Musings

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Highlights: Family Portraits 2015

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” ~ Robert Brault

Each of us only has 24 hours in a day. When I first started my business, I was grateful for the extra ‘time’ that I could have for myself, and then when I had kids, I wondered where all that time went! Each day, I am surrounded by news of disaster, and how easy it is to lose someone you love. Ironically, when I have time with my kids, I just wish they would fall asleep faster, and when I am away shooting a wedding at a beautiful destination, I wish I could be back with them.

I also want to do more in life, but when I have time on my hands, I just want to laze and not do anything.

Such is the irony of life. And then, before you know it, time just slips through your fingers and then a week passes by, and then a month, and a year. Just recently, on Sunday, I sat down with my husband Alex at a random cafe in PJ to talk about life (without the kids!). It felt like a breath of fresh air. We ordered fries, tea and coffee, then flipped our mac screen open to look at our February calendar and intentionally planned date nights, family nights with the kids, swimming sessions etc! We left that cafe a little more rejuvenated, and a bit more focused with what we wanted to achieve in our life as a family.

So, as a pause… here’s a little compilation we did of some of the 101 families we photographed last year. We hope you will take a moment to cherish your family today.

Photography by Grace, Diane, Jamie & Weiming

Grace Tan In For Photographers, Life, Musings, Running a Business

Merry Christmas from all at Integricity

The past few weeks have been filled with wedding and family shoots as everyone takes advantage of the holiday season to get some portraits done or get married! I have so many photos to share from the past few months but sadly, have been delayed in getting them posted online. 2015 has been a good year for us despite the implementation of the GST affecting everyone’s spending. Together with the team, we have photographed 45 wedding couples and 101 families. I thank God for an amazing team as always, spear headed by the ever awesome key people at Stories… Weiming, Jamie and Chi Yin. Not forgetting others like Diane, Nigel, Johan, Delvin, Choo Cherk and our latest intern, Hui En.

Do view our Facebook or Vimeo page for the latest updates in our work! In the meantime, our group of companies, Integricity, wishes everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

MerryChristmasIntegricity2015

By the way, have a look at some really cool DIY Christmas gift ideas in a jar at this site! Have a great holiday, everyone!

Grace Tan In Family + Children Portraits, Life, Musings, Portraits, Relationships

My heart overflows

When they laugh, I laugh with them. When they are sick, my heart goes out to them. How can one human love another so much? I guess God had to show the extent of His love for us through little children… I never fully understood it until I became a mother. Just the past one week, my kids have been really ill. It breaks my heart to see them suffer, yet I am so humoured when I experience little scenarios like these…

At 3am, when my daughter has high fever, she can still consume her orange Paracetamol, give a thumbs up and say…”NICE!”

When my son cries his heart out because he doesn’t want to take his medicine, his sister cheers him on by saying “You can DO IT, you can DO IT!”

They are so funny. While my children mean the world to me, it is my aim to be balanced in all my relationships.

I choose not to neglect my husband since it is so easy to do so after the children come. I remind myself that he needs to be shown love too, so I need to make an intentional effort to fill his emotional tank.

I choose to maintain my friendships with other people… friends who were very close in the past (before we had kids). If I end up living in my own island (where the world revolves around my family) and lose all other friendships, then I only have myself to blame.

I choose to care for my extended family and be grateful for all the things they have done for my family.

My heart is full.

20150925_FAMILY_PORTRAITS_ALEX_GRACE_013 Thank you Jamie for these wonderful photos. Love how you have immortalised so many moments for our family.

20150925_FAMILY_PORTRAITS_ALEX_GRACE_020 Continue Reading

Grace Tan In For Photographers, International, Life, Musings, Wedding Films & Videos, Weddings

Two Middle-Eastern Weddings

libyan-wedding01 Traditional Libyan wedding outfit

A few months ago, I was approached to photograph two very interesting weddings. Both were Middle Eastern weddings and required an all-female photography and videography team here in Kuala Lumpur. Since I love a challenge (despite not speaking Arabic) and have always been fascinated with Middle Eastern culture (I’ve read lots of biographies especially of women living in this region), I decided it would be wonderful if I could photograph these weddings! Somehow, I gained favour in the eyes of the couples, and my team was engaged to cover their events.

The first couple was from Yemen. They were originally meant to be wed in their home country, but because of the civil war that is still ongoing, they had to move their wedding to Malaysia. Up to one week before the wedding, they weren’t sure if their family could come for the wedding as the Yemen airport was closed due to unrest. Thankfully, the couple had already left Yemen by then, and were sure that at least they would be there to attend their own wedding! This couple have known each other for a few months before getting married.

yemeni-wedding03 The second couple was from Libya. I really had a tough time communicating in English for this wedding but thankfully, even though I couldn’t understand their verbal language, I understood universal body language! I found out that this couple have only known each other for 2 months and that the groom worked with the bride’s father.

One common theme during the two weddings were the separation of gender during the parties. I knew that it would happen, but I never understood how it would unfold on the wedding day. Interestingly, both cultures had different standings on how strict they were on allowing men to view them unveiled. I am not sure if it was specific to these families, or it was a cultural thing. The Yemeni family I photographed was particularly strict about this, so there were two grand entrances (one with the bride only to a roomful of unveiled women), and then the bride and groom to the same room of women who covered themselves again before the groom entered the room. There was a lot of cheering, clapping and singing as the couple made their entrance. Many of the women who were at the Yemeni party specifically told us not to photograph or film them, so it felt a little strange for me to mainly focus on the couple during the wedding. Naturally, I had to respect their wishes but it was not possible to completely ignore all guests! (one lady specifically made me delete her photo from my camera when she saw that I had photographed her). I found it challenging knowing who I could photograph and who I couldn’t.

However, at the Libyan wedding, the guests kept on asking for photos (repeatedly and in many different poses)! It was quite entertaining, really! Continue Reading

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To Diet with Photoshop or Not, that is the question…

This issue has come up every now and then in our conversations with clients. It usually goes like this…

“My arms are huge. I want to hide it… or maybe you can Photoshop it smaller after our shoot…”
“Can you make my face look less round with Photoshop?”
“I don’t like my tummy. It’s very easy to Photoshop, right?”

(Random info: By the way, Photoshop shouldn’t be used as a verb, meaning, all those ways of describing Photoshop at the top is not the correct usage of the word. Read more here)

So, back to our conversation. While I understand that not everyone loves EVERY part of themselves equally (hey, I have a tummy too, after two kids!) and hope their photographer is a magician, I think editing an image too much in Photoshop is a distortion of reality. We would much rather use the right choice of angles & lenses, lighting and cropping to make you appear slimmer, rather than relying on Photoshop to solve all these ‘problems’. Naturally, in an event like a wedding where everything moves so quickly, it’s not possible to make sure every angle is a ‘perfect’ one for you. (By the way, we did have a request once by a bride to only shoot her from the right side during the entire wedding. Uhm… not possible!?)

We usually edit our images to enhance the colour and contrast, and when we create an album, we work on making skin a bit more flawless (but not plastic fake). So if a request such as the above comes to us, we will work on it for the album or print, but it will be done minimally and realistically. We really do not believe in creating a false representation of someone through editing.

After all, what kind of satisfaction would it get if you looked at your photos and saw ‘perfection’ but when you look in the mirror, you feel sad and upset?

BOUDOIR Interestingly, I wrote this post some time ago but hesitated to share it, until I read another photographer’s post that came out recently about a similar topic. Victoria Caroline who photographs boudoirs wrote in her Facebook post:

“Hi Victoria,
I am (blank)’s husband, ********. I am writing to you because I recently received an album containing images you took of my wife. I don’t want you to think that I am in any way upset with you….but I have some food for thought that I would like to pass on to you. I have been with my wife since we were 18 years old, and we have two beautiful children together. We have had many ups and downs over the years, and I think…well, actually I KNOW that my wife did these pictures for me to “spice things up”. She sometimes complains that I must not find her attractive, that she wouldn’t blame me if I ever found someone younger. When I opened the album that she gave to me, my heart sank. These pictures…while they are beautiful and you are clearly a very talented photographer….they are not my wife. You made every one of her “flaws” disappear…and while I’m sure this is exactly what she asked you to do, it took away everything that makes up our life. When you took away her stretch marks, you took away the documentation of my children. When you took away her wrinkles, you took away over two decades of our laughter, and our worries. When you took away her cellulite, you took away her love of baking and all the goodies we have eaten over the years. I am not telling you all of this to make you feel horrible, you’re just doing your job and I get that. I am actually writing you to thank you. Seeing these images made me realize that I honestly do not tell my wife enough how much I LOVE her and adore her just as she is. She hears it so seldom, that she actually thought these photoshopped images are what I wanted and needed her to look like. I have to do better, and for the rest of my days I am going to celebrate her in all her imperfectness. Thanks for the reminder.

Regards”

It was a real reminder to her about altering the reality of life through her images.

I believe everyone is beautiful, and confidence comes from how you carry yourself in front of the camera. Practice looking at yourself in the mirror daily, and reminding yourself of the traits that make you a beautiful person on the inside. Even if you started with hesitation, I guarantee, over time, your face will naturally glow from this confidence.

And then, trust your photographer to create the best possible portrait of you, that is true to yourself.