Finally, it’s time to say ‘Goodbye’ to 2011, and stepping into a brand new year – 2012!  Happy New Year everyone!

2011 has been a really important year for me, as there were a lot of life-changing events come and go; Thanks god they are mostly in the good side!

As starter,  I am glad that it has been a great year for my career as a wedding cinematographer at Motion In Style,  it was also my first trip travelling to Perth, Australia to cover a wedding.  It was a totally difference experience shooting there and it certainly has taught me something new throughout the assignment.

As part of the work requirements,  I also acquired a new unit of Nikon D7000, a fantastic camera that are now one of my main choice of camera!  I love this camera’s exposure accuracy, color and sharpness!  Along with this camera, I also purchased a new carbon fiber tripod and a new tracking system for dolly scenes.

At the same time this year, I was also engaged as a state liaison by Nikon Club Malaysia, in the club, I hope to learn new skills,  meet new friends and to share my passion of photography!

btw, I am ‘married‘ finally,  in front of relatives and friends actually.  Me and Angelina actually got engaged last year on Nov 2010.  I hope to stay healthy so I can take care of my lovely wife and our future kids.

and btw… stepping into 2012 also mark the end of my 20s, and I am now 30 and I should be ‘wiser’ now and makes better decision, I hope.

and finally, my long list of resolutions & wish-list for 2012 begins with…

• Stay healthy by living a healthier lifestyle… pretty difficult for me without all the tasty food, midnight food-crave and etc
• Go honey-moon with my wife, some-where nice and cozy.
• Get myself a HD projector for those HD movie-lah…  size really does matters to me.
• Fewer works, more profit.
• Try for baby…  *wink* at my wife.

As part of the on going after sales support from Nikon Malaysia, I am proud to share with all of you that I am now one of the appointed Penang state liaisons for the official Nikon Club Malaysia.  Nikon Club Malaysia, or NCM will be introducing a series of workshops & activities exclusively for all Nikon users every month!

It is our great pleasure to invite all of you who love photography,  come and join us today!  Registration is very simple, what you’ll need is any serial number from a legitimate Nikon Malaysia’s product, it can be a coolpix, a DSLR or even a speedlight.

To jump start the club activities,  we had planned a series of workshops, get-together and walk-about activities for many states in the coming months.  Do check them out and feel free to join us!

If you need further help in this,  please feel free to drop me an email, or ask me in facebook.

& btw, check out the video promo shot and edited by Motion In Style crew on one of my previous workshop for Nikon D7000 & D90 held on June 2011.

& & btw, I will be sharing in a seminar in UTAR Setapak on 20th Aug 2011,  if you are interested to participate,  please check out the details here.

Dusk is one of the most amazing moment for photography and to get a good picture at this moment is pretty easy if you know your basic.  First you’ll need a steady tripod, then make sure you are familiar with your camera &  system, the more you know the better your chance at getting beautiful photos as dawn fade away very fast, especially the best duration of ‘golden hour‘ is only about 10minutes at most;  You really do not want to be wasting your time finding a feature or setting of our camera.  So,  study your manual and understand your camera before you go out and shoot!

Generally, your will be shooting with a relatively long shutter speed to get the nice colors from the horizon.  In order to get the longer shutter speed we preferred,  we will be using low ISO together with a small aperture.  In this series of photos,  I used mainly Nikon 24-120VR, Nikon 18-35 and Nikon 50 f/1.4 on a Nikon D700.  Generally I used aperture smaller than f/5.6 to f/22 on some cases.   I’ve adjusted the ISO from 100 – 1600 depend on my subjects and the motion blur effects I wanted to archive.

Attached here with some of the photos I shot from a local theme park at Queensbay, Penang, there are edited with Adobe Lightroom 3.  Please feel free to comment or share them to your friends.

&. btw,  I am planning for an intensive class of Adobe Lightroom 3 for intermediate users,  do send me an email if you are interested.

&.&. btw,  if you are looking to turn your hobby into profession, please check this out.

Thanks to TY for inviting me to film this interesting short story.  A short film about a boy day dreaming in office, about winning a contest to visit Queensland.

The purpose of the short film was to join this contest and it was all planned, shot and edited in a single day with only me and TY.

Finally I got my hand on a unit of Nikon latest DSLR, the Nikon D7000.  Basically the camera is so hot that it was sold out the moment it arrived in the local store;  I am not going to write a technical review of this camera as you can easily get a very comprehensive review from the internet such as this and this.

My 1st impression with the camera was very positive.  At a low investment like this, you get a very solid camera, with lots of features and fantastic image quality!
In this round, I was invited by G3k Photography to a shooting assignment on 2nd of Jan, 2011 in a Ballet Graduation Concert held in Dewan Sri Pinang, Penang.

Paired with a single 70-200 f/2.8 tele-lense, I set up myself on the platform with about 100m away from the main stage.  I had a hard time getting a pin-on exposure as the stage lighting was arranged in a not-photographically friendly way.  The spot-lights was badly distributed across the stage sections with a lot of colors.

I’ve have no complain on focusing with the d7000’s new module as the contrast of the subject was reasonably good there, I only used AF-S (single shot) here and no continuous-shoot.  The WB was set to Auto in this case as the lighting and color themes changed too fast for me to coup up with.  As it is really dimmed in the stage main-lighting, I had to crank up the ISO to 1600 – 2500 ranges to obtain a shutter speed of 1/160s – 1/250s at aperture of f/2.8 – f/4.

I’ve shot in full resolution jpeg in camera, and had selectively cropped to a better composition.  Minimum color treatment was done, most of the photos from this series, was basically similar to the out-of-the-camera photos.  I also noticed the default Picture Control gave a slightly more saturated colors compare to Nikon D700. So I’ve tuned down a bit in the saturation from the ‘SD’ picture control, and crank up a bit on sharpness as usual.

The performances went on for about 2 hours,  I’ve captured about 400 over shots from the series, and have selected some of my favorite to share with you in the following flash album,

>> Click here to view them now <<

As usual, comments are welcomed and please do share with your friends who might be interested to my photographs.  The photo below is a closing shot I captured using Nikon D700 & 50mm.  As from you can see, the stage was flooded with a warm yellow lights with nothing else,  I am really having a hard time shooting the performances.

Finally I visited Hard Rock Hotel Penang for the 1st time last month!  We were asked to cover a small engagement party there at Pizzeria by the pool!

It was truly a fun experience working with a bunch of party peoples!  They have rented a few rooms with an attached balcony,  you were able to access to the pool directly from the room’s balcony!  When I was there, the weather was wonderful and the timing was right on for the sun to set!

We quickly take the chance to shoot a few shots for the host on the beach!

The buffet dinner started with a touching vows from the host!  As I mentioned, the host and guests were a group of care-free peoples!  There’s non stop jokes and laughter everywhere!

And if you noticed, this was the biggest ‘diamond’ ring I ever shot till date!   Everyone went crazy and laugh non-stop when the groom proposed and shown it to his wife-to-be! While the host were kissing in the background, there’s something going on…

The buddy of the groom suddenly proposed to his girl-friend!  It was a surprise proposal plan that were carried out secretly within the band of brothers and no doubt it was a great success!  We have the second lovely couple in one party!

The wedding rings of the soon-to-be married couple!

Not forgetting the largest ‘diamond’ I ever shot!

They have also ordered a lot of funny cupcakes that features topless girl figurine and willies!  And everyone went crazy again when the host distribute the cakes to them!  Next they were having fun playing some games prepared by the emcee of the night.

And the losers get free drinks…!

Right when everyone taught the party was almost finish… there is the another surprise of the party!

The emcee was having his birthday on the next day, and they decided to do it earlier!  Look at how surprise the emcee was when the cake was brought out and shown to him!

and before we call it a day, we did a few of a informal group shots around hotel swimming pool…

I hope you enjoy these photos and if you would like to view more, I have selected and compiled them into a slideshow,

>> Click here to view the slideshow <<

The cinematic video taken by my partner will be ready soon and feel free to comments and share this to your friends on Facebook and twitter!

This is one of my commercial photography assignment done earlier for ATI College Penang, With only 1 and 1/2 day time slot for the assignment, I managed to cover the main campus, Penang International Airport and a few of Penang’s tourism hot spot.  It was truly a unique experience for me, as I get to shoot difference subjects in such a short time!

The above shots was done very quickly as everyone is complaining about the hot baking sun, the shot was shot right in front of the college main entrance!

A few shots from the kitchen, where the future chefs learned their basic here…

A few shots for student’s activities in campus.

The last shooting ground was a real life heavy traffic International Airport Penang,  as we only have permission for a really short session there, I quickly executed a few shots inside the airport with the helps of Air Asia Crews (former students of ATIC) and a shot on Firefly Air Plane just happen to land at the time.

I hope you enjoy these photos and do write me a comment!

For Penangnites,  if you pass by Burmah road from Komtar,  look to the right and you should be able to see the new campus for ATIC, they have printed some banners with my photos. 

If you are interested, here’s the ATIC’s corporate video done by a friend of mine.  The video was shot with mainly a D90 and a slider.

You can also get more info on what courses are available from ATIC by visiting their official website or facebook page.

Greetings, today I am going to share a series of photos that I took for my other business, Hot-Ohh!  A series of photos on some of the gifts and presents carried by Hot-Ohh!
As I do not want to present the photos in a conventional way (plain background in studio setting); I set the subjects in my crib, having fun at my living room. 

Captured with a Nikon D700 and mainly a 50mm F1.4 prime, I’ use 2 x SB800, one to light up the subject and another one to create a bit of side and rear sight.  The photos are then processed with Photoshop Lightroom 3.

If you liked my photography, please kindly leave a message!  If you would like to buy the above items, they can be obtain from http://www.hotoccasion.com.

Inspired by Cede Prudente, a Malaysian nature photographer based in Borneo. I restarted finding the right spot for time lapse photography.

Here’s 2 clips captured earlier with Nikon D700 and compiled with ProShow Producer.

Video 1 is a sunset scene with Penang port, take note on the interesting boats movement along the straits.

Video 2 is captured during evening at Egate, Penang.

Feel free to comments; Both video is available in 720p HD on my facebook page
I am going to share on how to create the video shortly after this, stay tuned!

Thanks to the invitation from GEM Restaurant & Penang Tua Pui,  I had a chance to dine in one of the Penang finest Indian restaurant, located near Penang Esplanade.

The restaurant is a 3 stories building with the 1st floor as the  main dining area and 2nd floor as a relaxing corner for the after-works; The 3rd floor is reserved for private party, weddings, corporate events.

We were having great times there with the dishes served by GEM and among them, my top choice would be the Crab Soup!

For more selected photos, feel free to check them out at the Photo Album

Enjoy!