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Grace Tan In Boudoir, Casual Portraits, Family + Children Portraits, Maternity, Portraits, Studio

Studio Portraits

Over the past few years, many families have walked through our doors and spent one hour with us in our natural light studio, immortalising family relationships through our images.

STUDIO_10 STUDIO_07 Other than cute babies and families, we’ve also photographed casual portraits of couples…

STUDIO_05 Boudoir photos…

STUDIO_03 Corporate headshots for professionals…

STUDIO_02 …The only thing we haven’t tried yet is fitting an animal into the studio!

While most of these sessions did not manage to make it to the blog, I’ve decided to select a few of our favourites and show them to you here. These images are taken by the Stories photographers, mainly Grace, Diane, Jamie, Nigel and Weiming. Do contact us if you’d like to pop over our studio for some portraits!

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

Canon Family Portraiture Workshop

20140803_CANON_FAMILY_WORKSHOP_09 In half a day, 25 participants were taught the basics of what makes a great family portrait even better and were even given the opportunity to photograph real families! Chaos reigned supreme during the shoot as with all normal family portrait sessions, and together, we perspired, jiggled rattles, played games, and simply had fun. It was my first workshop specifically on family portraiture, and though I had spoken at many workshops and seminars before, this one felt a little different.

I am thankful to Canon (yay, thanks Chris, Shing Eu and Kevin!) for being the main sponsor for this workshop, and for giving me the opportunity as to speak as their EOS Academy Instructor. We also got to test out the PIXMA Pro-10 printer which was great! I loved the prints that came out of it, so this one’s a keeper! We’ll definitely be printing more images and displaying it around our studio soon.

I’d also like to thank Diane, Jamie and Alex for assisting me on this day because no successful workshop can be done alone.

Here’s some photos from the workshop over the weekend, held at Tropicana Golf & Country Club.

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Grace Tan In Family + Children Portraits, Maternity, Portraits

Maternity & Family Portraits: Chee Seng, Sze Min & Katelynn

Chee Seng & Sze Min and Alex & I have a lot in common, really. We have individually conquered Mt Kinabalu before, are certified divers, have 2 daughters that are the same age (1.5 years) and are expecting our 2nd child in the same year! Oh, and we live in PJ too, just 10 minutes apart!

The difference is that they dated for 10 years and were married in 2011. Alex and I dated for 2 years and married in 2006. :)

It was great getting to know this little family early one weekday morning at their apartment in PJ. Our main purpose was really to just capture moments together that are classic, timeless and real. Honestly, Sze Min and I share the same values when it comes to photographing our children. We feel that time flies so quickly and everyday is a new learning experience with the child. It sounds cliched, but it is true… they DO grow up way too quickly! And part of being a kiasu parent is the feeling that we don’t want to miss a single experience in their childhood years.

Even when I look back at the photos of my daughter just a few months ago, I notice her facial features have changed somewhat. I am really glad that it is relatively cheaper nowadays to photograph our families as compared to the days of our parent’s time! Developing film was pricey (and 1 roll was only 36 shots!)! There were no such thing as lifestyle portrait shoots (If you wanted a family portrait, you’d just get one done at the studio, and you only get 1 image!). Now we can shoot in burst mode even on our phones and seriously not think about it.

The downside is that most of us don’t even print most of these images, and the value of photos as it is, goes down when you have an overabundance of images all stored… somewhere.

But a well taken family portrait will be cherished for years and years to come.

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Grace Tan In Family + Children Portraits, International, Portraits

Family Portraits in Melbourne: Andrew, Jessey & Maddie

I got to know Andrew through his sister, Amy Yeoh, who is a friend from my church, DUMC. Well, thanks to Facebook, we could get connected through the years, even if it was a random viewing on a status message! After I delivered my little Krysta, Jessey connected with me on Facebook when I posted that I had some sleep issues with Krysta. She was a very helpful source of information and gave me some valuable tips to assist sleeping babies… well, sleep!

It was great that I managed to photograph their cute little family in Melbourne during my holiday there recently. They chose to have their family portraits taken at the University of Melbourne since it was where they had studied in the past. It was a gorgeous day, and we had some lovely moments together, though Maddie was adamant on demonstrating how good she was at running away from the camera!

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Grace Tan In Family + Children Portraits, Life, Musings, Parties & Events, Portraits, Relationships

Krysta’s 1st Birthday Party: Little Miss Theme

It’s been half a year since my beloved daughter Krysta turned one. It really just occurred to me how fast the year goes by (especially after they turn 1). When she was a baby, I would photograph her every month, just to see her physical changes. Maybe it was more apparent then… roll over, tummy time, crawling, walking… they were very real milestones. But after she turned 1… I don’t think I made such an effort to photograph her little moments or new milestones.

Now, with baby number 2 on the way, I have an even bigger challenge… to make sure I document his life with equal passion as I did Krysta’s. Even with the pregnancy, I am really not that ‘aware’ of the progress… when people ask me how far along I am… I have to think twice before replying. And that too, is with some hesitance.

I recently wrote a blog post about my intention to make time for family despite work commitments. I really do count it a blessing when I can spend half a day here or there midweek with my daughter, just doing simple things like reading a book together or playing chase in the living room.

Anyway, here’s some really belated photos of Krysta’s first birthday with a Lil’ Miss Theme. We chose the character Little Miss Chatterbox for her. Love the detail on the cake. I designed the logo and it was beautifully translated onto the cupcakes. We made little stickers with the logo too and placed it on cups and goodie bags. About 2 weeks before the party, I managed to find the Mr Men and Little Miss themed books from the Big Bad Wolf sale at a huge discount! So that made really nice gifts for the kids who came.

The food was a selection of my favourite hawker stall foods… everything from a lok-lok van to Village Park nasi lemak, to rojak from Bayu Timor… everyone loved it.

Photos were taken by Diane, and a few by Weiming.

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