is so worried that each time I get involved in a project, I get so carried away,' he says. 'But ask anyone who does anything well: There is a lot of blood and sweat, and it will require sacrifice. This is a sacrifice I have made.'
The project was born while he was speaking to MrNg Lang, chief executive officer of NParks between 2006 and this year and now CEO of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, about the beauty of Sungei Buloh.
Dr Chua suggested that a book be devoted to the reserve, and offered to do it.
The completed product 'highlights the many gems of nature in a seemingly dull mangrove habitat', he says.
Otters and crocodiles have come to make Sungei Buloh their home and he managed to snap an image of four amorous, male Paradise Tree Snakes pursuing a female snake.
The avid nature photographer, however, still jokingly speaks about the photo that got away.
He was trying to take a picture of a black spitting cobra on the ground one morning at the nature reserve last year. 'I don't know why I wasn't afraid at first. I followed it with my hipstamatic camera and, suddenly, the snake raised its hood. I ran for my life,' he says at the Botanic Gardens last Thursday.
'There are some things that are dangerous in nature, so we should respect that. I will be much more careful the next time,' he adds.
He first got interested in nature and photography while studying dentistry at the National University of Singapore.
He watched a black-and-white film on the underwater world and was enthralled: 'I was thinking, if it can be so interesting in black and white, it must be something amazing.'
Upon graduation, the first thing he bought himself was a camera. He honed his skills by taking pictures of wildlife around Singapore.
Since then, he has published books on Pulau Ubin's Chek Jawa and about the tropical forest in Sabah, Malaysia.
His interest in photography has taken him to the United States, where he attended photography courses organised by the National Geographic in 1988.
His children - son Jeremy, 26, is a legal assistant and daughter Jessica, 21, a dentistry student - however, do not share his unflagging love of nature.
'They've followed me on a few of my trips. But it's hard to compete with the Internet and blogging these days, so they have stopped,' says Dr Chua, who is married to Amy, 53, a housewife.
'My wife comes along with me sometimes but there's a lot of waiting and walking, and that can be trying,' he adds.
He hopes to do his next project on Cantonese opera, which he thinks is a dying art in Singapore.
'It will be something challenging. I don't want to do something that is not difficult,' he says.
Related links
More about Dr Chua's books.