Basic Studio Lighting with Ted Adnan - Part 2

As mentioned in my last post, here are more photos I took during my workshop with Ted Adnan. I've gotten brutal criticism so far, but I am loving it as I can improve my shots and think deeper before just snapping away. I guess the perfectionist in me would want me to be able to take stunning photos and not mere sub standard quality ones.


Ok, well the shot above was just a shot of the participants trying to get certain angles and shots right and working with the pocket wizard.

Hair tossing in action? Man I need to get the lighting correct as well. Comments I have received is that the hair and background blended too well. Perhaps it would be better against a white background.

A smiling portrait for everyone.

This pose looked a little familiar but I just can't nail it on where have I seen it before. Comments received for this shot was that there was too much empty space above her head and at the sides which I totally agree.

Haven't received any comments for this picture yet though. Perhaps that is a good sign.

Of course, a nice group picture of us all who participated in the workshop including the model and Ted of course.

And finally, a picture together with the model as well. Please note that the camera I was holding was not my camera. Ted used my camera to take this shot.

More exciting things to come including a whole new blog as well as my online portfolio.

Stay tuned.

Lionel & Gek's Wedding

Last weekend I had the pleasure of helping Lionel and Gek Sim on their wedding day shooting photos for them and helping them run stuff during the dinner banquet. Believe me, it was extremely tiring, waking up at 5.30am and then heading over to the bride's house and only to sleep at 2.00am the following morning.

I took this shot at the church hoping to capture in the best man holding the rings as well.

After the vows were done and the rings were placed, I caught them holding hands while they were listening to the reverend preaching.

This was shot at the bride's house just before the tea pouring ceremony started.

Managed to catch this shot of the bride's gown in the reflection in the mirror.

View of the flowers in the main church hall with the cross in the background.

Considering this to be my first wedding shoot, I really did learn quite a bit from the professional photographer and his two assistants. Watching them shoot and learning their style of communication, it was like a wealth of information for me.

More to come, especially since I shot like over 800+ shots that day.

Patience with photography

As many might have known, I've recently taken interests in the area of photography and have invested in this new hobby of mine considerably. Definitely not an easy hobby because at some points I do demand a lot from myself especially in the photos I take.

On Saturday, I had the wonderful opportunity to join a group of photography enthusiasts at Batu Caves. I didn't have much time as I had to head towards my colleague's birthday party at 12pm so here I was at 9.50am walking about the courtyard at the bottom of the 100+ steps leading up to the caves.

By the time the group arrived, it was already 10.30am and I had only an hour to browse through the place. Thanks to that I kind of rushed through many areas and walked up the steps fairly quickly together with Kaz and Visithra while Vignes and Nagen was slowly taking their time learning about cameras and shooting about.

I guess every bit of myself wanted to take my own sweet time taking shots of the surrounding area and I am trying my best to take shost in JPEG so that I don't have to rely on post-processing to alter my shots. It is definitely a discipline I need to follow in order to up my game. I know Sze Yoong has been hounding me for a date to take her products as well so I definitely need to make time for that.

To sum it all up, Saturday was a busy day for me. Shooting at Batu Caves in the morning, rushing over to New Life church to shoot my colleague's surprise birthday party where I met some photo enthusiasts as well (unfortunately they were from the light side) and finally at night, shooting my good friend's stag night at The Curve.

Another week to go and Lionel's wedding is coming up where I managed to squeeze my way in to help them take photos as well. For free of course but I definitely hope to make a good impression as well as perhaps get some tips from their own professional photographer whom they hired (someone who used to work at Photoz).

Complete Worn Out

It's rather rare that I would usually talk about what I did over the weekend. Well, I am going to do just that. Saturday was supposed to be jam packed (schedule wise) for me as I had my company's futsal tournament in the morning and then a model photoshoot from 3.00pm till 10.00pm. A few days before that, I got a sms telling me that the photoshoot has been postponed.

So on Saturday morning as I was all blurry eyed and sleepy, munZ came over in the morning and surprised me with two hash browns and a cup of coffee from McDonalds, sort of like a good luck breakfast. Driving all the way to Endah Parade (near Bukit Jalil), I finally reached the tournament venue only to be told that the Shell team had been drawn against the Petronas and Synergy Drive teams.

Horror to horrors came true, we were drawn up against strong teams and guess what? We got our butt beaten the hell up. At least we managed to draw against Synergy drive but we have been shooting blanks all this while. We lost 2-0 to Averis and lost 7-2 to Petronas who then went on to win the tournament.

By the time I got back home in time for lunch with munZ and hoping to get some DVD's, I was completely wiped out. A quick rest at home and then I headed to out State PJ where I had to drop munZ of at her grandma's place while I decided to drop by this camera shop which is rather popular called J-One at Amcorp mall. There I spent a good amount of time chit chatting with Jason who is the owner and talking to him and getting price quotations from him.

J-One is located at the bottom floor of the mall, I seriously thought it would be located upstairs so I went everywhere except the ground floor. By the time I found it, there was a customer over there buying the new Nikon D40x and I just went about browsing (tempting myself with the Lowepro Slingshot 200AW and the Manfrotto tripod). Prices were very reasonable and Jason was extremely friendly. I also met two other customers there and started chatting with one of them who swears by Pentax cameras (Malaysia has been dominated by Nikon and Canon).

After leaving the mall, I thought of heading out to Putrajaya/Cyberjaya to take some night shots of the surrounding area but I was totally disappointed by the way how my pictures turned out. I guess I don't have the flair for night landscape shots. Definitely have lots to learn and practice! I definitely won't give up that easily.

Senget shot of the bridge

I think the toughest part about trying to get these shots was that my dad's tripod didn't work too well and I couldn't extend it any higher so some of the images had to have some sort of foreground. Also, walking around lugging all my equipment was not easy since I am a law abiding citizen and all of the proper parking allocations were so far away!

View of the administrative row at night

For now, I shall just relax before writing out what happened on Sunday. It was equally tiring!

Check out more of the Putrajaya photos on my Flickr set here.

Photo Updates

Here are some photo updates for the mean time. I took these pictures at KLCC Park but from the comments I've been getting about them, I definitely need to improve.







More updates to come soon!

Kuching, Sarawak - Part 2

I've finally gotten around to converting one set of photos from my point and shoot camera and uploading it to Picasa Web albums as well. Well, its not much but I plan to convert the photos I took with my Nikon D40 later tonight to JPEG form.

Kuching, Sarawak

I finally managed to edit a couple of photos which I took over the last weekend when I was in Kuching to attend the 10th Annual Rain Forest Music Festival. Work has been extremely tiring and busy for me so trying to find the time to edit these photos while working on a super slow PC (it takes about 5-10minutes to edit one photo due to the slow loading times) has not been easy.

This shot was taken at the Kuching Waterfront during the day time on my final day in Kuching.


Another shot taken at the Waterfront during the day time on my final day in Kuching. I waited for the boat to come in a little closer before I took the shot. Man, do they travel slowly on water.

Took a picture of this flower outside the Inn where we stayed on Green Hill Road. The beauty of the flower cannot be compared to the "beauty" of the surrounding area. For those who are from Sarawak and is familiar with that area would know what I mean.

A shot of Hilton during the afternoon after visiting the Chinese Museum. I thought it was a pretty good shot and I was wondering if I could sell it to Hilton. Nah, they probably got more interesting pictures of the hotel to use.

I took this last shot as I just arrived in Kuching on the first night, after flying with Air Asia from Kuala Lumpur. I can't remember why I took the shot, but oh well, here it is.

Stay tuned for more pictures to come of the Rain Forest Festival!

Its Raining in the Forest??

Life for me has become increasingly busy and stressing at times but I am making do with all of that especially with a huge super milestone for the project I am coordinating occurring next week on the 18th of July. At the mean time, I will be trying to rush through quite a bit of work so that I can complete them before I fly off to Kuching, Sarawak tomorrow night (yes I will be attending the Sarawak Rain Forest Music Festival!!). With any luck, I can complete my work by then and ensure that I have everything ready to go forward.

I have been looking forward for this trip which we planned out since the Charge Up! Conference which I attend sometime back in March. Unfortunately my project Go-Live was then set to the 18th of July which is next week thus causing me to be a little stressed out at the moment. As they always said, work will be work but I can't help it thinking of all the issues and problems that always seem to come up at the very last moment.

On another totally unrelated matter, I won't be migrating my blog. The features found on Wordpress was rather lacking and it frustrated me quite a bit. I like to have a chat box on my blog but unfortunately it isn't available or maybe I am just too daft to set it up there. Until then, any sort of blog migration will be kept on hold.

Anyhow, I managed to finally upload the photos I took at the CYZ Leaders Retreat at MBS, you can view the photos here.

More shots from Teluk Batik

As promised, here are two more shots I took while I was in Teluk Batik. The first one was taken somewhere at Kampung Koh while having breakfast in the morning. The second one was taken at the famous Sitiawan "Gong Pian" shop.

Some funky tasting noodles, yummmm!

Guy peeling onions

Ok, I got a lot of more photos to edit and I definitely don't have that much time to do that.

Sunrise At Teluk Batik

Here is a picture I took at Teluk Batik over the weekend. More to come, my PC is too slow to do quick processing.

Sunrise at Marina Cove

Pre-U Getaway Photos

I've finally decided to sit down and learn how to edit photos using some online tutorials which I did find pretty useful as well as my stack of Digital Camera Malaysia magazines. Proved to be quite useful or maybe my pictures could do with a little bit more work in terms of post processing.

Anyway, J-mes has been commenting or asking me where the photos are so here are some of them which I picked randomly from the entire collection of photos I took in the period of about 6 hours. Since I drove there alone, I had my new companion in my car to keep me company on the way there.
















Of course I needed some shades as well because the sun was shining directly right into my eyes.
















Also thanks to me being sleep deprived, this is the best thing that could keep me awake as well.























One of the games which was ongoing when I arrived on the scene.
















Winners posing for something, not too sure what :P
















Interesting host I took, trying to get emphasis on the sky. Maybe I could have edited the sky nicer.
















The games organizer getting his just reward
















Chicken little, hoping that the sky doesn't fall on his head.























The super sifus!
















Well these are all the shots which I managed to edit but if you want to see the entire collection (unedited), I've uploaded them into my Picasa Web Album, click on the link below to access it.