Random portraits + Reptiles Malaysia

Posted on November 6, 2008 by Mark

I was trying to free up some space on my hard disk the other day and came across some portraits which I took a while back and it has been sitting in my folder all this while.

A little history about this shot, my friends, the pioneer of the ever popular Reptiles Malaysia, were in the midst of setting up their business and asked me if I could do them a favour and shoot for them. Of course these were the ones that I took for the fun of it. Right now, wished that I had shot more photos at that time and played around with the lighting. Although time was rather tight but at least I managed to pull off a couple of shots within 30-45minutes.

Here are some of those shots.

I took individual portraits first in my house using a single strobe with a softbox attached.

From the photos, judging from then and now, I can truly say that I learned a little bit more in regards to lighting as the more I look at them, the more I feel that I could have done a better job. Note that minimal post processing was done on the two shots above.

Frankly, if I were to shoot the portraits now, I would have added a backlight and side lighting to create a more nicer 3 dimensional feel to the image. Anyway I got to prepare for a shoot this Saturday and I am really gearing up for it. Time to try and improve by another 5% in this shoot from the previous shoots.

Photos Revisited – Velva and the unknown mystery

Posted on July 10, 2008 by Mark

Update: I finally remembered their names, the first picture is a picture of Carace while the second picture is a picture of Velva. Doh! I must be darn shallow

While I am waiting for my trusty MacBook Pro to render some 1200 odd photos, I spent some time revisiting some old portraiture shots I took last year sometime in September. These shots were taken at the Orchid Garden opposite the Bird Park at Taman Tasik Perdana. Just some post processing done on these shots, still I know much can be improved in terms of the framing, composition and pose.

The shots below is a shot of Velva, and the shot above is of Carace

Alright, I admit, I really can’t remember her name. As much as I would love to remember as many names as I can, this was taken a long time ago and I was swarmed by 40 over odd photographers. Do let me know if you know who this model is, thanks!

Anyway, the rendering is almost complete. I know I have shots lying about waiting for me to post process them.

Introducing Shery Lim, author of the book, “There Is Hope”

Posted on May 28, 2008 by Mark

Last weekend I had the privilege to shoot Shery Lim who is the author of the recently published book, “There is Hope“. “There is Hope” is how Shery wants people out there who are currently battling cancer to know that there is still hope. Meeting her in person was such a joy and a privilege for me and I was truly blessed by both her and her husband who were so hospitable.

A little background on the shoot is that Asian Beacon needed a cover shot for one of their stories and guess who would be on the cover of the next Asian Beacon magazine?

Ms. Shery Lim, author of the book “There is Hope“.

Here are some of my favourite shots.

The boxes signifies the size of her cancer over a short period. God is indeed awesome and amazing. Look how small it shrunk into!

Of course I can’t resist taking some candid shots.

Portrait shot without the book.

Just like my previous profile shot, all of these were shot with the Nikon D300 using the 85mm f/1.8 lens and utilizing all available lighting within her home in Puchong.

If I am not wrong, Shery’s book can be purchased at either MPH or Canaanland. Here is the link to purchase this book via Canaanland’s online store. The book costs only RM25.00.

More photos can be found here on my Flickr photostream.

Introducing Shery Lim, author of the book, "There Is Hope"

Posted on May 28, 2008 by Mark

A little background on the shoot is that Asian Beacon needed a cover shot for one of their stories and guess who would be on the cover of the next Asian Beacon magazine?

Ms. Shery Lim, author of the book “There is Hope“.

Here are some of my favourite shots.

The boxes signifies the size of her cancer over a short period. God is indeed awesome and amazing. Look how small it shrunk into!

Of course I can’t resist taking some candid shots.

Portrait shot without the book.

Just like my previous profile shot, all of these were shot with the Nikon D300 using the 85mm f/1.8 lens and utilizing all available lighting within her home in Puchong.

If I am not wrong, Shery’s book can be purchased at either MPH or Canaanland. Here is the link to purchase this book via Canaanland’s online store. The book costs only RM25.00.

More photos can be found here on my Flickr photostream.

Profile Shoot for Sze Accessories

Posted on May 15, 2008 by Mark

The one thing I always admired about my friends is those who are keen businessmen or in this case, a keen businesswoman. Take it from me, I hardly like to take any sort of risk and I always worry too much about the consequences and other areas. But then again, this isn’t about who I am but rather about a shoot I did a couple of weeks ago.

Sze is a good friend of mine whom I have known since we were in primary school and when I found out that she was going to start up her own business selling handmade jewelry online, I was in complete respect for her. After hearing the initial news about it, I did blog about it before previously and since then so many things has changed. Welcome to the world of Sze’s Accessories.

Now, her online presence is getting stronger, getting first hits on Google and more and more sales are coming in. Why not? Her products are awesome and they are one of a kind! Yes, you heard me, one of a kind as she doesn’t make the same one twice!

Anyway since she found out that I do shoot on the side, she asked me if I could do some portrait shots of her for her profile. I was totally excited about it and two weeks ago, I shot her indoors. Lighting was tricky but the condo we were shooting in was excellent. Here are some of my favourite shots.

I like the photo above the most as it has a little bit of reflection as well as there is a natural rim light on both sides. Looking at the hair you can see the rim light there and there is a rim light on the arms as well. See, available lighting can be quite awesome as well!

All shots were shot with available lighting and no flash was used. Because we were shooting indoors so I had to bump my ISO higher than that I can go if I were to shoot outdoors under the sun. It was a fun shoot and I look forward to shooting more profile shots and cover shots.

If you are still looking for a gift to give a loved one, don’t forget to head over to Sze’s Accessories and choose your perfect gift. I mean, what more could you ask for especially when you have so much to choose from and its definitely one of a kind! Best of all, it is relatively cheap and well priced. People always say that we should practice what you preach, well I will be choosing something from Sze’s Accessories to give to MT. As proof I will blog about it and take a picture of the item.

My next profile/cover-shot assignment is in two weeks time and this time for a cover shot of a magazine. This really puts me under pressure as I don’t have any studio equipment or special lighting but I shall trust in God and the gifts he has blessed me with.

I will be away this weekend shooting a wedding in Singapore. Really really looking forward to the shoot, hope that there is an internet connection in my hotel room.

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.

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.

Guess who I shot last week at home?

Posted on January 29, 2008 by Mark

It was rather fun shooting for friends. I guess from my usual group who are rather camera shy, this is a huge leap in terms of getting them to pose in front of my camera with studio strobes next to them.

Frankly, I am not too satisfied with my shots because I lack space in my house and there are just too many distractions in the pictures. Also I feel that if I weren’t so rushed for time, I could have taken better photos. But for the mean time, they will have to do. Hopefully, the might be a part 2 to this post.

Mark Leo Dot Net

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

Tag Archives: Portrait