brian's photowezk

The toughest obstacle that grooms have to overcome - the Steel Lock.

One of of the most dreadful thing to go through for the brothers contingent has got to be the gatecrash at the bride's house during the day.


The same cannot be said for this man. :P

One of the reasons why I have decided to be a wedding photographer in the near term is that on a typical night, I will probably be greeted by loads of smile.

I have met Nick last week to talk about the last studio shoot we had and also to go through the some of the shots. We also discussed on some of the concept that I have in mind and roughly how the lighting should be positioned.

One of the biggest advantage of shooting in a studio is that photography is carried out in a controlled environment. The lights are pretty much dictated by ourselves. The very recent studio shoot was my personal second and indeed, that is one area in which I think I still have a long way to go.


That's Liyun & Nick posing while I sneak a shot from nowhere. :P

I love highkey. It is a personal preference. I am a big fan of highkey pictures. With studio, I can literally light up my subject, removing shadows completely out of my shots. Comparing the shots from this recent shoot and that with the first, I'm more or less satisfy with what I have got, though it could have been better

As already mentioned, from logistic stand point, it was way too rush to shoot 4 models in 2 hours. We did not have too much time to adjust the light and merely shoot from the existing arrangement of the lighting. This I thought was a pity. Rushing through the shoot and to shoot for the sake of shooting is I think really a waste. Also, in the midst of rushing, we did not review our shots, or at least in a more extensive manner.

When it comes to studio photography, I have this preference of thinking up a certain concept, in terms of lighting and theme and then try to work on it in the studio to materialize it. And so, in the next studio shoot, it would probably be highkey again. But this time, I'm gonna discuss with Nick on the lighting technicalities before we actually conduct the shoot proper. Hopefully this time round, I can really get what I have in mind.

The studio shoot over the weekend for fun. We had 4 models and 3 photographers. It was a good session in that after the shoot, we had some discussion over our mistakes and areas in which we could have done better. The unfortunate thing is that it was way too rush to have 4 models in 2 hours. It was make worst by the fact that we had issues with the light meter sync cord initially and that took away about 20 minutes of our time. By the time we figured out the correct settings to use we are left with slightly more then an hour to shoot.



Moral of the story, 4 hours would probably be better. 20 minutes to check our setting, probably another 30-45 minutes to adjust the lighting setup to achieve what we want. And then another 15 minutes for test shot. 1 hour for each backdrop color. That should keep the progress at a reasonable pace.

Stay tune for the pictures!

One of the things that I have always wanted to shoot is flower nursery. I've seen beautiful pictures take at flower nursery. The colors and the long rows of flowers. This is a scene I don't think I will get to see in Singapore.

Visiting Taiwan durin spring meant that it is a period whereby flowers are blooming at it's peak.


I've made a trip up to Yangmingshan National Park during my trip to Taiwan. I was looking forward to taking pictures of Sakura flower and Calla Lily. But the day when I visited Yangmingshan, the weather was just too short and I decided to cut short my time there.

A lot of purist 'condemn' the use of Photoshop or whatever form of digital manipulation on images. Most of the time, these purist have failed to realize that back in the film days, the same kind of manipulations have been in practice. The final photo usually has a certain degree of post processing (through chemical reaction) during developing.

Times have changed and therefore, the way photos are process goes from analog to digital as well.

Digital processing is the same as developing negatives (analog). In fact, a lot of tools in photoshop or any image processing software derive from the olden ways of developing photos. Therefore, it is quite unfair to call post processed pictures a 'artifical'. Unless of course, objects are explicitly added or a scene is articially constructed via digital means.

Below is a shot which has been heavily post-processed in Photoshop.

Most people complaint about noise grain when shooting at high ISO. Indeed, noise grain is one of the major problems with high ISO even for DSLR. For compact cameras, one can hardly go beyond ISO200 for a reasonable noise level. Therefore most of us will shunt away from high ISO shooting. But on the flip side, at very low light condition, motion blur kicks in resulting in blurry/unsharp pictures.

During my Taiwan trip, I shoot mostly at ISO500 or above. Even in broad daylight. Reason being, it was cloudy. Throughout my 9 days in Taiwan, the sun was out in full blast only for 2 days. With the sun behind the clouds, considerable amount of light was lost. So in order for me to 'regain' back those light, I had to shoot at ISO500. I was skeptical to shoot at high ISO for, like everybody else, worried about the noise grain which means that I would have to do a lot of post processing later on.



But well, it turns out that the pictures turn out to be pretty clean. In fact, for most of my pictures that were being shot at below ISO1000, I hardly have do noise clean up in photoshop. The end result of high ISO shooting in day light - sharper pictures. I did not have to scarifice my shutter speed for moving objects and so, this means a properly exposed scene (aid by high ISO) and fast shutter speed to 'freeze' moving objects.