Sorry for not updating my blog for 2 weeks. My notebook was down and I got a minor problem with my hard disk.

Finally got it up and running again, and LIFE GOES ON!

Stephen and Cathryn asked me if I can help to take their photos at the heritage train station after a disappointing session they had with a local bridal house.

I normally don’t do this kind of request but in this case, I gotta do it… Coz Stephen is my brother in law (my beloved wife’s brother). Moreover Stephen and Cath are really nice people.

So we went to the train station. It started with hot weather. As usual, it was unpredictable in Malaysia, 1.5hrs later, it started to rain HEAVILY.

My plan to capture a dramatic sky was gone. But I didn’t wanna ask the lovely couple to come back again. So we took most of the shots indoor.

Lovely couple, beautiful smiles… Wishing them happiness as they embark on a new journey.

It was 2pm when I was lazing on my beanbag reading a magazine, suddenly, the thunderstorm and rain kicked in!

“Oh no!!! What about our shoot?!!!”, Yeah, that was my first thought!

That’s right, we organised a 4pm shoot @ Putrajaya and the weather definitely was not on our side…
3pm, it was still raining heavily…. but our spirit were soaring high. In fact, it was so high that we decided NOT to call it off. We messaged each other and said “Let’s go ahead! Keep believing that we will have good weather by 4pm!”

Left the house at 3:15pm and drove to Putrajaya. Reached there about 4pm and the rain started to subside. At 4:20pm, the rain stopped completely. We met Jezamine 10min later and we started our session immediately.

Jezamine is the current winner of the FHM’s Girl Next Door 2009. A beauty with brain (she is a medical doctor). Not only she is intelligent and friendly, she can speak fluent English, Malay and Hokkien.

We started by taking the photos infront of Ministry of Finance building. It was still drizzling that time. But we still went ahead to setup two flash and did the following shoot.

Bout an hour later, the rain stopped and I saw the beautiful blue sky above us. I took out my beloved Fujifilm S5 Pro and mounted a wide angle lens on it. Got really low and included one of the MOF building wall into the frame.

Before I start talking bout photography, I just wanna say this: Jeslyn, you’re one cool pro!

I found this photo when I was doing my archiving from one hard drive to another. This was an old photo which I took mid last year during one leisure outing with the Nikonian fellows. It was during this outing when I first met some good local photographers like Braendan Yong.

Jeslyn, with her high boots, braved the slippery rocks and slowly walked to the middle of  the waterfall. I was sick worried about her when she stepped foot into the water. I remembered I asked her when she was walking towards the rocks “Jeslyn, you sure?”.

Calmly, she answered with a sweet smile and said “Yes, I’m fine. it’s ok.”

Talk about PRO AT WORK!

I wanted to use a slower shutter speed so that the water would appear “misty”. But it was a bright sunny day and I didn’t have my neutral density (ND) filter.

So i gotta make do  with what I had in my hand i.e. a Nikon D700 and a Nikon Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR zoom lens. I tried to avoid taking the exposure reading from Jeslyn face as she has fair skin and with the water in the background, that might not be able to give me a correct reading.

Hence I took the reading from the grass next to the waterfall, recomposed my frame and ~C~L~I~C~K~ . I got this photo.

Ok, Kelvin and Vingel didn’t actually meet each other on the train. Just that we took this in a train station, I just thought it’d be appropriate to title it such.

Alright, let’s talk bout photography.

It was about 5pm and we were in the train station. We waited for quite some time for ONE train to pass by.

While waiting, I quickly setup a Nikon SB900 flash shot thru a diffuser. I put a full CTO infront of the flash wanted to simulate a sunset effect.

However, it didn’t make sense coz the light direction wasn’t real enough to simulate a sunset.

When I was about to approach the light and take out the CTO, I saw a train approaching from far. Immediately I asked the Kelvin to hug Vingel from behind, and changed my white balance to tungsten to neutralize the orange colour produced by the CTO. By doing so, the daylight will change to a slight blue tint too.

I set my camera to a slower shutter speed (1/60s) to capture the train movement but used the flash to freeze the couple.

As the train passed by, Kelvin hugged Vingel tighter… Lovely!

… continued from Part 1.

After some shots with ambient light and with one flash, I decided to add one more light into the setup in Zephyr’s shoot.

The 2nd light is to isolate Zephyr from the background. I used a honeycomb to concentrate the light around her curvy body.

Then I added a white umbrella so that the main light from the Nikon SB900 will be diffused to illuminate Zephyr’s body in a softer manner.

Just before we left the set, I had this urge to have a fun shot. Politely asked Zephyr if she could lower her undergarment to her ankle while I lied on the floor with my camera on my right hand and a Nikon SB800 flash on my left. She agreed to do the shot… even though it was not part of our planned shot and she wasn’t prepared with a sexier undergarment. What a good sport she is!

Some readers wrote to me and asked if I can share some “behind the scene photos”.

Your wish is my command…

This set of “behind the scene” photos are from my previous post on “Freeasy Bridal Chic”. Decided to capture some portraits for Melissa after we were done capturing the gowns. Thanks to Christopher for capturing these behind the scene images on his Nikon D70.

Adjusting and positioning the Nikon Speedlight that triggered on Melissa.

“Now, Melissa, eyesight follow my palm… here… a lil’ bit to your right. Alrite, PERFECT! You’re Beautiful!”

“Alrite, 1… 2… 3… Gorgeous, Com’ on! I know the baldhead infront of you is not good looking, but give some face please…” Melissa smiled, shutter pressed!

Chimping with Melissa and showed her how beautiful she was

… and the end result?

The following shot was done using the same setup.

We were indoor and there was NO WAY the sun could reach this part of the house.

So I placed the Nikon Speedlight on the other side of the window and attached a Full CTO colour gel to it to simulate a sunset effect through the window.