documentary

Grace Tan In At Home, Beautiful Everyday, Casual Portraits, Family + Children Portraits, Portraits

Embracing Malaysian Culture in Family Photography

Since it’s Malaysia Day, I was thinking about how we can incorporate Malaysian culture into our family photo sessions. My heritage as a child born into a Peranakan family in Melaka is colourful, but personally, I have not embraced much of the culture in my daily life (except to wear the kebaya and eat pong teh occasionally). My children certainly do not identify as being Peranakan.

The thing is, growing up, seeing my mom cook all her Peranakan dishes using the batu lesung, listening to my parents speak the Peranakan lingo, and being asked to pin the kerongsang on her kebaya didn’t feel like heritage. It felt like a normal, everyday part of life. I didn’t know what I had until I lost it. Of course, I never had the opportunity to document most of these everyday memories, as cameras were a luxurious item we didn’t own back then. This photo of my parents taken in front of our home in Melaka is a precious memory for me. It is not fancy, but it is meaningful.

We value the things we once took for granted as we age. I wish my parents were still alive so I could take a beautiful portrait of them in their element. If I could do it again, I would photograph my mom in her kebaya holding a bakul sia filled with her homemade pineapple tarts, which she used to make every Chinese New Year. I would create a mini-video documentary of everyday life snippets, filled with stories from yesteryear.

As a family photographer, I have photographed so many different cultures in Malaysia. Family photo shoots are more than just a moment in time—they are a celebration of history, heritage, and identity. Interestingly, as more and more inter-racial marriages take place, our cultural identity becomes even more diverse and fascinating for the next generation!

So here are some ideas on how you can infuse Malaysian family culture into your next photo shoot and create something that resonates deeply with your family’s story.

1. Cultural Dressing

Clothing is one of the easiest and most visually striking ways to incorporate culture into family photos. In Malaysia, we are blessed with beautiful cultural garments that can be beautifully showcased in a photo shoot. Whether you are wearing the baju kurung, cheongsam, saree, or any East Malaysian traditional costume, these outfits can look especially striking because most of them are rather colorful! These outfits can carry deep meaning, reflecting your family’s roots and values.

2. Locations

Malaysia’s diverse landscapes are another wonderful way to integrate cultural elements into your photos. Choosing locations that are meaningful to your family’s background or that hold cultural significance can create a profound visual story. For some of you, your family home could be a heritage site or museum on its own! You could take photos in your hometown, whether it is the city or the kampung. When making a choice, think about the significance of the locations to you. It could even be a simple location like the family swing, where you used to enjoy moments as sisters growing up.

3. Props

Props are a fantastic way to add personal and cultural touches to your family photos. Every Chinese New Year, my family would dress up for a family photo. It’s a great time to add in props like Mandarin oranges, lanterns, bakul sias, baskets, and angpaos! Other ideas could be incorporating old family photos into the current image. It’s a great way to remember how far you have come and to see how everyone has aged gracefully.

4. Extending the Shoot: Coffee Table Books and Family Videos

After your photo shoot, you can enhance the experience by crafting keepsakes that narrate your family’s story more comprehensively. You could do it with a beautifully designed coffee table book that allows you to showcase the photos in a way that tells your family’s story. You can organize the book chronologically, starting with older family members and progressing to the younger generations, or you can group photos by theme—such as family traditions, celebrations, or important milestones. This family went the extra mile in creating their coffee table book—it was a huge family project that incorporated their family tree, written stories, and scanned letters from great-grandparents!

A video is another way to capture the essence of your family’s cultural heritage. We’ve created short family films that combine video clips from the shoot with candid moments, and sometimes even interviews with family members. Imagine capturing your grandparents sharing stories about their youth or your children talking about what their heritage means to them. This turns your family photos into a living, breathing memory that you can pass down through generations.

Documenting heritage through photos and videos can be a wonderful way of passing a piece of life to the next generation. This is why we do what we do at Stories—our vision is to touch lives by building visual stories for the present and future generations. As a photographer, it’s a joy and honour to capture these moments, knowing they’ll be cherished for years to come.

Grace Tan In At Home, Family + Children Portraits, Portraits

Family Portraits: Dr Nick Boden & Elaine Daly

We’re glad to have the opportunity to meet Elaine Daly, actress, TV host, former beauty queen and National director of Miss Universe Malaysia Organization together with her husband, Dr Nick Boden, who is an accomplished chiropractor, originally from South Africa. As a family, they were both warm and welcoming as the team headed over to their home for some family portraits. We were pleased to be acquainted with Eva and Mia, their adorable daughters. Not to mention, their lovely dog who happily sat there for some photos (though refused to be in the group shots).

Although it was a drizzly day, we managed to sneak some photos out in their backyard, making images in corners they said they hardly visited. Thank you for your being so accommodating and we hope you enjoyed the session as much as we did!

Nick and Elaine are supporting our fund raising campaign for Make-A-Wish Malaysia. We aim to raise a minimum of RM5,000 to donate towards critically ill children so that they have the courage to face the future. To find out more about this fund raising campaign, and how you can help by booking a photography session with us, please visit www.stories.my/make-a-wish.

Grace Tan In Life, Musings, Relationships, Tips + Ideas

Everyday photos that you need to take

As a photographer, I have this innate desire and need to document my life. There are some important people, places or events that encompasses an essential part of who I am and the life I live. I believe that this process of documenting life is really important and I encourage you to think about your own life and how you can capture these moments because they become little windows into a memory that you once held dear.

1. Your house

It may seem trivial to take a photo of your house from the outside. But when you move and settle into a new home, you might find it hard to remember if there was a rose bush by the old gate or if your door was wooden or glass because those memories will fade. Just by looking at a picture of your old house on the outside can actually bring a flood of memories to mind of the times you spent pruning that rose bush and the barbeques you had on the porch.

My family home in Malacca where I spent my growing up years. This was the final goodbye as we packed the house to sell it in 2011.

2. The inside of your home

Just like the outside, you’ll want to remember the interior of the place you called home. Maybe one day your kids will want to see their old room, or the doorframe where you had their height measured every six months; and maybe even have a laugh at the type of furniture you had. They might even remember the time they spilled juice all over that carpet! They will be images that have far more sentimental value than you’d expect. This is one of the reasons I love photographing families in their own home, mess and all.

Grace Tan In Family + Children Portraits, Newborn, Portraits

Newborn family portraits: Nate

There is something beautiful about seeing a newborn nestling comfortably in his mother’s arms. Or how tiny his fingers look compared to yours. Oh how a child changes everything in your life! Definitely a milestone to remember. Nate was an easy baby to photograph… most of the time, he just slept and was oblivious to me clicking away! He must have gotten his easy going personality from his parents Owen and Ida. At the end of the session, we managed to even change him into a pilot’s outfit, suitable for a pilot’s son! That was just too adorable.

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

Fugee School Documentary Videos

At the end of 2016, 4 of us from the Stories team made a special visit to Fugee School, an education hub for refugee kids in Kuala Lumpur. It was a time of getting away from our usual work to do other socially responsible photography and video related projects. In a way, it was something similar to what we did in Kelantan some years back with the flood victims. I met with Deborah Henry, co-founder of the school, to run through some ideas on what we could do for Fugee School, and we narrowed down our focus to a documentary style approach that would give some insight into these families and their life here in Malaysia.

We were blessed to have met two students, Yusra and Hafsa. Listen to their heartwarming stories in the video below, and support amazing organizations like Fugee School who work to make a difference to these children.