With a new blog design, I guess its time to post up some photos. Digging through some of my photo archive, I found some photos which I shot a couple months back. Joshua has been one of my best friends and we go a long way back. Having also both studied in the UK, he was always a great host whenever I visited him in Coventry. This time, he came back to Malaysia to propose to Adeline and she said “yes!”.

Although both Joshua and Adeline had a tight schedule here in Malaysia (he’s working in the UK and she’s working in Singapore), I had to make do with the little available time they had. Although the two of them were in Malaysia, it didn’t mean that they were in Selangor. The short time before church started was the only time they could spare. Nevertheless, the 35 minutes we spent together was well worth it!

Here are some of my favourite shots from that day.

Joshua is a talented musician and he plays the drums and the piano. Check out his blog over here.

I know Joshua quite well and to be very honest, he seems to always like to put his hands like that against the wall. Even when he is thinking to himself. I guess it was meant that Adeline could easily charm him from that angle

I secretly took this shot after we were done and they wanted to see some of the results of the earlier shoot.

Last but not least, a group shot of the four of us having lunch after church.

Joshua and Adeline, congratulations on your engagement and I can’t wait for your wedding next year. Although I won’t be shooting it but I am glad that I can be part of your wedding next year as one of your groomsmen.

First and foremost before I begin this post, I would like to welcome everyone to my newly designed site sitting in a new home. After much deliberation (and many theme changes), my blog underwent multiple theme change and multiple add-ons in the form of widgets as well as other funky adds. I decided that it wasn’t the right move to do hence I have switched over to a single column theme. I cleaned up quite a fair bit of unused applications on my blog in hope that the design looks a lot cleaner and easier to navigate.

Secondly, as I mentioned, this site is completely new. How does it translate to new? My domain name (http://markleo.net) has been moved to a new registrar, my files has been moved to a new server and I gotten a new theme to suit it as well as made multiple changes to the design (a big thanks to @theBackPackr for your help!).

After reading Dane Sander’s “The Fast Track Photographer“, I was truly inspired by what he wrote about the various types of photographers. It was then that I knew where I wanted to be and to brand myself in that direction. This blog update is one of the first changes I am making and hopefully, you will see more of those changes in my shooting style as well.

Of course with this new site design, I will start to concentrate more on posting up more photos from various shoots and experience especially weddings and portraits. I am also quite glad that I can post up large sized images as well. I definitely need to update my Photoshop actions to suit the new changes.

I previously used to have multiple pages but have decided to limit myself to two pages, My Portfolio and About Myself. At this moment, my portfolio will be the next item on my to-do list to update and hopefully be completed by the end of July. Exciting times ahead and I can’t wait to be able to share it with my readers.

Do drop me a line or two with your thoughts and comments on this new site. I would love to gather some feedback in order for me to improve it as much as I can.

…….that is posted on a Thursday.

So I got carried away with work yesterday and totally forgot that it was Wednesday. After being carried away, I ended up being so excited over catching Transformers 2 that the movie ended so late and I just got back. Yesterday, I went for dinner with a bunch of crazy photographers (so crazy that they can even make balloon dolls for you) at Delicious at Midvalley. Me, being me, driving all the way from Cyberjaya, I ended up taking photos with my trusty iPhone instead. But today is not about EatFest, today it is about Clicks, and by clicks I mean my usual list of interesting links.

• Check out this gallery of amazing photos that was taken with a camera phone! This further elaborate on my that it is the photographer behind the camera that makes the pictures (I said this during my workshop last Saturday).
• With so much hype about the government wanting to keep a register of bloggers, some say that bloggers are killing journalist. I beg to differ and so does this article.
• Want to know how much Twitter has grown? If you don’t know what is Twitter, just join Twitter.com and add me in @markleo82
• Has the law finally caught up with Rapidshare?
• Check out this huge debate on what went on at Matt’s Adobe Lightroom post. Very interesting and great arguments from both sides. The story originated from a guy who wrote a nifty little program that when you enter in a Flickr image, it will calculate out and create a Lightroom preset to achieve that effect. Some say it is stealing but some say that it isn’t because no one can copyright Adobe Lightroom settings. If that is the case, no one can use +10 Saturation, + 20 vivid and vignette.
• Become a better photographer through the critique of others. What can I say, the title of that article says it all. Which was why I implemented what I have learned from Louis Pang’s workshop and did a simple critique session for the workshop which I held recently as well.
• Check out this interview with Landscape Photography Legend Art Wolfe at Digital Photography School. Here is the link to Part 1 and Part 2 of the interview.

A brief Wednesday Clicks this week but watch out for this space, I have a whole new blog revamp coming up soon and no, I didn’t do it myself. So it is going to look way awesome!

Alright, after @theBackPackr tweeted about today being a clean desk day and after he has reminded us again today with a blog post about it, I figured to myself, why shouldn’t I clear my desk as well? I would pretty much say that my desk at work is fairly easy to clean. Its my desk at home which is the nightmare!

Workstation at work

A quick description on what is on my desk, I have my laptop sitting on a laptop dock. It is connected to a mouse and keyboard which I use most of the time. The keyboard was a hand-me-down keyboard which I received when I moved places in the office. As you can see, my desk is pretty small which makes it easier for me to clean as well. I have an IP Phone next to me and a mini fan which I bought for myself because it is so friggin hot here.

Here are some more close up of my desk to show how messy the wires and cables can be!

Mini fan with messy cables

The mini fan is my life saver sometimes but it can be rather noisy as well.

Super messy cables including laptop lock

The IP phone has a network cable connected to it and another one connected outwards towards my docking station. There is also a laptop lock for

After a quick organising and cable management, voila, this is what happened to my desk.

Cleaned desk

Doesn’t look like much but mind you, the documents are all stored in the cabinet! Took me 3 seconds to stuff everything in there. I was seriously so amazed because of my super organizational skills.

Mini fan revisited

After careful thought and consideration and weighing various techniques and options, the best solution I came up with the mini fan was to tie the wire with a cable tie. It took me a strenuous 5 seconds to tie it up. Talk about hard work and quick thinking strategy.

Less clutter behind the laptop

At the end of the day, I get a cleaner desk where I can throw more documents on the next day especially after a meeting and get my feet tangled up because I love to cross my legs when I am at my desk due to the dangling cables.

This is where all my cables went to!

So I would love to encourage everyone to spend a little time to clean up their desk, preferbly on Monday. With that you have 4 more days of the week to mess it up again in order for you to clean up your desk again next Monday. I think I shall start a trend, #MessyDeskFridays.

Yup, as the title says, I will be conducting a workshop this Saturday on basic photography at my company’s office in KLCC. I think it will be an exciting and interesting event so I definitely need to beef up my slides a bit more to ensure that I can help them visually see the effects when tinkering with their cameras.

The great thing about it was that I was totally overwhelmed with the response. I had initally told them that a small crowd of 30 participants would be perfect including a couple of mentors. So the email went out company wide and within a couple hours, all seats were taken up. I am totally surprised by the overwhelming response (there is even a waiting list) so to be extremely honest, I feel to pressure to need to ensure that the workshop is a huge success.

I started working on the slides on my flight to Los Angeles as well as when I was waiting for my flight. From what I can see now, there is a lot more for me to improve as well as making sure I put into practice what I learned from reading my Presentation Zen book.

Now I feel a little nervous but I definitely want to help everyone learn about the wonderful beauty of the world of photography. Wish me luck everyone!