sometimes, there simply is no need to be so deliberate about photography. i think making pictures like these helps to balance the forces within.

the recipe for the photos above – a rainy night, a moving bus, slow shutter, lack of focus (in every sense) and a world of lights outside.

let it hang man.

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here’s sharing the photos from eugene & chia jin’s ROM below, which i photographed a few weeks ago but haven’t had the time to do a post about it due to the crazy amount of work.

i had a really wonderful time at the lunch, with great food and even better company. it was a small affair set in the flutes at fort canning, with close friends and family in attendance – and laughter in abundance. the couple’s zest for life and love of fun clearly came through in the photos, i felt.

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above are my favourites from axl’s and cheng yee’s wedding.

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for this session of dapper, we wanted to give our viewers a peek behind the scenes of a typical shoot, albeit in a stylized manner.

many thanks to my 2 wonderful stylists for all the hard work, all the beautiful models who have graced our shoots and all who have helped in one way or another through the year. been hell of a journey.

to view the rest of my lifestyle/fashion portfolio, click here.

been busy the past couple of days, mostly with editing my photos and also assisting wei ming of stardust imaging with a school yearbook shoot.

frankly speaking, i was pleasantly surprised that some schools these days are insisting that their yearbooks be creatively conceptualised, designed and photographed, unlike the usual boring fare that characterises this business.

it is really an experience to watch a seasoned photographer at work, to try to understand what goes on in the photographer’s mind by observing his actions. no amount of theory from books can be better than “real-life education”. you may think you know everything until you notice the little tricks and techniques, probably also picked up through years of assisting and shooting.

will be shooting a wedding lunch tomorrow and then it’s back to clearing the backlog. i just bought a lonely planet guide for nepal so i will be going through that from cover to cover. like yusuf said, the 4 of us going just wish that this semester could be over and done with so we can start our little adventure abroad.

let time run its course.

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above are photos from the latest installment of dapper. we initially had the idea to do a night shoot, before narrowing it down the final theme.

credits to ivan for the colour toning. i think that gave the images a fantastic mood and feel to them.

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next week is supposedly recess week.

been a really, really busy period with me hardly able to set the camera down (not that the practice is a bad thing) – the weekly photojournalism assignments, the dapper shoots, a ROM last saturday (a wedding tomorrow as well), photos for the school newsletter and a corporate shoot for credit suisse (really exciting)  yesterday – add on the other school projects, not enough sleep and exercise and you got yourself a recipe for a major burnout.

i guess even the craziest photographers got to take a break sometime.

which is why i am rather glad that next week is recess week. though the backlog of photos to edit as well as the school projects that need attention will prevent me from truly having a good rest, i will take anything now – so long as i can take my foot off the pedal, however little.

some recent photos from the streets –

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time-lapse photography i did for a recent school assignment. put together in quicktime pro and imovie.

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had a nice evening watching “getai” (literal translation = song stage) with pamy, amos, weili and lyon after dinner at jurong west. my previous recollection of watching getai was when i was a child, and before we moved to our current estate. credit to amos for coming up with the audacious suggestion. i think we enjoyed ourselves in general, though we did not stay for long.

a spotlight from the stage illuminating the side of a block.

the much talked about “vacant” seats.

the “black cats”. what outrageous outfits, but i guess you can get away with a lot in the garish world of getai.

some of the performers leaving for the next show. some getai performers do a few shows an evening at various locations around the island, especially the more popular acts.

some kids fooling around with a found trolley.

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was on my way to punggol yesterday when i caught this on the train. it was a strange sight.

was at punggol beach in the evening when amos fell and cut his palm on some rocks while walking out into the sea. he managed to save his camera though, which was rather heroic. it seems like people value their possessions more than themselves – i once heard a story of how this musician fell while going on stage with her guitar. she broke her hips and the guitar? never left her hand.

after that pamy’s dad fetched us to a clinic, where amos got the cut cleaned out. thankfully it was not that bad to the point where stitches were required.

amos getting a tetanus shot. now you know how doctors make so much money, especially the pushy ones.

latest update is that amos is fine and has removed the bandage.

now for some happy photos from punggol.

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here are some of my favourites from the dapper shoots so far this semester. really great to be working with carina, audrey, ahmad and yudi again. of course, we warmly welcome into our midst ruiqi who will be doing hair/make-up (something that we did not have last semester). the shoots are always so enjoyable, and though they are sometimes physically and mentally taxing, i am sure we all look back and agree that the effort spent was well worth it.

many thanks to our models too. you all make the pictures.

a couple more issues to go!

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above are my favourites from a recent dance event (most of them from a rehearsal actually, since photographers were not allowed near the stage during the actual run).

i believe i once heard annie leibovitz say on a documentary that dance cannot really be photographed. how can one convey the expressiveness and motion that defines dance by freezing it in a moment in time?

then again, time is the sum of the littlest bits of moments. photography may not be the best medium to represent dance as a whole, but i think it might be the best in terms of showing what others might have missed.

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“untitled no.1″

the above is an example of a fine art photo, if i may be so bold as to suggest that. it is blurry, out of focus, devastatingly cool, titled “untitled no.1″ and you probably don’t get it.

i took the photo above while on a “photowalk” around school with yusuf earlier. to be honest, the only thing that went through my head before i adjusted the settings, framed the shot and squeezed the button was “hey, i think that will make an interesting picture!”. aiya… there, i just outted myself, dang.

i then half-mockingly (i was half-serious) tried to justify why i shot the photo the way i did (artistic statement) – city boy (in skinny pants and white sneakers) treads the line between his urban life (represented by the asphalt) and his desire for a return to nature, to a simpler place (the grassy side).

yeah, right. yusuf didn’t buy it. i didn’t either.

so we have heard of how art, in this case the photograph, can mean so many things to different people. isn’t great when the creator of the same photograph can ascribe so many different interpretations to it, and after the fact? better still, that same guy probably felt something and just wanted to shoot a pretty picture.

it seems like discussions about photography inevitably lead to the topic of fine art photography, and along with that the requisite ridicule and disparagement of that genre. i won’t pretend to “get it”. i am not a fine art student, and i don’t think you will see me rushing to join an art school anytime soon. my only academic exposure to fine art so far was to take the digital darkroom course at adm, conducted by an artist who explained that fine art can be any form of expression, provided that the vision is clear from the start and every step and detail of the process deliberate.

all this so that people can interpret his/her work however they wish. sounds complex and difficult. who makes these definitions anyway? who wants to live by them?

having said all that, i have to confess that i can be constantly found eating my own words (binging on them, as a matter of fact), so you never know.

i guess it is so easy for us to dismiss what we cannot comprehend. there is a matter though that i can’t understand, nor can i dismiss, and that is the notion that photographers have to be labeled this and that – fine art photographer, portrait photographer, press photographer, still-life photographer, documentary photographer, corporate photographer, pet photographer, fashion photographer, landscape photographer, the list goes on…

why can’t a photographer be just a photographer?

the conventional advice is that if you want to make a living at this, you can’t afford to be everything to everyone. if you really want to become good at a particular something, you got to devote all your energy to it.

but then, there are those who say that in a small photography market like singapore, you got to do a little of everything, even if that means selling your soul and murdering your conscience. who to listen to?

the solution? get out of singapore, become a fine art photographer and starve for the first few years. then win a couple of awards and get noticed by a wealthy patron or a gallerist such as james danziger. then you are all set for life.

“untitled no.2″

since we are moving into rather controversial (and dangerous) territory here, i shall defuse the tension by showing you a nice sunset picture and ending this post.

“untitled no.3″ (why is there an ugly canal in the scene? ans: fine art, baby)

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above is a series i shot for my school’s dinner & dance, old tales of hollywood. i am not going to go into the technical details of how this series was shot, like i usually do. you can read about it on my flickr.

instead, i want to record on this space my gratitude to all the people who made this shoot happen. it is true that artistic collaboration can sometimes produce the most surprising results.

so in no particular order, many thanks to hendric and committee for having enough faith in me to do this, as well as handling the styling and logistics in such an impressive manner that allowed me to focus solely on lighting and shooting.

to all the contestants for being game enough to go along with the concept, and for being really spontaneous in front of the camera.

to ahmad for being a very patient and efficient help (owe you one + a lot).

to rui qi, carina and xiao xuan – you girls did such a fantastic job with with the hair and make-up!

and to all the rest who contributed in one way or another, thank you.

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things come in tumbles.

point is, watch this space. there is going to be an explosion of information — content generated during the past week when i finally had to kiss my lazy holidays behind and actually get down to doing some work. not that i did not enjoy it though. i pray and hope that i get to spend the rest of my life wrestling with light, capturing moments and uncovering facts. stu maschwitz at prolost calls taking the perfect photo FML (fact+moment+light). nice acronym but can’t be further from the truth though.

also, i would like to keep this space more regularly updated. more tumbles to the people.

i am actually rather excited that school will be in session again. as usual, i psych myself and promise a semester of toil but my best friend procrastination is seldom long away on vacation. we will see.

so you will.

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the title of this post is also the title of a book by dane sanders, wedding photographer and educator extraordinaire out of newport beach in the states, that i finished reading while lazing around in camp during my recent reservist stint.

this book is certainly different from other photography books i have come across. you won’t get f-stops or shutter speeds here. the focus is not even on the business of photography, though at face value that is what it appears to be.

rather, sanders is concerned about the business and marketing of the photographer, which in essence sets the premise for the rest of the book. he explains that with the homogenization (big word, i know) of photography, it is no longer possible to be known for simply shooting fantastic images, especially when people are already drowning in the sea of photos all around (just look at facebook).

thus, sanders believes that the spotlight should be on the photographer, and examining what changes can be made to either transform an indivisual into a dependable freelance, contractual photographer or a maverick signature, brand-name photographer (like him), depending on the personality and preferences of that individual.

with those 2 types forming the foundation, sanders then go into the details. he identified 14 key factors that makes up a photographer’s ‘DNA’ (or pDNA), determining which of the 2 types a photographer falls under and what needs to be done to further improve his/her current practices.

the 14 pDNA quotients are: experience, self-starter, program-starter, confidence, risk tolerance, need for control, need for collaboration, artistic identity, entrepreneurial identity, attractiveness, grumpy factor, creativity from people, creativity from self and self-promotion.

while this book is targeted primarily at wedding photographers, i believe that the principles espoused are relevant to photographers in every genre, especially if their concerns are marketing and growing the business in this day and age. i think that the photography world has been thirsting for literature like this for a long while.

not going to say more. go pick up the book, you won’t regret it.

on to other news, i am bracing myself for non-stop shooting and editing this coming weekend and the start of next week. looks to be fun though. good thing the bugs let me off in time.

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been slightly more than a week since i last blogged and i will blame that on the fact that i am currently on reservist training, and how army camps are well known for being deserts in terms of connectivity to the outside world.

i know this is going to sound bad but it has become a real struggle when i don’t get to check my e-mails (i use apple mail with auto-update so it’s worse), fiddle with facebook or simply surf the net in search of the millions of possibly interesting articles to read and photos to look at. as a result, my down-time (quite a lot) consists of reading ‘the undercover scientist’ (actually, not a bad book), having really juvenile conversations with my bunk-mates and making the next trip to the canteen.

also, i have to now check my e-mails vicariously through sarah (thanks babe!).

at the same time, i do realise that perhaps it is not altogether a bad thing that i have been yanked out of the messy matrix that is our world and thrown into a simpler lifestyle, at least for a couple of weeks. not having a computer in front of me has actually made me realise the massive amount of time spent online in my daily life. because of all the surplus time that i now have, i get to actually catch up on sleep, as well as just think about life in general.

most of all, it is refreshing to be chatting with people face-to-face, rather than via msn or twitter. i fear that in the near future, kids will no longer have the social skills to carry out a conversation with someone in person. after all, how many of us are already msn-ing our siblings, even when they are only in the next room?

be booking in to camp tonight for another week of training. anything that is urgent kindly call or sms. till next week, adios.

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i had a really good break last week at camp, just hanging out and catching up with friends. really enjoyed the late night suppers and irreverent chatter, which was peppered with references to ‘the struggle’, well-conceptualised by thiam peng and finely elucidated by wei li here.

photography-wise, i shot mostly with my 50mm. i was not looking to cover the camp, rather capture expressions and moments, generally for myself and my friends. below i have posted my favourites.

wei li posing with weed bombs. patent pending.

marcus not acting his age, haha. you are awesome man.

kudos to the various foc 2009 committees for doing a magnificent job and no doubt giving the freshies a camp that they will never forget. clearly, a lot of heart and soul went into this effort and i am sure that a bar has been set, and it will one for future committees to aspire to and to even surpass.

to view the rest of the photos, visit my facebook album by clicking here.

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l-r: shi hui, tze, lide, walter, liz. check out the details and the props!

did a really fun photoshoot for some friends a couple of days ago to make some pictures to promote their group in the upcoming wkwsci orientation camp next week. it was a nice get-together at sarah’s place (with the super cool old-world-looking basmement!) for dinner followed by the shoot.

since the theme of this year’s camp has a mafia-ish feel to it, we wanted to do something in the same grain – thus the choices of costumes and location that that you see. before i move into the technical stuff, just want to thank yudi for being an awesome assistant (always brings great insights and ideas to the shoots), sarah for being a wonderful host and supplying the food and location, and of course, the cast – tze, lide, shi hui and walter for being so fun and sporting and a pleasure to work with.

for the first photo on top, we had a speedlight close to camera right set to bounce light off the white ceiling for general fill. since there were a couple of available light sources (the lamp lighting shi hui and a spotlight on the ceiling lighting liz), we wanted to incorporate those into the setup and achieved that by setting a slower shutter speed to allow them to “burn in”. the main light was a CTO-gelled (for warmth) speedlight with omnibounce attached and pointed straight down from the ceiling to simulate a bare bulb. we flagged the side pointed at the wall to minimise ugly specular highlights from forming.

since the lamp was rather strong, there was a noticeable light falloff from left to right before we corrected that with a speedlight (low and right of camera) fired into a relector to match the brightness of the left. i then had to do quite a bit of selective colour-correction in photoshop to match the different colour temperatures of the various light sources.

for the set of images that you see above, we set up a speedlight bounced off a reflective umbrella right of the lamp, high and aimed at the subject to make it seem as though the lamp was actually the light source (it would have been too harsh a light if we were to use it). we had a reflector out of frame on the left to lift the shadows a little. that was it, simple setup.

i then wanted to try a low-key portrait with a warm light as the main and a cool light as the kicker. turned the camera’s white balance setting to tungsten to get a bluish tone (for the kicker light) and gelling the main light orange for the warmth.  the shutter speed was set near maximum sync-speed to remove all the ambient light (turning the background pure black). 2 light sources for this – a speedlight, gelled orange, bounced off a reflective umbrella right and just out of frame and another speedlight grid-spotted to control the spill, left of frame. got the following:

for the fun of it, i also made a “movie poster” version by combining the 5 pictures above in photoshop and bumping up the contrast and stripping a bit of the colour for the edgy look.

and of course, i had to get my portrait of sarah. another one for the collection!

thanks for reading! hope this was informative.

for more posts on my photography, click here.

here is me sharing some of my favourites from the ROM ceremony of king yang and joanne that i photographed a couple of saturdays ago. the ceremony took place at the clubhouse of westmere condominium and it was a really nice, intimate affair with close friends and family. the weather threatened to spoil the proceedings but thankfully the clouds cleared up in time to reveal a lovely afternoon. enjoy!

thanks for looking! if you like my photography and want to see more, please visit my portfolio site at www.chang-photography.com.

on to other matters, i am really looking forward to attending the freshmen orientation camp next week as an “old bird”, hanging out with and just chilling with the guys. then it is in-camp training for a couple of weeks that i am not looking forward that much to but i suppose it would be a nice change of lifestyle for that little while.

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