Grace Tan

Grace Tan In Life, Musings, Running a Business

Working Holiday

One of the greatest perks of my job is being able to travel to really beautiful destinations and call it work. I can’t help it, but the mention of a beach wedding totally excites me. I love feeling the sea breeze on my face, the sun on my back and the sand under my feet.

I am blessed to be living in South East Asia where there’s an abundance of scenic beaches, which boasts beautiful locations for weddings. Places like Langkawi, Redang, Penang, Kota Kinabalu, Bali, Phuket, Krabi are just a stone’s throw away. Combine that with cheap Air Asia flights… and destination weddings become affordable!

At every wedding, I shoot in a team with another photographer, and sometimes being the husband of the photographer has its perks too!

I am currently in Redang Island for a wedding shoot. The next few months will be really hectic for me, with shoots every weekend till December. So I am taking the opportunity to enjoy 2 extra days here at Redang. Work wise, there’s lots of things I still need to do (blog posts in the pipeline), but I guess that will have to wait just a wee bit longer…

Grace Tan In Life, Musings

Selamat Hari Raya!

To all our Muslim clients and friends, we wish you Selamat Hari Raya or Eid Mubarak! We hope you’ll have a great time with your family and friends during this festive season. Feast on the ketupat, rendang and kuih raya! From all of us in the Stories team…

And just because it’s Raya, here’s a behind the scenes photo of Johan and myself during a client’s wedding some months back…

Grace Tan In Portraits, Pre-Wedding & Engagement Portraits

Pre-Wedding: Eric & Jennie

Photographer: Grace
Hair & Make Up: Michelle Touche
Wedding Gown: That Special Occasion
Flowers: My Bridal Florist

It’s such a great honour when another photographer chooses to hire us as their wedding photographer. It’s also quite stressful, cause they have certain ideas about what looks great, and with their x-ray vision, can probably tell if I’m making a mistake. :) But thankfully, Eric is super easy going and went with the flow… and Jennie, well, she is used to being in front of Eric’s camera.

Eric is a destination wedding and portrait photographer, having set his footprints in Australia and Indonesia. Currently, both Eric and Jennie live in Jakarta, but last month Eric and Jennie traveled to KL; he had planned to attend CM Leung’s photography workshop and during the same trip, be photographed by us!

Since their flight was scheduled to arrive in KL the day before the shoot, that meant we had very little time to organize everything. Multiple emails were shot back and forth before the wedding. They chose the location, we organized the flowers and the make up artist. After their flight landed on Saturday afternoon, they headed straight to That Special Occasion and found a beautiful gown for Jennie.

We had an awesome time wandering the streets of KL, and it was great that we had so much help! Together with my assistant, Diane, Eric & Jennie had brought their entire family along! Eric’s sister Elsa was shooting some behind the scenes photos, and Jennie’s parents were there for moral support! Now this is a different sort of family holiday!

Eric & Jennie, thank you for your confidence in us. It was so easy talking to and photographing the both of you! I can’t wait to fly to Jakarta next year for your wedding… it would be my first trip there, so am excited about it! Perhaps I can spare some time after to go shopping as well. :) Hope you like these images!

Grace Tan In Portraits, Pre-Wedding & Engagement Portraits

Pre-Wedding: How Wie & Adelene

Photographer: Grace
Location: Dusun Garden Fairies
Hair & Make up: Shinny
Wedding Gown: Pretty in White

One of the most beautiful and memorable places Alex and I have ever been to is Cinque Terre, in Italy. It’s not a common holiday destination for Malaysians as you’d need to travel quite a fair bit to reach this beautiful cliffside destination. Alex and I spent our honeymoon there and we absolutely loved the quaint little villages and doing simple things like hiking from one village to another, while eating grapes and looking at the scenic ocean view.

And so when I found out that one of How Wie & Adelene’s many travel destinations was Cinque Terre, I knew they were a couple after our own heart. :)

Adventure and travel seem to be the theme of their lives. Both flew thousands of kilometres across the globe to London, one escaping the bitter cold of Boston, while the other traveled from New Zealand to visit Europe. As fate would have it, they crossed paths at a mutual friend’s party in London on Valentine’s Day. Over many meals, desserts and shared conversations later… a relationship developed.

And that led to more kilometres of adventure as they visited many countries, explored beautiful sights and discovered love for each other.

Grace Tan In Musings, News, Running a Business

Internship position available

If you are keen on working with the Stories team, do send in your resume to us. We welcome students who are looking for an internship position. Requirements:

Time frame: Able to work min of 3 to max 5 days from our PJ office from the months of September – December 2011
Skills: Basic Lightroom or Photoshop skills, preferably familiar with a Mac platform, otherwise, we will train
Tasks: Photo editing, and album design
Perks: Get to hang out with cool people at Integricity, tag along for shoots (whenever possible)
Attitude: Willing to learn, humble, friendly, passionate about what you do!

Do note that this is not a full time position, though it may translate to one in the future. So do send in your resume or write to me at grace.tan[at]stories.my to say why you’d love to join us for these few months! Looking forward to hearing from you, and have a great weekend!