No rest for the wicked

The street I am living on


Local Muffin shop for breakfast. Letezia's


My local kitchen, Thai Village

I am going to have very little time to update this blog. I am probably looking at 12 hour work days for all my stay in Chicago, including weekends. Seriously, Paul is shooting jobs back to back to back and has several other print and personal projects going on all the time. It is crazy here but amazing how all the people in the studio just keep focused on getting one thing done after another. Very inspiring for me.

I can't put up stuff I take from the shoots. The images cannot hit the public before the actual campaigns reach the public. I should have thought of this myself. So, I am sorry, can't really talk about job specifics.

What I can say is that Paul is dedicated to giving the best images he can give in every shoot. I absolutely love this. There is no compromise. I need to cultivate my own clientele so that they can appreciate a higher quality of work. I do not want clients after cheap and good. Good enough is not my benchmark, excellent is my benchmark, awesome is my goal. And to achieve this, I need the resources to do the shoot. Time, equipment and manpower, are all important ingredients to a shoot. That and lots of creativity and focused team players.

Paul is transitioning from film to digital. So I feel good that I am able to share some of my knowledge as well.

I am still freezing my ass off, but I think that it is going to be a challenging and rewarding stay.

Yo, chill...

P45 Horseman SWD

P45 Horseman SWD

Hi folks. I am having great fun in Chicago with Paul Elledge's studio. I will talk more about my experience. I just wanted to get something off my chest. It is a suspicion that I have been harbouring since I moved over to digital.

This article compares the output of a large format camera with a P45 digital back. What struck me was the 100% crops at the end of the article. Take a look at it. The digital prints looks sharper, there is more edge contrast, but the tonality and the gradations on the film are much better. What is my point? My point is that digital captures have always looked 'thin' to me. As if something is missing in the gradations, and I think this little example proves the point.

I hear that camera manufacturers are reaching the end of the megapixel wars. And I am glad of this. Most of us have all the megapixels we need, but we now need better megapixels. We need pixels that pick up the subtle tones and gradations that film still captures better. The quality of film is not an illusion, as sharp as digital is, film does have a more natural look.

Jumping in in Chicago

London Car

London Car

Leaving Heathrow airport

Somewhere about Canada

Arriving in Chicago

It was an 8 hour flight from London to Chicago. The flight was nice. The immigration let me through but the customs guys tried their best to ask me hard questions but finally let me in. I guess they could not find a real reason to keep me out.

Paul and Leasha sent me a surprise to meet me at the airport. They have another intern who happens to be a Malaysian studying photography in Chicago. And Shin, the other intern picked me up. Oh. to travel half the world to Chicago to meet someone from Malaysia. How conincidental is that?

I was taken to a shoot immediately from the airport. At first I kind of felt stupid because I had no idea what was happening and was just standing freezing my ass off. Well, I just jumped in and helped when I could. Beats standing around in the cold looking like a fool. While shifiting light stands and sandbags, I thought that all those of you who have assisted me can have a good laugh thinking of your boss, now shifting sandbags for another photographer. But honestly folks, you want to learn the ropes, you gotta to pay the dues.

I did sneak a pic of the shoot but I am not going to put it up. I have no idea how senstive these things can be. If I can get clearance to put some pics up of the shoots I will.

I gotta sleep. As Chicago is 6 hours behind London, I have had a really long day. Instead of the normal 24 hour day, I am having a 30 hour day. :)

Just before I go, a quote from fashion designer, Nicole Farhi, that I read on the airplane magazine,
I am a fatalist - I will enjoy my life as long as I live and I'm not frightened its going to end. What frigthens me is what happens in the world, that people take the decision to make war for us and we can't say a word. I find it frightening that we are powerless, that we can help such a little bit in all our lives.

Break over

Paddington Train Station


The Churchill Arms, London


Earl's Court from Earl's Court Tube station


My brother in his house


My brother's house


My brother's house


Bus Stop, London

Well, the break and climate adaptation is over. Chicago seems to be above freezing so I should be ready for it. So, I am going to start over again. I will probably not be taking that many photographs, but you know what, I think I need a break from taking photographs. I think it will be a great change to see Paul shoot and support him.

The next entry will be from the states!!

A sunny winter's day

In a week of cold muggy weather, the sun popped up on Saturday. This was lucky because my friend Liana came down for the day from Cambridge to walk around Portobello Road with me.

I have always enjoyed walking in Portobello. It is so bohemian and full of what is possible. It is the spirit of creative entrepreneurs. Antiques and contemporary wares from all over the world. I love all the different extroverts that you meet on the street as well.

London and Oxford

Breakfast at Carluccio's with the F11.

The temperature in London and Oxford has been on either side of freezing. It is cold but does not feel bad. I guess I was prepared and am preparing for -7 degs in Chicago. For a tropical body, these temperatures are quite extreme, but I tell myself that it is just for a month or two. Although Rajasthan was not as cold, it caught me off gaurd one day as I was prepared for around 10 degs and the temperature hit 0 degs. It was the coldest in Rajasthan for like 30 years!

I exchanged 3 slr bodies (2 contax, 1 canon) and an Olympus 8080 for a fuji Finepix F11. Sounds like a bit of a bum deal but film bodies are going for a song nowadays. And the Finepix F11 is a real nice low light performer, at least for a compact. There is some noise and jpeg artifacts at higher iso, but it is acceptable to me at iso 800 and 1600!



Selfridges

I guess that some of my friends will identify this shot as a manifestation of my desire to shoot nudes! But it is the unclothed mannequin in winter that struck me as odd, honest. :)

And nudes or not, I was in Selfridges to buy wollen underwear. I kid you not. The world's freak weather may turn Chicago into Florida or Siberia, I don't know, not taking chances.


Sasha, Zoe and Sian Bothy Vineyard, Oxfordshire

I visited my sister in Oxford on her birthday. She is not really into cakes anymore but having 2 daugthers, a cake on a birthday is mandatory.



Richard and Zoe

Singapore is where my future is. Even if I manage to break into the international scene, Singapore will be my base of operations. Still, I cannot erase nine years of living in the United Kingdom. My sister and husband Richard have lived in various houses in Oxfordshire over the last fifteen years. Thanks to them I have seen a bit more of the English countryside than I would have planned for by myself.

Lodon is a living city, changing daily, but even after nine years back in Singapore, some landmarks remain. The buildings do not get torn down as fast as they do in Singapore. The shell of buildings I am familiar with now carry shops that are new to me. In some ways it is like meeting an old lover who has remained a friend. At one time the relationship was so intimate and intense, and now even though some of those deep links cannot be severed, layers of new experiences slowly pry you apart. And to keep living and moving forward, one accepts the drifting apart, even though a small part is marked by that past love.

I also wonder if the final, ultimate parting with life, would be a similar experience. How do we remember a lifetime of experiences when our minds are imperfect tools? That drifting away of experiences, never to be repeated. But so many people wiser than me have said words to the effect,

The past is a memory,
The future is a dream,
We only have the present.

------

Chilling in London.

Back in London - My second home

Some of you might go - 'I thought he is going to Chicago. What's up?' I planned a week's stop in London to get used to the cold and to catch up with my brother and my sister. London is where I spent nine years of my life, some of the most important and happy years of my life. So London is like a second home to me. Whenever I am not in London, I imagine a piece of space the size and shape of me wandering the streets of London. :) So I am having a bit of real slack time before I go and work and chill my ass off in Chicago.

I think Eadwine is going to laugh after his misadventure with British Airways to Melbourne. Last year I had one strange incident with Indian airlines where the flight schedules changed and I had to wait 12 hours for a flight from Delhi to Jaipur. Then going to do a shoot in Jakarta, Garuda airlines cancelled the flight I had and made me wait 3 hours for the next one. I thought it could not happen again but it did. My British airways 747 had not one, but two technical problems. Once everyone had boarded the aircraft, engine number one would not start up. It took 2 hours for engineers to sort that out. Then as we were on the end of the runway, some warning signal about the hydraulics went on and we had to go back to the bay to get it fixed. So the 11.30pm flight left Singapore at 3.30am! Well, I got into London in one piece. :) I wonder what will happen on the next flight?

Time Out

I have been working like a mad man since I returned from Rajasthan. I turned the big 40 last week. So the people from 153 Joo Chiat Place brought me to the beach. They made me write down the good things in my life on a sheet of paper which I kept. I also wrote down the things that I want to leave behind and threw it into the sea. After that they dunked me in the sea. Only to be expected on my 40th birthday!



I have had 153 Joo Chiat Place for six years now. It seems that some of the people that pass through become more than just friends, they become family as well. The people that come through 153 are driven dreamers, a couple of them are studying film in Edinburgh and Beijing. Its great that people come through mixing their creative energies. Now Wes and Jodie will be making their home in Paris. Still, 153 kinds of connects us all. To the people who bring their dreams to 153 and help nourish the others, I say thank you.

I am going to be spending some time away too. I leave tonight for 3 months in Chicago. I will be interning at the studio of a great portrait photographer, Paul Elledge. I am a self-taught photographer more or less. I really want to see the entire process, artistic and business, not just the inspirational stuff. I want to see the sweat and tears behind the seemingly perfect images. :)

Then I will be back in June to open up for work again in July. I already have a couple of tentative overseas commercial assignments when I return. Looks like a great year ahead.

(Pictures by Wesley.)

Birth - Esther, Ian and Ethan

(Click on image for larger version.)

Somehow my personal projects always take a back seat. This is one thing that bugs me. Esther and Ian came to pose nude for me over 5 sessions, including the last one with their new born son. I did the last shoot some time last year and it must be close to a year before I managed to put this collage together. Sigh. I only managed to do this now because of the sabbatical. I need to set aside time to do personal work. I need to set aside time to exercise. Working like a dog without thinking is not the way to personal excellence.

Anyway, the final product looks great to me and I am so happy to have been able to do this project. I guess the blog version is relatively small, but I made a 15"x75" print of this on my Epson 4800. And really, it rocks!!

I need money to run my projects, but if all I do is chase after money just to run the office, then I might as well close shop and camp permanently at the seaside. It is these personal projects that make it all worthwhile.

The other side

At times it is necessary to go over the top. How else can we get to the other side? - Kobi Yamada

It feels like one project after another, one mountain to scale after another. I am building walls of sand against a rising sea tide. At this point of time it seems that I have built a career and have a path in front of me but like I once said in my doctoral thesis, 'The more I learn, the less I know.'

There has been so much learning and trying in the last 6 years and at this point of time, it seems that there is even more to master, with digital workflow, color management, asset management and photoshop techniques. The goal seems simple, to make the best images that I can, but even defining which image is the best and how it should look takes a long process of introspection and knowledge of the work that has gone on before me and the work that is being produced by my peers. This mountain of tasks and knowledge, has the ability to make one freeze in fear, pinned down with way too much to consider. And yet an unconsidered and undisciplined approach brings self-indulgent, superficial work.

In a room of snakes, you just got to concentrate on killing the snake closest to you. You move on a little and kill the next snake.

I am sorry as it is hard to describe the place that I am in at the moment, leaving an apparent safe-haven to embark on a journey of toil and unknown perils. And yet, I feel excited by what I may encounter. I know that the learning and experience that I am undertaking will make me grow. Sometimes my friends tell me that I look tired, but I am happy with this toil. Sometimes my body has ached after exercise, and I know it is the ache of being alive.

Death is really the only thing to fear but it will come whether we fear it or not. I may fail to become the photographer that I feel I should be. I may achieve it and retire, opening a coffeshop instead. Whatever, I will fill my life with goals and journeys that bring me new experiences and hopefully more wisdom. I just have to keep on climbing those mountains as long as I have the strength, because I want to get to the other side.

Ecnad Fireball

The nice thing about the sabbatical is that I can stop worrying about how much money I need to earn and take projects that interest me and reject projects (even ones offering commercial rates) that would cause me hassle and to pull out my already thinning hair.

Melinda, a good photographer in her own right, approached me to do publicity shots for Ecnad's Fireball 2006 festival. They wanted something classy and thought that I was the one to pull of the shoot for them. Hey, I am a sucker for classy photos of dancers. So I sponsored the shoot and it was enjoyable.

I have a couple more shoots before I leave for America which I am looking forward to.:)

Tibet Black and White

I have been kind of quiet not because of the Chinese New Year celebrations, but because I have been working very hard to understand Digital asset management. Trying to archive 6 years of work is not simple task. What I start now will probably take more than the 6 months of my sabbatical to finish. I will be reviewing my work for a long time to come. By the time I get past this backlog, I will probably be creating mountains of new work to archive.

One of the good things of this process is that I stumble across work like my black and white photos from Tibet. When I went to Tibet I shot with the X-pan panoramic camera and was more inclined to promote it. My black and whites were more or less for personal consumption. But I chose a few hoping that it would be published in the magazine Grain, but it never did. So here is a selection of a selection of my black and white Tibet shots.

I think that as I go through all the work that I have done in my 'professional' career, I will probably share stuff which is close to my heart.

9 Lives ads

I have seen my photographs in The London Underground, on the back of buses and in the usual places. This is the first time they have been plastered around the bus!! Not the original shots for the buses but pretty cool still. :) I will know that I hit iconic if I could ever shoot a photo as famous as the one of Che Gevara.

Wedding Day Photographers in Singapore

I have heard that some people are sad that I have stopped taking on wedding day assignments. It is just too tiring the way I shoot actual day weddings. I am constantly on the prowl on a wedding day. However, I am still shooting Bridal work as I take them to be portrait assignments and each work is unique. However, there are actual day photographers in Singapore who I think are individuals and bring the passion for photography to their work the same way I do. I guess I cannot be replaced directly, but these guys are photographers I can identify with and respect.

Here goes,

Kuang from 39 East Images
Eadwine from Plush Photography.
Ron from Ron Lee Photography.
Wan Sheng, a freelancer.

The Past and Present colliding

(listening to Glen Gould playing Bach's Goldberg variations)

I am on sabbatical now. A place where I am taking stock of the past and preparing myself for the future.

Some of you may have read the article, journey of an accidental photographer on the last version of my web site and realized that I kind of stumbled into photography via the arts. Just what made me start taking photographs? It was my first trip to India that got me started as an amateur photographer, taking holiday snaps. My interest deepened with the candids that I took at my sister's wedding, enabling me to capture the moments of humor and human interaction. I kind of stumbled along for almost 10 years with holiday snaps and friend's weddings till I started working at The Esplanade. I started taking pictures of my first love, which was dance! I had to but a fast f1.4 lens but that was when I became aware of the art of photography. I left The Esplanade to find that there were people,mainly in the performing arts, who actually thought that my photographic skills were worth money! So started my career as a photographer.

I joined photography on the eve of the digital revolution. With the best intentions, I bought a Hasselblad 503 medium format camera, because that is what professional photographers used. I think such a camera in the previous generation would have lasted 2 decades. However, soon after the Hassie, I reluctantly moved to digital, buying the disastrous Kodak Pro 14N. I sold it a year and a half later and switched from Nikon to Canon. I bought the Canon 1d MK II which I just sold at the end of last year to buy the Canon 5D.

There is no debate on which camera of format is the best for me. I still have 35mm film cameras, my Hassie system and a Sinar 4x5 camera in addition to the 5D. I have also not discarded my x-pan, Lomo LCA or Holga. It all really depends on what I want to shoot and why. As versatile as digital technology is nowadays, film cameras still have an emotive impact that can theoretically be recreated in digital, but is actually harder to achieve than people would admit.

Still, for commercial assignments there is no debate that digital delivers high quality that is easy to use. So a lot of my preparation for my next phase is to ensure that I will be able to perform in the digital age. The challenges I foresee for my commercial work is

1. Managing color. This used to be a choice of film and lab in the film age. Now it falls to the photographer deciding what color space to use, how his equipment reproduces color and how the equipment is calibrated. The most used color space for professional photographers is Adobe RGB. Still I just came across a book completely dedicated to Photoshop LAB color and how manipulations in LAB can produce much better results in some classes of images. And I have not even properly explored the complexities of Adobe RGB...

2. Physical archiving of images. The cheapest solution for younger photographers is to archive work to at least 2 sets of DVDs. Truth to tell, there still is no guarantee to the longevity of DVDs. Personally, I am going to archive to 2 sets of hard drives. I have tried retrieving work before and It is just madness.

3. Cataloging the work. I suspect that many photographers have been like me, archiving the work and perhaps writing down the name of the jobs and DVD number onto an excel spreadsheet or Word table. I will not be surprised to be generating 1 tetrabyte of files a year from now on. Just try keeping track of that in a table and a stack of DVDs. You may just as well throw you old files away. I am going to burn a whole in my pocket and time to bring all my work into a cataloged, graded and keyword applied database. My choice is Iview Media Pro. To initiate me into this world, I have bought The DAM book by Peter Krogh. I am also going to get all my negatives and slides scanned so that I can catalog them properly. I hear that collective groan of photographers going 'Who's got the time and the money?'. Yeah, its a tough pill to swallow, but like your vitamins, its good for you. You can avoid it but you will be a sick photographer for the rest of your life if you don't set the ground work right.

4. The struggle for creative vision and integrity. That is an ongoing one. I think that the one point that photographers in the digital age should take note of is not where digital fails, but where it exels. To me trying to make digital do film is possible but brings less benefits than seeing what digital is good at and pushing it to the limit.

As a photographer who wants to create final product art, I will need to:

1. Learn how to be a digital printer

2. Learn how to maximize the scanner to get the best out of images shot on film

3. Explore new ways to getting my work seen and sold, especially on the internet.

I am glad that I had my break. There is a long road ahead of me, full of challenges. I am a lazy person at heart and would rather things just fell into my lap. :) But I have always risen to the challenges and I will continue to get myself out of bed and find that path to my dreams and visions. And the goals are just reasons to take the journey. It is on the journey I make friends and discover real joy. Once again, I am leaving a safe port, one of a career in wedding photography, and striking out into the unknown of commercial portraiture. This is not a road to financial riches, but it is a road that is good for my soul.

LIfe's Simple Pleasures

Name five of life's simple pleasures that you like most, then pick five people to do the same. Try to be original and creative and not use things that someone else has already used:

Hmm...

1. A good cup of coffee after dealing with stress
2. Listening to music at night under the stars
3. Catching up with one of my close friends for a meal
4. Waking up late on a day with nothing to do
5. Sitting on the beach watchin and hearing the waves break

Don't know who to tag really, unless Ron, Geoff or Eadwine would like to try?

One2One Introduction by William Hannigan- The Digital Journalist

One2One Introduction by William Hannigan- The Digital Journalist

An article on how portraits can become really great when the subject and photographer are given the space to play. I really love the shots of Nicole Kidman by James White, and I am not really fan of Nicole Kidman either.

Sicilian Portraits

I have taken down Tete-a-tete from Citilink mall. I have put up portraits from my easter trip to Sicily. Do drop by if you have the time. The next change will be the Rajasthan pics! :)

KONICA MINOLTA is stopping photo business

Press release details | KONICA MINOLTA

More digitally induced death.

Aquarius Horoscope

It's an excellent forecast for you, dear Aquarius! Although no specific events will occur, there is huge promise of freedom for the next seven months. In your chief occupation and in your love life, a fundamental shift is about to occur. As the months unfold, you can expect to be more visionary, more creative, and perhaps more rebellious. This time, you'll be much more effective than in the past two or three years.

:) I know it's just a horoscope. But I really hope this one is true. On the other hand, you can't real say that going to Chicago for 3 months is not a specific event...

Rajasthan - Epilogue

Jodphur Fort

When shooting for clients, any clients, I am looking for creative solutions. There is a craft to this type of work but it does not feed a need inside me. There is in me, a need to be unbridled, completely without fear, completely free to shoot or not shoot. This is what 3 weeks in Rajasthan has done for me. It stopped me from being a problem solver and let me just be me. I also realized that on such a journey, I can only take companions that would give me the space to let go, or I have to go alone. When I return to work, there is a brief and expectations, but the results are greatly enhanced if a part of me is still 'free' to play and shoot as the situation developed. Photography is not a career for me, photography is my life. I do commercial work so that I can have the space, time and finances to live. The more I live, the better my commercial work is as well because I bring a life to my work that photographers who only shoot for money do not have. I guess that the ultimate dream would be to get paid for being.


Jaisalmer

I think that the two ends of photography are represented by the lomo creed and the photographers that actually know the zone system. On the one hand you have people who shoot without thinking, without framing. On the other hand you have the people that meter the zones in an image and control the process from end to end. I think that my truth is somewhere in-between, a knowledge and control that will allow me to say what I need to say. From this competence is the confidence to let the spontaneous enter the moment, to capture a moment of grace with the with the visual scope of a Michelangelo. Like flying a kite, photography for me requires a responsive tension.


Katariasar

The last time I felt this good about a trip was when I went to Venice by myself. At that time business was young and I was totally without worries. On this trip, it was with the help of my assistant Betty taking care of business for me and my parents keeping an eye on me that allowed me to travel unhindered by the baggage of daily life. I was also fortunate enough to find a good travel agent over the internet who provided me with a dependable driver who ensured my comfort while in Rajasthan. It took a group of dependable and kind people to enable me to be myself again. On my part, I tried to respect the people I photographed and if I promised them a photograph, I did all that I could to get them the photograph. (It is now out of my hands and in the hands of the Indian Postal service.) I think that it is important to nurture the people around you and find people that can nurture you. It is a question of cultivating real love and sharing it.


Bhanwar Niwas roof, Bikaner

As I struggled with photography, a few readers of the blog reminded me to experience the journey. Thank you for the advice for it is true. I know how to take a photograph, it has become second nature to me. As I left the fears of living behind me, the need to get a shot became unimportant. I was just taking the journey and took photographs as a natural extension of the journey. This is an important point, being there in the moment, vital, interacting with the place and people is what counts. As a photographer, the images are a by-product. I know that I did not let go of the camera completely, but I feel that I got a respectable distance along.


Rickshaw, Jodphur

Letting go of myself in Rajasthan, I realized the tough life of the people of this desert region. I sympathize with the harsh plight of these people but I also realize that I cannot be responsible for the plight of these people. Not going to the country is also not an answer in my mind for there is a legitimate help in the tourist cash. Like any other group of people in the world, there are good and bad people. So there are good and bad tourists, and there are also good and bad people in poor countries. There is no binary answer to this problem. The world will not be a better place when one group of people solve the problems of another group of people. The world will be a better place when everyone takes responsibility for themselves and the people immediately around them. We are all human and that is the best we can do. When everyone nurtures love, we can overcome entropy.

Love be with you all. :)