More Photos from Penang

Posted on April 19, 2008 by Mark

Its Saturday and I am completely worn out from the week. I completed my training at IBM at Bandar Utama and on Friday I was completely surprised when I received a certificate for completing the course, DB2 LUW for SAP, and on top of that, the trainer, Jeremy from the IBM Development Centre in Toronto gave me a 1Gb thumbdrive for being able to answer the most questions during the Thursday session.

So now you know that I was busy at a workshop and then needing to log online to my client’s VPN and check my emails. Hence the delay in getting some of these photos out. I hope you enjoy viewing them. Here are more of the shots I took in Penang during the “From Ordinary to Extraordinary” workshop.

Here is a shot of Reynaldo indoors before we headed out to our on location shoot. He wasn’t looking at me as he was looking at Louis at the time but I do like his suit. Stripe suits are slimming!

From the shot above I know that I needed to step a little more to the left to capture them with a completely blue background.

$Samantha\'s dimension$

I thought that this shot was a little more on the funky side. I find it difficult to try to get the shot with my 85mm lens when everyone else was using their 70-200mm lens. It was only after this shoot that I learned the term “Don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness”. Next time I shall be moving my big butt in front of those with the 70-200mm and get my shot and then tell them, “Aiyah, so sorry ”.

To me at the moment in time it was just another shot with someone posing with interesting props. Now as I posted this up, it came to me as a good representation of how Malaysian drivers are. Constantly waiting in “No waiting” zones and constantly parking at “No parking” zones. How ironic.

An attempt of a glamor shot with a touch of macho-ness. Notice that the tie was caught in the wind. Thank God for the wind as it was rather hot that day. Yup, this was shot outdoors as with the other photos taken here.

Max and Vicky spending a little intimate time together with at least 15 photographers breathing down their necks. Well not literally but I really wonder how it would feel at the other end of the camera. The shot can be improved of course with a little better composition.

Managed to execute this shot with the motion blur I wanted but I was so engrossed with the effect that I totally forgot about the background. Funnily, I was reading about this in a blog post, about how an amateur and a veteran shoots and how the newbies would miss out some areas like the background and the framing and concentrate on the subject while veterans would take everything into account. Yup, I totally fall into the amateur category.

Thats it for today folks. As I find the time to run my other errands, I will post up more photos up here soon.

The One with all the Photos

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Mark

Well, not all of the photos are up yet but I did manage to export them out of Lightroom and added the border and watermark on Photoshop before uploading them to my blog. Decided to upload them straight to my blog rather than upload them to Flickr and then copy the codes over here.

First photographer I know to have his own notebooks

Took this shot when we were presented with notebooks to write down our notes from the lectures. I would have loved to use this notebook but I brought my trusty “Photography Notebook” along with me to Penang. This notebook contains a few other notes from my other photography workshops which I attended.

Presenter with an Apple?

I am glad that I finally gotten my Macbook Pro after waiting for a month for it to clear SIRIM and arrive at my supplier’s doorstep. A huge thanks to Siva who helped me to order in the Macbook Pro and also bearing with my constant SMSes, asking when is the stock arriving. From the shot above, Louis is explaining about what the slide shown on the wall contained and what it meant. Want to know more? Sign up for his workshops here.

According to Louis, my Macbook Pro wasn’t well “trained” enough and he offered to give me his well “trained” Macbook Pro and swap it with my “untrained” one. Too bad Louis, I am going to train mine in my own special way

Show by example!

Here we have Louis explaining to the models on what he intends to do with them. It was good that Louis and Arden hired models who were not experienced in posing. This really made us work hard to get them to pose properly!

Shooting with a D3 and a 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens

Noticed that the white balance of both the shots above this and the previous ones were different? That is due to the light coming in from the window versus the yellow ambient room lighting. What I learned here is that you don’t need a fantastic location to create wonderful shots. Look at all the equipment everywhere in the room. And yet, I managed to steal a shot with my 85mm lens.

Using my Nikon D300 and 85mm f/1.8 lens

Using my Nikon D300 and 85mm f/1.8 lens (portrait shot)

No studio lighting was used to get these shots and we relied heavily on natural lighting. A round of applause to our wonderful models for that session, Samantha and Reynaldo. Appreciate you guys tolerating a newbie like me during the workshop!

Looking at the time now, I am already late for cell group. Hope to get more photos up here soon.

More to come soon…..

to be continued…

What’s Coming Up?

Posted on March 4, 2008 by Mark

Something is coming over the horizon. Are you prepared for it?

Head over here to find out more!

What are you waiting for? Sign up now!

What's Coming Up?

Posted on March 4, 2008 by Mark

Something is coming over the horizon. Are you prepared for it?

Head over here to find out more!

What are you waiting for? Sign up now!

Charge Up! Conference – Its coming, again!

Posted on February 29, 2008 by Mark

Last year, I started my photography journey when I attended my very first photography workshop at Jalan Tandang. Prior to that, I had just recently purchased my Nikon D40 and was playing with the camera for about a month before. Little did I know that attending Charge Up 2007 would leave an impact so great until now.

One year down the road and it’s here again, Charge Up 2008!Â Of course I will be taking up the photography workshop as usual and I can’t wait to learn more from Louis Pang again. I have been to many photography workshops and I loved his teachings and lessons. Given that it was extremely new to me the last time (I couldn’t understand what he meant when he said SB-800 or 17-35mm f/2.8). All I knew was that he takes amazing photos and it was then that I realised I wanted more from my camera.

One year ago during the Charge Up conference, I took these 5 shots to be submitted.

Charge Up! Conference Its coming, again!

This year, if there is an opportunity again for this, I will definitely benchmark myself, not to beat last year’s photos but to be more on the creative side. A pro wedding photog did mention to me once that I was too technical and not artistic enough. I find that very true and I blame my interest for technical stuff and my engineering background. Actually, I do know a lot of engineers who are extremely artistic as well. This year I hope to awaken my artistic side of things.

So what are you waiting for? Head over here and sign up now!

Getting back on track (4) – A morning with Jacq, Sofea and Castelle

Posted on February 28, 2008 by Mark

Here is the final installation of my “getting back on track” plan. Well it is not really a full blown workshop but more of like a gathering of photographers from the Lowyat.Net forum early on a Sunday morning to learn from one another shooting 3 models. After all of these workshops and outings, I still feel there is much to learn and much more to explore as I feel that I have yet to achieve what I plan to gain. Nevertheless, the learning experience was just incredible.

A group of 15 photographers met up at Taman Tasik Permaisuri (opposite HUKM) together with 3 models and began our shooting at 9.00am. We split into 3 groups and the models went to each of the group so everyone had the chance to shoot all of the models. By noon time everyone was getting tired and weary but it was a healthy bunch, mainly armed with Nikon and Canon cameras.

Here are some of the photos I took over last weekend. Do leave some comments, especially what you think of the photos. Whether I can shoot them better or my post processing was off or the entire picture sucks. Don’t worry, I take criticism (good or bad) positively as I am striving myself to improve.

To be quite frank, after all of this, I still want to learn more and I have already signed up for two more workshops with Louis Pang. Now that is something I am truly looking forward to and will be paying 200% attention to what he has to teach and be exactly like a sponge and absorb everything. Until then, I got about close to two months before the first one and about 4 months before the second one. Hopefully I would have more jobs between then and be able to afford to get myself a laptop (praying hard for that).

I guess learning is always a lifelong process and I will definitely do my bit to learn as much as I can as well as teach what I have learned to others.

Getting back on track (3) – An afternoon with Nicole

Posted on February 25, 2008 by Mark

Sometimes I wondered why I signed up for a workshop which was something I most probably knew everything that was going to be thought. Really, the very first 30-40minutes I was just flabbergastered because I really knew what the trainers were teaching to the rest of the students.

Then it hit me, absolute pride. I began to think again, where was my meekness especially the time when I was down? What happened to that? Just because I took a few “good” photos (note the quotes, “”, at good) doesn’t mean that I am the best? Not really, I am totally far from being called a “good photographer” and ever lightyears away from being called “the best”.

Anyway, the workshop with the trainers (Andrew and Mohd Haidar) over at the Nikonian Academy brought a new light to me. There are far more people with so much more experience that I can learn and absorb from. I need to be a sponge and absorb all of it. There were plenty of tips I picked up along the way and definitely shooting under such bright sunlight was a pain (I realised so many hotspots or overexposed areas on my shots!).

Part of my homework is to choose the best three but frankly, I haven’t found them yet. I took two which I liked and posted them here but I haven’t found my favourite 3 yet. I need to go back home, sit down in front of my PC and start post processing them.

Lastly I would like to take the time to thank the trainers, Andrew and Haidar for teaching us the fundamentals of shooting outdoor portaits as well as Nicole who was our model for the day. Thanks so much, an afternoon with you guys made me realise that I have got a lot more to learn.

Getting back on track – An afternoon with Nadia

Posted on February 18, 2008 by Mark

Getting back on track? A question I was asking myself previously in regards to the whole area of photography. Sometime in January, I assisted another wedding photographer to shoot a wedding and after a long and tiring day, I noticed that my photos didn’t turn out as well as I would hoped for. Then it really hit me that I have plenty more to learn and it really got me down.

It was a tough time for me as I was rather demoralised and instead of just sitting there and sulking, I decided to get back to basics, start afresh and re-discover my style. With that in mind, I signed up for 4 workshops simultaneously with the hope of learning as much as I can and gaining more experience.

Last week, I attended my first workshop and here are the results from it. The workshop was conducted by Jayhan and it was a strobist style workshop where one would work with portable flash whilst shooting outdoors. There were only two participants that day, me and Saiful a.k.a Xandman, travelled to Bukit Jalil on a hot Sunday afternoon.

We started off by shooting in a hut using Jay’s portable flashes but in the end we had to resolve to our Nikon’s CLS system and two SB-800s because the triggers were not working. Although we did manage to use Jay’s more powerfull portable strobe light for the outdoor shoots.

Jayhan teaching Saiful and Nadia who was our model for the day

Saiful shooting with his 70-200mm f/2.8. Now that is one lens I would love to have!

And here are some of the results from the “indoor” shots.

Frankly I didn’t have the time to post process the other shots I took in the hut as I feel that the whole strobist style which I wanted to learn was more of that taken outdoors. When I have the time, I will definitely post them up here.

The next bit of course would be for us to go outside. And this time, I had more fun shooting, not with my 50mm portrait lens but with my 10-20mm wide angle lens.

Jay call’s himself the human lightstand

And here are my results from that session.

Ok, this shot was taken using natural light though

At the end of the workshop, or shoot I would say, I felt that perhaps I have improved a little or perhaps I am still a little lost looking for that style of mine. Prior to this, I had a chat with Shaolintiger and he gave me some very good advice and I still keep it in my head everytime I go for a shoot.

Patience is the key and I will definitely think a lot more before firing away at my shutter. With that in mind, I would also like to thank Louis Pang who has been a great inspiration to me and for helping me with my queries.

I got another workshop lined up this weekend with the Nikonians Academy and an outdoor shoot with the guys over at Lowyat.net on Sunday.Â Looking forward to a productive weekend and putting what I learned into real practice.

I took the plunge

Posted on December 3, 2007 by Mark

From my last post, you would have guessed that I attended another workshop. This time the workshop was free. But to be completely honest, it wasn’t a workshop. It was a talk by Zung of The Photoz. When I say it was a talk, I could be wrong in some areas whereby there were some sharing but mainly most of the time, he showed his collection of his work.

Some comments I have heard about Zung from some of my friends was that his work was good but not extraordinary. Other comments were favourable on the other hand, with people complementing his style and his artistic talents.

Well back to the workshop cum talk cum slideshow viewing session. The event started late because everyone was stuck in the huge traffic jam from KL thanks to heavy rain. I had a tough time travelling straight from work, the Elite highway was pretty congested as well.

It was pretty pleasant to sit in front (being a little kiasu that night) as compared to the other workshop with Ulf Recher and I couldn’t even see much at the front. Zung, came in a little late but he recognized me as I met him and introduced myself during David’s wedding in Penang a couple weeks back.

Anyhow, how this relates to the title was that in the course of the workshop cum talk cum slideshow viewing session, there was a workshop being offered. A proper proper workshop which costs a bomb and it lasts for 6 weeks and includes two on-site photoshoots. I knew that if I did take it up it will definitely be a large investment for me but I guess that I would rather spend the money on the workshop than get myself a lens.

What made me take the plunge was that I saw some of his previous student’s work and they were quite good and interesting.

Check them out here.

All of these photos belong to one of Zung’s student. You can check out his website here.

In preparation for a wedding I got to shoot on the 14th-16th of December, lets see how much I can motivate and hone my skills in time for that shoot.

Another workshop again?

Posted on November 29, 2007 by Mark

In about 2 hours time I will be attending a talk by Zung from The Photoz in Damansara Utama. More information about the talk can be found here.

veil 04web Another workshop again?

I will blog about this event pretty soon. Currently am extremely busy with work and after last night’s or rather, this morning’s 1am teleconference with folks over in Houston, I am just extremely tired and worn out.

Mark Leo Dot Net

Loving all things photography, tech, gadgets, Apple and cars

Category Archives: Workshop