A Jinky Holiday

Back in March, Kayden had his first school break since starting Primary 1 and I ingeniously planned it such that we had a vacation in Perth AND a Jinkyart photography workshop for myself as well! Wahaha! The holiday was totally awesome and the workshop was even more awesome!!! I met one of the most creative minds in the industry of children photography – the wonderful Barb Uil. And it was mind boggling the way she dreams up ideas for her shoots! I was starstruck to say the least and being able to learn from her was an invaluable experience. I took back with me new knowledge in photography and was bursting with new ideas that I wanted to let loose at the first chance! 

Some of my favourite images from the 7 shoots we did during the workshop.

During the 3 day workshop, I also ate the most delicious coconut cake baked by our host, Alex Castle of Jumping Jigsaws Photography and made new photog friends! The lovely Fiona Henderson drove me around those 3 days with Sue Stone in tow. Sue was ever the chatterer and there was never silence with her around :p A fellow newborn photographer Susan Zamolo and I exchanged tips and stories of shooting our little clients. Then there was the hilarious Adi, with her glorious hair (she used to be a hairdresser) who had two little boys like me. Elke, Simone, Melissa, Nicole and Linda were the rest of the ladies whom I shared time with talking over meals during the workshop.  Ladies, it was a pleasure meeting you all :)

So I'm back in sunny Singapore and ready to get my Jinky on! Look out kids :p

The Client

We have had people from all walks of life as clients of The Studio Loft. Some are really nice and I mean REALLY REALLY REALLY wonderful people who ended up being friends of ours, you know who you are! ;) For the rest, I thought just for fun, I'd compile some categories below, which do you fall in? *remember this is just for laughs ya, take it with a pinch of salt*

The Obedient - Brings everything you ask them to, listens to everything you say, open to any ideas you have.

The Photographer - Usually forced by the wife to come for the shoot, either asks a lot of questions (mostly technical) or remain silent throughout and observes, chooses the bare minimum number of prints or takes everything.

The Friendly - Chats with you throughout the shoot without any effort, takes a genuine interest in you and what you have to say, recommends friends to come.

The Joker - Always the husband or the father, cracks one joke after another sometimes at their own expense, lots of laughs during the session, kids usually are a fun bunch too :)

The Germaphobe - Comes armed with disinfectant spray, wipes every part of baby that comes into contact with anything, asks if your floor/toy/prop is clean.

The Boss - Wants you to do all the work, reluctant to make their child smile with the thinking "I paid you to do the job", hands you the child's next outfit and expects you to change for them, passes you the bottle and wants you to fill it up with warm water.

The Panicky (Grand)Parent - Often never more than 1mm apart from baby, 99% of the pictures will have a part of their limb in shot, screams for an ambulance if baby falls.

The Cool and Collected - Leaves you to do your job, lets you hold or position their child, don't mind you reprimanding their kids if they are misbehaving, says "Aw, it's nothing!" even when the kid has had a knock and is bleeding from the lip :p

The Fan - Knows what you did last week if it was on your blog, can name your kids and recognises them, compliments you on the last album you posted on Facebook, very excited during the session, eyes lights up when they see their pictures and yes I love you too ;)

Hee hee, regardless of which type of client you are, I just want to say you helped our business grow with your patronage and we thank you sincerely for that.

Having said that, I would like to end this post with a quote I read from a wedding photographer's blog, it is by Mahatma Gandhi. We hope to be able to hold on to these words as we work each day!

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him.
He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it.
He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it.
We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

- Mahatma Gandhi

Carrie Sandoval - the rockstar of newborn photography

When you mention baby photography, most people think of Anne Geddes. However, in the past few years, Carrie Sandoval has risen to be one of the best newborn photographer (at least to me). Her work is AMAZZZZZING to say the least and although I just came to know about her a couple of months ago, I am still in awe of her work.

If you look at any and I mean really, ANY of the baby photographers in Singapore, you will notice that most of them has at least one Carrie shot in their portfolio. While I was going "nice" over the work of a fellow photographer before, then while looking though Carrie's site I realised, hey! so this is where they got the pose from hahaha :D Anyway they say imitation is a form of flattery so Carrie, you have a lot of flatterers here in Singapore! ;)

I find Carrie very inspiring as she comes up with new ideas or improve on old ones every now and then. Whilst Anne Geddes came up with the hanging babies concept, Carrie brought it a step further by making the faces of the babies visible (via a hole/gap) while being hung. And her branch shot is WOW wow wow!

Browsing through her blog, I realised she's a Nikon user, whoo hoo! And the best part, she uses my favourite lens for most of her shots, the 50mm f1.4! What I would love to have now is an area of my space in the studio for available light shooting.

Carrie Sandoval, you rock!

Her Morning Elegance - Oren Lavie

This video by Oren Lavie is so god damn AMAAAAAAAAAAAAZING! During the first few seconds of watching it, I thought it was shot as a video and during post, frames removed to get that staggered motion. But NO...get this, it's actually a video put together by still photos! 3225 of them! I am so inspired to do a video like that, it puts my love for photography and my background in film production together :) Definitely on my TO DO list now, arrrgh, I need more than 24hours in my life!

Fun Facts of the video:
* The video was shot all stills - roughly 3225 still photos for the entire video, using one camera, hanging from the ceiling for the main body of the movie.
* It took 4 weeks before shooting to create an animated computer generated storyboard for the video, with 3d dummies for the characters.
* It took only 2 days of shooting for the live actors on set to re-create the 3.5 minutes computer sequence, frame by frame.
* Some of the bed sheets used in the video were taken from Oren’s own bedroom and are now considered collectors items, worth at the moment not very much and therefore used as bed sheets.
*Each of the wonderfully talented people above have worked on the video for a fraction of their normal rates (except Oren who worked for his normal rate of zero).

My favourite scene is the underwater one :)

Footprints

While surfing for inspiration, I chanced upon the work of a wonderful child photographer Erin Drallos. I was intrigued by this particular shot of hers where she placed a newborn naked and sleeping facedown on a chair. Here's my rendition hehe :



Shot at home against my cement wall with my ugly dining chair, hmmm maybe I should get some nice chairs as props like hers. Dylan was so sleepy after a good feed that I had more than 30mins trying out this shot. I couldn't bare to put him on the hard wooden chair thus the red cushion :p

Igniting the passion

No, i am not talking about passion in the bedroom (which is almost non existence with your kid sleeping between you both ;p) but getting the passion back for photography. As with most jobs, after you've been doing the same thing day in and day out for money, it begins to get boring and mundane. For the later part of last year, i have been struggling to get my passion back into shooting without it feeling like work. i guess the trick is to start shooting from the heart again and getting inspired.

Shooting my son at home provided this opportunity and i must say i felt somewhat encouraged by the results and was determined to bring this inspiration into the studio. On Monday, i met the most lovely couple who came into the studio for their Bloom shoot. i totally enjoyed my session with Gervynne. She and hubby were a fun couple to shoot plus it was also a weekday so we had time to try out new shots and poses and i was pleased with what i got out of the session - physically & mentally.

*****PHOTOS REMOVED AT CLIENT'S REQUEST*****

Then yesterday i got inspired again when a sweet lady, Sherina decided that the best gift she could give her husband for their 10th anniversary would be some black & white portraits of herself wearing her mother-in-law's stage costumes (MIL was a singer in her younger days), awwwww! :) i must say the outfits fitted her beautifully and they were in immaculate condition and actually quite sexy! We did some nude shots as well and she was very happy with the results. i was delighted to play a part in this gift idea of hers and hope that her husband will love the present. Here are a few of the photos:












thank you son, Gervynn and Sherina for igniting my passion for shooting again :)