Musings

On the road towards Santa Cruz

A few days ago, we started our first day down the coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Together with Jenny & Ju, we rented a car for our coastal road trip. The rental of the car costs about RM1,500 for about 5 days. Each driver you register incurs extra cost. I suppose it’s because of insurance coverage. So Ju and Alex were the designated drivers for the trip. Firstly, it’s important to get your orientation right. It takes a while to adjust to driving on the right side of the road. So Ju made some little reminders, just in case…

The coast on the way to Santa Cruz was just beautiful. We had excellent weather even though it was a little chilly with the breeze.

Alex clowning around as usual.

Alex showing off…

According to this sign, not every American knows how to spell properly.

One of our other stops was at this picturesque lighthouse. I can’t recall the name of this lighthouse. It’s so nice that it deserved a vintage treatment. :)

How amazing it would be if I had a bride and groom to photograph here.

The waves in California are huge and intimidating!

The view at Santa Cruz. The weather was a little gloomy when we arrived.

The seagulls here are so bold. They don’t really bother too much with people around. Caught this one stealing someone’s leftover food!

In the States, equality for all is a big thing.

I guess these doggies know where to go to have a good time.

Grace Tan In Life, Musings

Oh, wonderful San Francisco!

This is my first trip to the United States. A couple of days prior to my trip, I was running around like a headless chicken trying to sort out so much work before leaving for 3 weeks. After 19 hours of sitting on planes and waiting at airports, I arrived in Los Angeles. Early the next morning, Alex and I took a flight out to San Francisco. I understand why people fall in love with San Fran. It’s a beautiful place with lots of exciting nooks and crannies.

Well, on the first day we arrived in San Fran, I told Alex, “Wouldn’t it be cool to cycle across the Golden Gate bridge?” And so we rented bicycles…

Which, ironically, costs more than the day rental of a car. The bike was USD32 per day, or USD8 per hour.

What we didn’t expect was that we’d be cycling for 4 hours almost non-stop. The ride from the city towards the Golden Gate bridge was lovely but there were some hills to navigate. And it was just soooooo far away!

Luckily there were lots of nice things to see along the way.

By the time we reached the Golden Gate bridge, our legs were aching and butt muscles cramping!

But the bridge is really beautiful. What an architectural wonder. Unfortunately, Alex lost his sunglasses here when we stopped on the bridge to take a photo.

We noticed these signs along the bridge. It’s kind of sad to think that people choose to end their lives by jumping off bridges. Hopefully by having these phones available, it would have saved a life or two.

By the time we reached Sausalito, we were just so exhausted! I forgot to take photos then! We took a ferry back to the city from Sausalito and met Jenny Sun & her husband Ju for dinner. After dinner, it took us another hour to get back to the bike rental place because we were trying to avoid going up those steep San Francisco roads! But there was no way out of it.

Needless to say, my legs felt like rubber the next day.

From a lovely sunny day, the next day, San Fran turned gloomy and it rained. The winds were so strong that most of the people on the streets found themselves with flipped umbrellas!

In the evening, the rain cleared a little. We spent most of the day around Fisherman’s Wharf and also visiting Lombard street (the crookedest street in the US). This time, we were smarter. We took the cable car.

We noticed some men on the streets, asking for donations for ‘canabis research’. Yeeaaaah, riiiight….

Had a pretty relaxing day and we even had time to take some silly shots of ourselves!

After 2 days in San Francisco, we left with Jenny and Ju for a coastal drive down to Los Angeles. But that’s another blog post.

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 Musings, Running a Business

Joe McNally in Malaysia

What an honour to be able to learn from one of the world’s best photographers. Joe McNally is not a new name to the photography world. His works appear all over the National Geographic, and he’s done portraits of so many amazing people & celebrities – including our famous Dato Michelle Yeoh. Thanks to Louis Pang, many hungry Malaysian photographers were able to meet the man himself, on our home ground, Kuala Lumpur.

I only managed to attend the seminar on the 6th of February, where over 300 photographers came from all over Malaysia and some from other countries to hear Joe speak. Joe is a really funny, down to earth man. I can’t believe he is 57 years old! You need a lot of stamina to do this kind of work, AND do things like speak for 8 hours x 6 days a week! (referring to the entire workshop, of course!)

There was a grand start to the seminar when 3 groomsmen and bridesmaid danced into the ballroom, followed by Joe McNally himself, with beautiful Evon at his arms!

Didn’t really get a good shot of the guys dancing in, featuring Mark Leo & Ian Chong! :) Too many photographers blocking my short perspective.

Here’s Louis Pang, the man who made it happen.

After this seminar, I am sure Lastolite’s sales in Malaysia will skyrocket drastically.

Joe says, “80% of photography is not about photography. It’s about managing people.” How true.

Some amazing models who were there that day.

The ever so hardworking and creative media team who were shooting the entire seminar, as well as doing the live video stream so that the people at the back could see what’s going on on stage.

And of course, I had to join the 300+ people in queue to get my standard ‘pose with Joe’ shot. AND get my Hot Shoe Diaries book signed.

What an amazing day. I learnt a lot about lighting that day. I truly believe in investing money for education such as seminars like these. I am always on a quest to improve myself, and I believe that you can always learn something, even if you are 80 and been in the business for years.

In a few week’s time, I will be leaving for the States to attend the WPPI conference – where thousands of wedding & portrait photographers will gather to learn from the top in the world. I can’t wait!