:: Walldrobe Photography ::

Recently, I’ve been too busy to keep the blog up to date. It has been crazy for me clearing all my backlog as well as my own wedding preparation and also running for shoots and meetings in between whatever time I have. Oh ya, there’s the world cup going on now too. Little did I know there’s actually so much little details to a wedding to take care of until I go through it myself. I also realised one thing during my own pre-wedding shoot…that I still prefer shooting for others then to be the one being shot. Ha..

From meeting to confirming to discussion to the actual shoot, the whole procedure with Nan & Yao was done in less than a week. All I knew about them was through that brief discussion we had. I usually prefer to recce the place before the shoot so that it allows me to shoot something that is the most meaningful to the couple. I love to shoot images that are as close to who the couple are as possible so when they look at their pictures in years to come, it’ll still put a grin on their face.

Nonetheless, we had a good shoot. The shoot turn out well despite the rush. The rain in the morning was little of a spoiler but it didn’t dampen out mood. More of their images in my Facebook fan page soon. Meanwhile, here’s a few.

The shoot with Daniel and Brenda was suppose to be done way back in April but it was always raining either in the morning or evening. By pushing the shoot to May, I thought we can get better weather but well, I guess the weather is rather eradical nowadays. It’s May and it’s still raining in the evening everyday.

We split the shoot into 2 days to avoid the rain the evening and all I can say is it’s well worth the torture of waking up early in the morning. The light is fabulous and not only can we have a more relax shoot, we are all warm up for the actual gown shoot. It definitely benefit both parties.

So, for all who wish to do their pre-wed shoot, for the same old good price, I’ll be able to split the shoot into 2 days, with a 3 hours casual on one day and the gown shoot on another day.

Here are some shots from their casual session.

Once again, I’ve wasted 22 days of my life away in ‘green’, doing lots of irrelevant and redundant things. Yes, it’s literally wasting my life away. Everyday, I watched the time ticked away and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. Have you tried lying on your bed staring at the ceiling fan counting the number of rounds it can rotate in a minute or waking up 5am in the morning just to wait for the next activity starting only at 2pm? Out in the jungle, we played with anything in our sight. We stared at spiders and played with ants, just so time can pass slightly faster. I’m perfectly cool with training for a purpose but sad to say, this is not the case. This is purely a show we have to put up just so to fulfill our liability. If you ask me, I’d say my fieldcraft is level 10 but my warcraft…….hmm… I really can’t express much about the dissatisfaction I have with this sad and long 22 days I’ve wasted. I’m sure lots of people share the same sentiments as me. A yearly ‘life wasting exercise’ I have to go through and a few more years to go….

Nonetheless, I did lots of thinking about life, about the people around me and about Walldrobe. It’s only during this period that I have all the time in the world to think through what I’ve done for the past year and what can be done better. Well, it’s still a good break away from my computer and it feel so fresh when I look at the images from my backlog all over again.

This article The Secret Life of Wedding Photographer has probably appeared in many wedding photographer’s blog but I must say I can’t agree more to whatever that’s written. I guess it happens to every wedding photographer. Even among my own group of friends, it’s not unusual to hear this remark.

“Hey, wanna meet for dinner?”

“Erm.so sorry, I don’t think I can make it.”

“You sure bo, you should be the most free person among us leh. We work like mad 5 days a week. You shoot 1 day a week then everyday stay at home one leh.”

So, what are we doing for the rest of the week? Well, I frequently see myself as a graphic artist doing editing work for my pictures, doing album design for my clients, as an IT guy troubleshooting whatever problem my pc has, as an admin clerk doing my book keeping, replying emails, meetings clients…etc. The most frequent hat I wear next to the graphic artist hat will be the IT hat. With social networking site like Facebook and blogs, it has totally change our life in terms of updating of our work. And man, you can’t imagine how much troubleshooting I do every now and then, be it hardware problems or software problems until you work your machines real hard everyday. To think about it, ever since I became a wedding photographer, my working hours has become much longer then when I was working in the corporate world. Every day of shoot means countless days behind the computer doing editing of the pictures.

If we were to shoot 40 weddings a year, it means we only take pictures 40 days out of the 365 days a year which translate to just 10% of our total workload. In fact, taking pictures has become so secondary that I view a shooting day as a day for me to get away from my daily mundane work.

It’ll be great if I can concentrate on what I like to do most – shooting, rather then all the other stuff. But if you ask me again, I’d still say I love my job.

Did a little shoot for a friend’s blogshop a couple of days ago. They carry a wide variety of ladies’ apparels and accessories from head to toe. It was a shoot that was delayed for quite some time due to my busy schedule. It was a long but enjoyable session. Had lots of fun taking the pictures. Went through a crash course on some photo taking techniques followed by another crash course on some Photoshop techniques. Hope its not too overwhelming for you, Chris.

Visit their shop if you’re free and if you like what you see, recommend your friends to their shop too ya.

Visit their shop here: http://tinkerbelastory.livejournal.com/ and their Facebook fan page here

All the best, Tinkerbela Story.

Time flies, CNY is over just like that. In about a month’s time, I’ll be reporting back to camp for my annual in-camp training. Man, this one is gonna be long and tough. A lot of people actually like ICT as they feel it’s a chance for them to escape from their usual routine but for me, if you are doing what I do in camp, you’ll never like going back.

Is it just me or is Facebook really slow. I’m getting a little annoyed by the forever loading mode Facebook is especially at night. Also, for those who don’t check out Facebook regularly, I’ll be updating my work here instead of just Facebook alone.

I’m still working on Vincent and Soh Peng’s pictures but it’ll be completed real soon. Here’s a few images I like.

Talking about group photos, a lot of photographers shun taking group photos. They are uncreative but yet unavoidable during a wedding ceremony. It is our big day after all and we want to have some photos taken with our families and friends.

There are many genres in group photos and one particular type is the table shots. During your big day, ask yourself do you really need the table shots to be taken or would you prefer your photographer to be engaged in shooting other more important moments? Or would you prefer engaging someone else, probably your friends to cover the table shots for you and to release your photographer earlier? After all, you are paying him not for the table shots right?

Well, group photos can be nice when all of us do our part by not just standing there for the photographer. True, we are not as expressive as the Caucasians but whatever little bit we put in helps. This is a group photo which will bring back good memories for years to come. It reminds me of how crazy the brothers and sisters are during her big day and how much laughter they have just to have this picture taken.

I’m not a big fan of cup cakes, in fact, I’m not someone who likes to snack. I don’t really fancy chocolates or all those sweet stuff but there’s always exception. I was trying to capture some images of the cup cakes few days back during a wedding shoot and while I was approaching the cakes, the first thing that caught my attention is the aroma. The more I was trying to shoot, the more I have the urge to grab one to eat but it’ll be a little obvious with a missing cake among the lot.

It was only after the shoot that I manage to grab one from the last two leftover. And man…the only way to describe it is..one is never enough.

Anyone who wishes to place their order, just let me know and I’ll pass the contact to you ya.

It has been increasing difficult for us to stream nice songs into the highlights we are doing due to the stricter checks from the authorities on the use of copyrighted music for weddings. As much as I conform with the copyrights for individual artist, I understand the additional cost couples need to fork out on top of the already very cost taxing preparation for their weddings for the use of these music. It’d be a celebration without music for some of us here from now.

Check out this article from TODAY online here: They’ve only just begun – to charge

I realized it has been a long time since I last update this blog. Ever since I started Facebook for the updating, it has been rather difficult to upkeep with the content on this blog. I’ll try to keep the content here fresh, with less duplicate on what you’ll be seeing on Facebook but still, more images from a shoot will be updated over in my Facebook. The selection of images here will be kept minimal so be sure to check out my Facebook too.

Here are some images from Wei Tat & Evon’s shoot. I’ve gone back to the good old way of scrolling down to view the images as there has been a lot of feedback on how slow the gallery takes to load the images. To think that it took me a long long time to figure out how to use this wonderful gallery plugin but oh well….   

More pictures from their shoot will be updated in my Facebook over the next few days.