:: Walldrobe Photography ::

The shoot with Mark & Kim was supposed to be done months ago, in fact many months ago. Mark travels a lot for his work, so to get hold of him for the shoot is very tough. It was really near their actual day that we decided to do the shoot some how even though Mark just got back from a trip and was still suffering from the jet lag. The shoot was short because he’s really tired but it’s a good one. Managed to capture a lot of them within the very short span of time we have.

Last month, it was an honour of mine to be invited by MediaEcho to write for one of their article. It was featured in the news section under ‘Featured Professional’. It was the first time I’m writing and it got me a long time to answer those questions posted by them. Shooting is somehow still easier. Ha..

Here’s the link to the article.

Hello!

Merry Christmas! This is my first blog posting as Jean! Hah.

It’s been quite awhile since our last post and we both discussed to make it a point to update the blog regularly but like Shaun mentioned, there is just so much to keep up with that even when I promise to help keep his blog alive, my own job and activities is keeping me busy enough!

Anyways, its a good one week of Christmas break for me and we will be heading to Phuket for a short vacation with friends. I made a quick selection of one of the wedding we took a few months ago. (Ya, which means alot of posting to catchup with…) At Ed & Khim wedding, I had the chance to cover the groom side while Shaun covered the bride.

Here’s some of the photos of the wedding before we fly to Phuket!

In my struggle to keep my blog up to date, I’ve to admit I can never do it. When was this blog last updated? Oh my, I don’t dare to see. I think I can easily count the number of post I’ve for this year. I often debated myself over the topic of spending time to update my work on all the social media I have or to edit more pictures that I’ve owed my clients. More often than the other, the latter wins. In this time where I can say the wedding photography market is getting more and more saturated, it is so more important to let our work be seen so that we constantly remind people of our presence.

The marketing scene for us photographers relies heavily on our blog and facebook update. All these social media update has become an essential part of our workload. We are practically glued to our computer all day long. Our work schedule can have very big swings. Very busy periods, not so busy periods, exciting ones, boring ones. People who misunderstood our job can easily imagine us sitting in cafes all day long sipping into our coffee, thinking this is the best job in the world. We only need to work one day a week.

To let people understand our job more, here’s a pretty honest list of my usual routine.

On busy periods,
- working later and later into the night, editing my pictures
- trying very hard to multi-task which I admit I’m just not good at doing it
- googling for help trying to solve yet another hip-cups from the PC, be it hardware side or software side
- becoming very quiet with all the updates, which is happening now (I still keep my Facebook alive though)
- planning for meeting after meeting forgetting I still need to eat
- on permanent invisible mode when signing into msn
- rejected all my friends’ date to meet-up
- keep forgetting to reply friends’ sms-es (this is really bad I know)
- wearing back the same few clothes. Whatever piece on the top of the pile goes

On not so busy periods,
- I write blogs like this. ha..
- linger in the cafe longer just to slack after meeting my client
- look into my work to enter photo contest
- dreaming of what new gadgets I can buy
- check out potential new places for outdoor shoot
- tidy up my admin stuff
- sync and update my ipad with more recent work

Do I miss the 9-5 structure of a day job..hmm..I absolutely love what I’m doing now.

Back to the blog, to keep it alive, Jean will be helping me with the updates whenever she can. You’ll be hearing more of her voices from now.

Oh my…I just realised my last post was in 1 Jul. That was 2 months back. Apologies for the lack of update here. Here’s a series from Paul & Kristen’s solemnization. The first impression I have of Kristen is she resemble Jolin Tsai. Her mum said so too but Kristen doesn’t like it when we said that.

I like the small intimate affair they have here. Outdoor wedding is always so much nicer than doing it inside a hotel ballroom but Singapore weather is just crazily hot. It’s either you have the rain or the heat and I prefer neither.

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.