Ohh... pretty seafood?

About a week plus ago, I was called for an assignment to shoot the Prime Minister's visit to one of Malaysia's most productive prawn farms by JW Aquaculture at Kuala Selangor. It was really an eye-opening experience for me as I have not seen a prawn farm in such a scale before. According to their statistics, the farm is more than 8km long and employs a few hundred employees everyday to tend to them; the prawns are processed on location, packaged and exported to a myriad of locations including Europe, Japan and Korea.

Now... let's go back to the topic: "seafood" .

Being someone who loves seafood, I honestly only like seafood that is fresh from the sea, i.e. "from the wild"; not the farmed or cultured stuff as to me, they lack the "real taste" of seafood.

I am sure many would agree to me in Malaysia where we have access to really good seafood for a relatively low price. As far as in Asia is concerned, the Hong-Kong(ites) are even more interesting, being true connoisseurs of food, they prefer "live" seafood, in other words, fish, prawns and crabs that are still alive right before they were cooked. That, I can attest produces the best tasting seafood.

All that being well and good but do we, the Malaysians ever consider the impacts of our choices? Just reminded by my aunt that seafood is not like it used to be in Malaysia, she said, "You used to get big crabs, now? You only get the small ones~!" and when she went shopping for pomfret, she noticed that the fishmonger was selling tiny little, sauce-plate sized pomfrets... those could have been 9" wide succulent fish in a year or so.

Without sounding overly political, she reminded me of our fishing policies, our choice of "caught-from-the-wild" seafood as well as the prawn farm that I had the pleasure to see a couple of weeks ago.

Perhaps it's time for us to consider having tighter and more effective controls on fishing policies for the sake of sustainability so that we can still taste good seafood in the years to come? So that the fishermen of the next generation still has enough to catch? Perhaps it's time for more of us to go into agriculture and aquaculture? And maybe... perhaps it's time for me to tone down my expectations of "good seafood" in the name of conservation and sustainability? Haha... I guess the last point, I shall have to mull over it for a long, long time... :-P

Beatles?

No... I am not from that time... was born after that but well... I landed a job (2 to be precise) involving the performance of David Leon & The Stars of Beatlemania recently. The songs are quire familiar and it was really nice to hear them live.

Been experimenting with using flash for stage photography again recently and I find that they are quite good when one wants to really see the person performing in their real skintones... the rest of the time I relied on available light but it is really quite useful to have some human looking skintones at least on a few portrait-like images from the set.

Stretchie and curvie~!

Couple of days ago, took my portable backdrop and headed over to get some "corporate portraits" done; wasn't really expecting having to shoot a myriad of Yoga poses but I somehow managed.

"How do they do that?", "Doesn't it hurt?" or "Do they have bones at all?" were the questions that were constantly on my mind. It is quite amazing how flexible (and inflexible, in my case) the human body can be with a bit of training. Of course, these are instructors; but they did assure me that with time and training, even my 200lb self can perform some of what they did that day.

Attractive as their offer were, I think I'd stick to photographing Yoga instead. ;-)

In any case, I think this was the most enjoyable "corporate portrait"shoot I have ever had. Not only did I don't really have to direct them how to pose, they actually continously asked me if I could shoot more for them and with all the interesting poses and bubbly personalities, how could I say no?

At the end of the supposedly 3hr session with 60-70 shots, I ended up with around 350 shots in 1.5hrs and everyone was tired, including my client; so we called it a day.

...am looking forward to my next "portrait" job with a Yoga studio. Hahaha... :P

Garden in the Sun

1st December 2007 5:30am I left the house for the bride's makeup at The Saujana at Subang Jaya.

... probably the earliest wedding that I have ever done and it is also the wedding that have been in planning for the longest, Phyllis, my client has started planning her wedding for more than a year and my guess is it is everything she hoped for and more.

She wished for a clear sky and yes, we got a clear blue cloudless sky. In Malaysia that is both a photographer's dream and bane, clear blue skies indicates that we get the final missing element for our photos : clean, pristine blue.... BUT... it brings us our most feared as well, extreme backlighitng. Whilst harsh directional light is good for moody photos and backlit shots are actually more beautiful if you fill it properly with flash; when one is talking about the sun and shooting an event in those conditions; it can quickly become a nightmare.

Well... In any case, somehow me and my partner managed. It's been years since I had to fire my flash at full-power and in some cases, had to use a slave flash because there just isn't enough power to overcome the power of the sun.

Now... less photographer's talk and more about the setting, the garden wedding was set at the pool-side and with it's huge swaying cocunut trees; it is perhaps one of the most beautiful settings, something I'd like for my own wedding with the addition of some greco-styled columns with flowers, that'd be perfect.

Right... I am off to process and select another 1.5k shots from this wedding.