Another year has passed and I am older yet again. On my trip from Istanbul to Cappadocia I met 2 students (from Portugal & Italy) who are on holiday. They are amazed that I am 10 years older than they are. Hahaha… good thing I still have my ‘youthful’ looks. Birthdays are not so special anymore as you get older… in fact, I had to calculate my age as I could not remember how old I was turning!
My clients in Turkey, Edwin and Dawn, were so sweet and bought me a chestnut cake. It was delicious! And the best thing was that we managed to share it with all the people traveling on the public bus we were on. Tonight, we will be going to a local restaurant, and hopefully I get to try the famous clay jar meal in Cappadocia!
I am reminded of this phrase today, quoted by Steve Jobs… “Live every day as it is your last, for one day, you will be right.”
It’s a reminder to me that life is so temporal. Yes, I am celebrating life today, but who knows what tomorrow will hold for me. If I am spending my life doing things that I do not believe in, then one day, I will surely regret it. I need to live each day with the conviction that what I am doing is eternal, and that it is leaving a legacy. I believe in living life to the fullest… but not alone. I am grateful to have Alex and my family and friends with me as I walk this journey of life. But most importantly, I have God by my side.
Whenever I go to a foreign country, I don’t know what to expect. The surroundings are unfamiliar, I don’t know where the best angles are to shoot from, what time the sun rises and goes down, whether we will get chased away from locations (which did happen)… there’s just so many uncertainties. But the thrill of being in an exotic country shooting portraits is every photographer’s dream.
It’s only been a few days into my trip, but I’ve already learnt a few things, which hopefully will help brides and grooms plan for a pre-wedding / engagement or portrait shoot overseas.
1. Do your research about the locations you’d love to shoot at. How far is one location to another? Do we need to allocate more days for the shoot? Edwin and Dawn, my couple in Turkey, did an amazing job researching all the best places to go to and knew exactly what they wanted. It helps the photographer a lot!
2. It is best to travel with a make up artist, if possible. It gives you flexibility as you can decide when to start your shoot. And it’s a lot easier communicating with a Malaysian make up artist than one who speaks a foreign language! Unless of course, you’re like Dawn, who has an amazing Turkish vocabulary even though this is only her 2nd time in Turkey. For your information, a make up artist in Turkey is called a makyaj (pronounced mak-kias).
3. Do bring your own gowns and outfits (I think that’s quite obvious!). Though you can do some portraits in a casual outfit, I think it’s quite different wearing your wedding gown or a beautiful evening gown against a scenic backdrop.
4. Depending on the season you travel in, there are pros and cons – for example, if you go in summer months when there are heaps of tourists, you may have to visit major tourist hotspots in the wee hours of the morning or at night if you want to get shots without tourists in the background. For winter months, the sun sets earlier, so do plan for that, because it means less daylight for your shoot!
5. If you plan to go inside a tourist location, be prepared to be chased away. Most locations require some sort of permission – but in our case, even if permission is granted, sometimes it can be taken away! Nothing is certain when you are traveling… just be prepared to be flexible and not get upset when things don’t go the way you expect it to.
6. Be prepared to walk a lot. So do bring along a good pair of walking shoes, especially when you are not posing with your heels!
7. For photographers, here’s a tip – tripods and monopods are considered “professional” gear – at some locations, you will be required to check it in before entry. If you don’t need one, leave it behind. We had a monopod with us as we’re doing a bit of video, and the trained guards spotted it a mile away!
At the end of the day, have fun, enjoy yourselves and create memorable images!
Travel has always been food for my soul. I absolutely love seeing new places, meeting fascinating people, experiencing different cultures, and eating the local cuisine. Every time I travel, I recharge. I get inspired. I am alive.
Turkey, just like its spices, adds a lot of flavour to my life. The people here are friendly and always willing to strike a conversation with you. Even if they are trying to sell you something, I don’t feel harassed, like some other countries I’ve been to. I love the feeling of the old meeting the new. Walking into buildings centuries old brings me back to ancient Bible times and makes me wonder how life was really like then.
Hi everyone! Alex and I are currently in Istanbul, Turkey! It’s a beautiful city, and my first time here. We arrived yesterday after a short drama of missing our connecting flight from Doha to Istanbul the day before due to flight delays. Well, that is another adventure altogether…
Today, we’ll be heading to the streets of Istanbul for our shoot with Edwin & Dawn. It’s a cold day, but the good thing is that the sun is out! Here’s a short little video greeting from Istanbul…edited by Alex!
18 guests flew all the way from Japan and Australia to Langkawi to attend the wedding of David & Risa. It was a small, intimate wedding filled with lots of emotions. Tears flowed freely, and love was expressed in its purest form. I couldn’t hold back my emotions, as I saw the strong bond between family members, friends and David & Risa. This is definitely one of my favourite weddings. I compiled a slideshow to showcase the many different photos as I cannot include so many in this blog post. I do hope you’ll enjoy this set of images as much as I did creating them.
Here’s David’s and Risa’s story…
We met in Japan in 2004. Actually, although we don’t like to admit it, we met in an English conversation school. I was teaching there and I met Risa, who was a student there at the time, a couple of weeks before I was due to finish my contract. We started dating and I moved in with her a couple of months after that.
Then, I had to leave Japan and return to my own country. We had only been together a few months and I wasn’t prepared for how difficult it was to say goodbye. I think I decided then that we needed to do our best to stay together, somehow. I had actually assumed that we would break up when I left, but I found that very difficult to come to terms with.
Anyway, Risa came to visit me in Australia about three months after I had returned. She then came to live there for a year (after a difficult 11 month long term relationship period), and after that we came back to Japan, where we’ve been since mid 2007. It was around November or December last year when I began to seriously think about proposing. Although we had talked about it many times, I had not really given much thought to actually doing it. We had been together for almost 6 years and had toughed out some pretty difficult times, with the long distance period, the bi-cultural relationship and all the complications that come with that, and it dawned on me that there was no reason not to. I certainly couldn’t imagine spending my life with anyone else, so we took a trip to Malaysia and ended up at the Andaman on Langkawi island, where I proposed. Now, a year later, we’re returning to finish the job!
