Family + Children Portraits

Diane In Family + Children Portraits, Portraits, Pre-Wedding & Engagement Portraits

Family and Couple Portraits: Nick & Josephine

I remember this shoot well. It was early in the morning and I drove out of my home just before the break of day. Getting caught in a jam and was worried about being late.

I remember reaching the park, where the family was all ready for the shoot. The first thing I noticed was Josephine’s warm and friendly smile. I felt connected to the couple almost immediately because of their easy going personalities.

Nick and Josephine met each other at work and are recently engaged. I recently met Josephine again at the BFM Enterprise Breakaway and found that she is now running a company providing nursing services. A company born out of her mom’s own disappointing experience with nursing services for her dad, who had suffered a major stroke and sadly was not able to join us for the shoot.

Together with Weiming, we set out to provide this family and couple the family portrait that they truly deserve. Here’s some of our favourites from the session.

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Josephine’s brother, David, was a little shy in front of the camera, but eventually he warmed up. :)

Grace Tan In Family + Children Portraits, Maternity, Newborn, Portraits

Newborn Twins: Akash & Isha

It was a huge milestone in her life. She turned 40, was pregnant with twins and about to embark on the wonderful journey called parenthood. When Akash and Isha were born, Li-Hsian left her high-flying job in corporate communications to be a full-time mum. I personally think a full-time mum’s role is even more challenging than any corporate job out there! (especially when you have twins!). Li-Hsian now writes for this really cool online mother’s portal for urban Malaysian mothers called Makchic. Here’s one of her articles on how to survive breastfeeding twins!

I was privileged to record two very important moments in Li-Hsian’s journey of life… her maternity images and family photos after the twins were born. They are now about 3 months old and are developing really well (I love how they’ve filled up with chubby cheeks!). Li-Hsian and Srihari, thank you for sharing your life with me. I hope we’ll be able to do more photos with the twins when they are a little older!

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Isha and Akash about a week after they were born. Babies change so quickly, it’s so easy to forget how they looked like when they were born. Akash says, “What’s up, sistah!”

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Grace Tan In Family + Children Portraits, For Photographers, Musings, Portraits, Pre-Wedding & Engagement Portraits

Bloom Workshops #3: Portraits in Penang

Our 3rd Bloom Workshop was held in beautiful, heritage Penang where tradition meets modern art ideas and creativity abounds. As usual, we had the support of wonderful sponsors such as Schmidt Marketing, WCA Fine Arts, Simplr, Kitty Bakes, My Hyper Store, Black Milk Studio, Barnyard & Prairie and That Special Occasion. Our 3 day workshop focused entirely on the art of posing and portraiture, and the participants had a great time with the theoretical and practical sessions.

I personally find teaching satisfying, though pretty exhausting. I’ve conducted about 20+ workshops and also taught photography and film editing to college students through out the past 8 years. It’s a challenge to think of how to verbalize your thought process and simplify it to students. I guess the good feedback I receive from my previous participants have shown that I am doing some things right!

If you ask me, I don’t think I’ll ever give up actual photography work for teaching. I still love creating images through my lens and making my clients happy when they see those images. But every now and then, you’ll find a workshop or two coming your way from us.

Here’s some highlights from the workshop. Enjoy!

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The four Bloom girls speaking at the workshop – Anna-Rina, Fiona Lim, Asther Lau and myself.

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Grace Tan In Family + Children Portraits, Portraits, Studio

Family Portraits: Matthew, Pooi San & Arianna

When you get to photograph a baby as cute and smiley as Arianna, it kinda gets your female hormones working a bit more… “Aaaww… I think I want to have another kid!” At 6 months, she is so sociable and super adorable. Naturally, it took her a while to warm up to Diane and I, but after a while, she was laughing at our silly songs, noises and whatever strange antics we had to do to get her all pumped up.

Matthew and Pooi San were really easy going and chatty too. It was nice to be able to connect with them and to spend some time photographing their family. I love how they described what they wanted out of our photo session… “We really want the photos to portray a tastefully done paparazzi shot…meaning it’s like someone is spying on our good times together and everyone is just enjoying each other’s company.”

Matthew and Pooi San, I hope I managed to capture the essence what you hoped for in our session!

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Grace Tan In Family + Children Portraits, For Photographers, Musings, Portraits

Family Portraits: Terence, Devi & Jaydee

I’ve known Terence and Devi for over 10 years, since I was a university student in Brisbane. They are 2 very cool individuals – Terence’s grin and laughter (plus silly jokes) is pretty infectious (though I sometimes admit I roll my eyes occasionally), while Devi’s warm, calm and pleasant personality makes you feel as if you’ve been her friend for umpteen years (even though you might have met her for only 15 minutes).

Devi’s Thai and Kadazan heritage is pretty cool too… therefore, they named their daughter Jaydee… which in Thai means good-hearted. Jaydee is such a sweetheart. Her smile makes you warm up instantly… I guess it helps to have super smiley parents like Terence and Devi!

This shoot was not an ordinary portrait session for us. In fact, there were 5 of us there that day – Johan, Ben, Diane, Felicia and myself. 5 photographers for a family portrait shoot? That sounds pretty crazy huh! Well, our main purpose that day was to share ideas, think outside the box, and sharpen each other’s skill while shooting.

We had heaps of fun. So here’s a combination of shots from all of us! Started out with some couple shots – image on the left taken by Johan, and on the right by Grace.

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Below: L (Diane’s image), R (Grace’s)

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