I was at my parents’ place when I took this photo.

My son, Zhen Xuen (Jadon), just woke up in my parent’s’ bed and I was playing with him. As usual, he gave me all sorts of expressions when he played.

The light was diffused through the window on his right. I told myself “This is an opportunity that I should not be missing!”

I went to my car and grabbed my camera bag which had a Fujifilm Finepix S5 Pro and 2 lenses. I mounted the 50mm f/1.8 on it and before I closed the car trunk, I took out the reflector.

I went back to the my parents’ room, stood on their precious bed (which later was scolded by mom. Yeah, I still get nagged and scolded occasionally every now and then). My left hand was holding the reflector to bounce some light onto ZX’s face, while my right hand was holding my Fujifilm, dialling in the correct aperture and shutter speed with one hand. Yeah, you can imagine the situation, both my hands were criss-crossing and it was messy…

Took this in year 2007 in Cameron Highland. The setup was in one of the tea plantation.

I remember it was windy and the weather was just nice. Christabel was wearing a short dress with a drapey clothe attached to it.

She stood on top of the rock and God was kind to us. The breeze just came in gently and went thru the drapery gracefully.

I had a choice to use either the 24-70mm lens to have a tighter frame and focus on Christabel’s lovely face. Or I could use a 12-24mm wide angle lens to have it more dramatic sky and make Christabel as a “compliment” to the scenery. Either way worked fine with me.

But I decided to go for the 12-24mm wide angle coz I really didn’t want to waste the beautiful sky and the fluffy clouds. They made very attractive and appealing backdrop.

We shot this in Cameron Highland for our pre-wedding photos. It was in a forest behind a tea garden.

The sunlight at 5pm was very diffused esp it was a cloudy day. Not only that. it was windy and cold too (considering it is in Malaysia). I checked the temperature on my watch, it showed 23°C.

Bel (my fiancée then, my wife now) practically was wearing just a piece of white clothe, not a dress. It was a LONG clothe that wrapped around her body. Poor girl, you could actually see her shivering under such cold temperature, but like what they always said during wedding preparation “Once In A Lifetime, Never mind. Sacrifice for it”.

I took this using my old Fujifilm Finepix S3Pro with a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. I chose this camera over my Nikon for its dynamic range. Until today, I still like the dynamic range and the colour produced by the Fujifilm Super CCD sensor. It is a REALLY nice camera to take scenery, portrait and espeacially wedding photos (Fujifilm don’t pay me to say this, in case you wonder )

However, The Fujifilm S3Pro and S5Pro (one of the camera bodies I am using today) are cameras which are known for high noise at high ISO.

I tried not to use high ISO to avoid noise as this is a wedding shoot which will go for print. Bel was actually sitting in a shaded area in a forest covered with trees. See, I was in a dilemma, I actually wanted to take this shot at a smaller aperture like f/9 or f/11 to have a deeper depth of field. But at that aperture in such shaded area, in order to handhold the camera at small aperture, I gotta use a high ISO, or I gotta use a slower shutter speed which very likely would produce a blur image.

I noticed Bel was sitting not too far from the background. That distance allowed me to use a smaller aperture. Set my exposure reading to ISO200, 1/60s @ f/2.8 and quickly took this before my wife turned into an “Ice Woman”.

When Amy and I arrived at the scene, I noticed the HUGE window panel.

First thing that strikes my mind “YEAY!!! Soft diffused light! Lovely”

But after few minutes, I was like “Oh No! I only have limited angle to avoid backlit”.

We settled down a bit, then I told Amy, “Let’s make full use of this window and don’t let it handicap us”.

I asked the beautiful lady to sit infront of the window. As expected, when I took the exposure reading off the window, Amy will be underexposed; and if I took it off Amy’s face, the window will be washed out. It was not a flaw in the camera, The camera is simply doing its job.

Even if I took the reading from a neutral point, it would not be good enough coz the backlit was simply too strong. So I setup a reflector to bounce off some light onto Amy’s gorgeous face.

Again, it was not good enough coz the light was pretty weak. I setup a Nikon SB900 and set it to TTL @ EV+0.7. We didn’t wanna fire the SB directly to Amy’s face as this will spoil the overall mood and feel. We bounced it off the silver reflector . The SB900 was triggered by a Nikon SU800.

And there you have it. A subtle light on Amy while the beautiful glow from the backlit surrounded her body.

First of all, I’d asked Amy to be my model for about 1 year. And her standard reply was always “KENOT (Cannot)! I don’t know how to POSE lah!”

Then when I pursued further, she would patronised me and said “OK, when I am ready lah.”

ONE FREAKING YEAR before she agreed to be my model!

We did some simple setup, just one Nikon Speedlight SB900 positioned at Amy’s 45° upper left. Manual power 1/16 shot through a diffuser.

When I was setting up the light, Amy, as usual, being the playful her, gave me this monkey face (which tuned out to be pretty nice and natural).

When everything had been setup, I had no choice but to tell her “OK, stop that monkey face and gimme a serious look!”.

Took her like 2mins to stop laughing and to stop doing her monkey faces…. Then only we got this.

Amy is still the best considering she is not a model by profession… Beautiful and charming! A natural muse…

I was introduced to Loo and husband by Len when she was in her 9th month pregnancy (yeah, her tummy was HUGE!).

Lovely couple, husband and wife are sporting with great sense of humour.

We shot this in a park which I asked Loo to roll up her blouse and hold her tummy. then I asked the husband to hug her from behind by placing his hands supporting Loo’s.

Today, the baby is healthy and cute too. And am glad to see this new life esp knowing that I took a photo of him when he was inside her mother’s tummy.