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Alex Lam
In Life

Ten crazy Las Vegas statistics

Since we are arriving in Las Vegas tomorrow to kick off the WPPI conference, I thought of sharing some crazy stats that I found online about the city. Some of them really make you sit back and think…

1. Number of Las Vegas citizens   500,000

2. Year first casino licensed   1931

3. Number of annual Vegas visitors   40,000,000

4. Number of hotel rooms   137,000

5. Number of pillowcases washed at MGM Grand (the hotel & casino that houses WPPI) daily   15,000

6. Annual no. toilet paper rolls used at Bally’s (it’s a 67,000 sq ft. hotel & casino with 2,800 rooms)   1 million

7. Lucky The Clown marquee sign at Circus Circus has 1,232 fluorescent bulbs, 14,498 incandescent bulbs, and 3/4 mile of neon tubing light (no wonder they’re replacing it!)


8. Average number of Vegas weddings per day   300+
9. Cost of Nevada marriage licence   $35.00
10. Average cost of filing for divorce   $450.00

(Seems getting into marriage is always the easy part, but getting out of it is sticky AND expensive! Its no wonder lawyers are richer than priests.)

Stats from: Frugally Vegas

Grace Tan
In International, Life, Musings

USA, here we come!! And of course, WPPI 2010!

I absolutely love traveling. It is the first genre of photography that captured my heart. I am always excited to see new places, faces and experiencing different cultures. This 24th February, I’ll be leaving Malaysia to travel to the US for a few weeks with my husband Alex.

The main highlight of the trip is the WPPI (Wedding & Portrait Photographers International) conference in Las Vegas from the 4th till the 11th of March. I can’t wait for this conference. It is such a huge event, with thousands of photographers traveling from all over the world to listen to world-renown photographers on topics such as portraiture, lighting, posing, business, commercial work etc.

I believe in investing money for education, and year after year, the Stories team attends various workshops. In order to improve, I believe I must always have this ‘learning’ attitude, even in years to come. At the end of the day, our clients are the ones who benefit, and if they are happy, we are happy too!

If you are living in the States, I’d love to meet up and get to know you – whether it is for a drink or chat, or if you’d like to have some portraits taken.

Do send me an email through the contact us page and I’ll be in touch with you! I’ll be blogging regularly from the States, so do keep watch over this space!

Grace Tan
In Life, Musings

My first WPPI Accolade of Excellence!

To have won a WPPI (Wedding & Portrait Photographers International) award means international recognition. It means that your work is amongst the top of the world. This quarter, over 1900 prints were sent in for judging. And I’m so proud to say that many Malaysian photographers have made their mark in the world. Amongst those who have won 1st, 2nd or 3rd prizes in various categories (in recent competitions) – Louis Pang, Jenny Sun, Kenneth Tan, Shen, Edmund Tham… gee did I miss out anyone else?

And those who have garnered Accolades of Excellence in this competition and in the past… Jon Low, Zach Chin, Paul Kong, Andy Chin… These are at the top of my head. This recent quarter was the first time I submitted prints for a competition. I usually don’t like joining competitions because I am rather afraid of failure. But recently, I learnt that doing things like this helps me better myself as a photographer. It helps me be more critical of my work and aspire to improve in the future.

And so I was quite happy to find out today that one of my prints received an Accolade of Excellence from the judges. Of the 6 submissions I entered, I thought that this photo was the strongest and my instincts was right. This was the photo that received an AE.

4 other photos of mine were each 2 points away from receiving an AE. I wish I could hear the judge’s critique on the images though. That would be a great learning curve. Anyhow, I am glad for this experience and for all industry colleagues who have made their mark internationally. I am looking forward to my trip to Las Vegas in March 2010 to attend the WPPI conference and learn from the best in the world.

Grace Tan
In Life, Musings

Jerry Ghionis Seminar, KL

The room was packed with photographers. Of course, who would miss out on the chance to meet world renowned photographer Jerry Ghionis for only RM350? Naturally, this wasn’t a personalized workshop with Jerry, but we had the privilege of hearing him speak for a full day. Before we started, the kiasu 3 of us – Mark, Ian and myself got a photo with Jerry. I was surprised when he lifted me! Must have been easy peasy since I am really light.

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Jerry shared with us his life, about how he started in the business of wedding photography, how to market ourselves, how to pose, how to look at light… etc. In a couple of hours, we absorbed as much as we could. If you sign up for his 5 day workshop, you’ll get to learn all these in detail.

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Grace Tan
In International, Life, Musings

Adventures in Holland

The past one week has been a whirlwind of an experience. From the moment I touched down in Amsterdam on the 4th of August till the wedding day, I’ve been running on adrenaline. After spending 2 days in Amsterdam, I came down with a full blown fever and flu on the third day. It was a really challenging time for me since I was by myself and having to lug heavy equipment and bags all over Holland while blowing my nose at the same time is not something I was looking forward to do.

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Some sights around Amsterdam.

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But I had to muster whatever strength I had and travel about an hour away by train to meet Christina and Chee Su at Zwijndrecht. That evening itself we were supposed to have our pre-wedding shoot but since I was not feeling too well we decided to postpone the main part of it till the next day. Instead we went to a nearby river for some quick shots.

The next day, we went to Kinderdijk, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. The place is covered with mindmills and the landscape is absolutely stunning! We spent about 2 hours there and I even had time to climb up one windmill (as a 10 minute touristy thing). That afternoon, I crashed for 4 hours since I was still weak from the flu. Later in the evening we came back for more photos! Christina and Chee Su braved their fears and went out onto the water in a really unstable row boat. Thank God it didn’t overturn! Here are some teaser shots from the shoot.

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