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.

Basic Studio Lighting with Ted Adnan

Over the weekend, I was one of the 6 participants in a workshop on studio lighting workshop held by Ted Adnan at his studio in Saujana Impian, Kajang. Traveling there was actually a worry for me as I was totally unfamiliar with Cheras and Kajang altogether so I practically Googled my way there. I definitely need to get a map of KL and Selangor.

The workshop started at about 11am and it started off with Ted teaching us about the basics of studio lighting by showing us slides of pictures he took and asking us questions on how many light sources are there in these pictures. His photos were awesome and it was amazing, especially the outdoor on location shots where we can't bring any studio lighting and had to rely on portable flashes.

Next, we were thought the basics of the lighting equipment and what each equipment does and how do we use the various filters and softboxes for studio lights. It was rather interesting and I definitely did learn a lot yesterday as I never had any prior experience shooting in a studio. Studio equipment is definitely expensive.

After many hours taking loads of shots and trying to get the perfect composition, the workshop came to an end with my being extremely tired as I had little sleep the night before but brimming with excitement and taking home more information about the whole field of photography.

The good thing about this workshop was that not only did I learn something but I also met other budding photographers and enthusiasts, both professional and hobbyists. The networking between the participants were great and we exchanged our name cards and gotten to know each other's photography background. Who knows, if one of them makes it big, I might be able to get some jobs from them.

Of course we didn't shoot any products but we had Hayda as our model of the day. She was extremely professional about it. I don't think that this picture is the best one I took but since I took most of my shots in RAW, I got plenty of post processing ahead of me tonight. I still owe Ted some of my best shots to see whether I made the cut to produce the best image during the workshop.

I definitely can't wait to learn more about shooting people and event as that is my goal in the area of photography. Wedding photography is never easy although some professional photographers feel that it is just photojournalism but to me, all of this is still a challenge.

More photos from the workshop to come!

Check out Ted Adnan's blog here.
Check out Ted Adnan's online portfolio here.

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.

1957 Album

After just celebrating our nation's 50th year of independence a week ago, I chanced upon a photo album which contains pictures taken in the year 1957. That means photos taken without the use of DSLRs and everything is in black and white.


Looking through some of these photos really makes me feel that the nation has grown so much and yet the troubles we face right now, thanks to certain individuals, just makes the whole idea of a huge celebration going up in flames.

Image by Tan Swee Lian

There is much bickering in this land and with an ever increasing population who has access to knowledge and a generation that may not necessarily be blinded by false pretense and lies, there is also much to look forward to.

How so can we as citizens of this country attempt to make this country one that is just, fair, technologically advanced and achieve our dream to be a developed nation by the year 2020? Do we still maintain our own pride of "Malaysia Boleh" when that might just be a phrase which has no actual weight in our everyday lives. Or perhaps we are just waiting for this country to fall down flat on its face and then we stand by and say the ever common phrase, "Didn't I tell you so?".

Who knows but do check out the Flickr 1957 Photo Album to browse through this blast from the past.

Image Source: Flickr

Marketing Gimmick?

I was at Lowyat over the Merdeka weekend browsing through some camera shops as well as trying to find a good deal on DVD+R discs when I chanced upon this store which thought that their marketing gimmick might just attract more customers.


Well, judge this for yourself. Personally, I think this photo eventually made me never want to bring my business to this store again. If you are so curious as to guess which store this is, just look around Lowyat and you will find it yourself. Don't worry, its not hard to find. Just look for the most empty looking store.

Also, their lenses there aren't cheap but they do have a fair range and selection of Tamron and Sigma lenses. If you were in the area looking to buy a camera especially in the DSLR range, I would recommend you either head over to Sungai Wang and look for this store called Boeing. Else, take a drive to Pudu Plaza and search for YL Camera.

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

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!

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.

Another Web Album Update

I am finally in the mood to upload all the pictures which I have taken and are just sitting in my PC. I guess with the help of Picasa it has been a breeze to upload my photos to online web albums.

Capturing Malacca

This album contains several photos I took while I was in Malacca during the Chinese New Year Holidays.

Lake Gardens

This album contains several pictures I took while I was at Lake Gardens in Kuala Lumpur.

Click here to view my entire photo collection.

Looking for clues at the right spot!

After a full day of hunting on Saturday, I am totally exhausted and even right now I can feel the effects of it up till now. Being it the first time participating in a treasure hunt, my tactic was that I drove because I felt that I had a good sense of direction and I needed my two other colleagues who had more treasure hunt experience to help solve the clues. In total, 4 of us left Kelana Jaya Seafood Center and ended up 8 hours later at Corus Hotel Port Dickson completely exhausted.


It doesn't really help that it starts at 7.00am and my trusty Toyota Vios has to travel around all day to ferry us around searching for the clues. The route brought us from Kelana Jaya to our first destination which was SS15 in Subang where we spent almost an hour looking for 3 clues. I guess it was rather difficult because no one managed to solve it in the end!

After SS15 we headed towards Kota Kemuning and then finally towards Nilai Utara. After taking a quick break at the Seremban R&R, and receiving the next set of questions, we headed towards the small town of Mambau and from there onwards the clues led us all the way to Port Dickson where we were greeted by a cool sea breeze and warm sand.


The weather was quite good with the exception of a little rain here and there but I managed to trot about on the beach with my camera and took a couple of random shots, some of the people in the area and others of my colleague who was just standing there.