The groom in the picture knew the bride since A level and the boy friend and girl friend status remained for 7 years and now evolved to the husband and wife stage. I believe a lot of guys must be envious on him, why? She is his first and only girl friend and now first and only wife! I believe not many of us manage to get our first partner to become our soul mate. What about you? Comment below, I am really interested to know.

I have a lot of favorite shots from this series but the couple hope to show only some now while the rest reserved for the wedding day. I’m sharing with all of you my top 10 favorite. Whole series were done in Penang beach with extremely nice weather, the Pinang Peranakan Mansion, and Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion (aka The Blue Mansion). Formal attire by Sol Cover while makeover by Joan.

&.b.t.w. – I realized many people assume Joan is my girl friend. NOOOOO she isn’t peeps! We are business partner helping each other out when both of us were relatively new in the industry and our work towards natural appearance resonates really well together. I don’t mind you help me spread that I’m still single tho…

&.&.b.t.w. – If you are a Malaysian and never been to Kelantan, what would be your perception on this place? I get to visit this state thanks to a client, check out my iLove photo album in Facebook. The milky way shot and the couple kissing infront the infinity pool shot.

Yup, you heard me right. Part of this Danish wedding’s ceremony includes a session of cutting off the groom’s socks at the toe part. Despite being in Malaysia, am so glad to be introduced to such a unique ceremony! It was really an eye opener and hilarious. This post is an excerpt of the happening from this Danish wedding of Sarah & Janus. I tried to Google a bit for the rationale behind this and I found some answers:

1) To prevent the groom from trying to make up to another woman. (source)
2) To prove that the bride can sew. (source)

Also, when happened that the bride move away from the groom, he will be……..”attacked” by all ladies in the wedding.

Same goes to the bride, she is soooooo unexpected this coming!

The couple have their first dance surrounded by all the people, they clap & clap and moving closer & closer & closer forcing no gap between the couple and make them kiss.

And then, there you go!

And Sarah & Janus is married happily ever after!

&.b.t.w. – Writing this post makes me thought of the wedding ceremony here in Malaysia. Many people have opted to simplify the tradition as some might be time consuming. I wonder if this would be ‘healthy’ down the road? I’d like to have a beach wedding for my registration of marriage while traditional Chinese wedding ceremony on the actual day. Having tradition captured in photographs will last several generations I guess showing the future generations our root, we might make it into the history text book 100 years later too. lol~ What do you think?

&.&.b.t.w. – Just came back from shooting a beautiful beach wedding at Kelantan. I have never expected Kelantan to have such a BEAUTIFUL beach, sky, and natural scenic. The beach and the stars are mesmerizing, I could stay there forever at the beach. Look at the milky way I manage to capture at 1am, here. I’m really thankful to be able to photograph the couple who entrusted me and leading me to explore the other side of Malaysia which I might not get to visit this lifetime. Saw a comet too but I just wanted to thank this universe for being this beautiful.

A Punjabi wedding was one that I never photographed before among many kinds that we could see in Malaysia. Finally, I get to experience one through the engagement and wedding of Devina & Sandeep and there are three things that is vividly imprinted in my mind until now which is the color, the hugs, and the music! The music is very infectious, even you don’t understand the language, you’d feel like dancing with the guests especially those with quick beats by the Dhol instruments! Looking forward to experience more of Punjabi culture in soon future and this post I’m sharing is the engagement of this couple.

&.b.t.w. – Guess I’ve worked quite hard for the first quarter of 2012, will be away few days for a getaway to Sabah end of this month! Looking forward to see the beautiful scenery that I’m able to get there.

&.&.b.t.w. – Joan is currently at Taiwan attending weeks long professional styling workshop which would leverage on her skills and knowledge, her spirit of learning new things is respectable. I’m planning a learning trip for myself this year too, going to learn something that’ll make me a better photographer and artist.

Today came a surprise while I was working on my daily routine as usual around late noon. My monitor screen was kinda shaky, then my chair…I put some force on the table with both hands, still feeling it, whole body. I looked around, the stand fan seems to move a bit but it should be normal cause it’s a running fan(I supposed?). Then, hey.. the jeans on the door is kinda waving gently and say hi to me. Tried to stand, a little dizzy, sitting down, feeling the shake too. So I shouted over my Twitter & Facebook to see if I’m the only one feeling it.

Well, it’s all over Facebook already people are shouting “Earthquake!”. The shake I felt holds for about 1-2 minutes even though I’m on ground floor. Imagine those in high rise building must have felt an even stronger impact. What’s a big fuss about it you wonder? I personally had only felt being shaken once, which is the Christmas night on year 2004 at my house – body moving up and down a little bit and the next day Tsunami hitting many places including Penang in a surprise the next day morning. This round, I was feeling being moved up and down, back and forth, left and right. Although it’s a subtle one(but stronger and longer duration compared to year 2004), suddenly fear came in as I really don’t know what is happening and what to expect, mind turned blanked.

Another strike of shake follows about an hour later. Google brought me to the info above from this website. Guess what, there are 22 earthquakes occured at the time I’m writing this around the orange ball area for today alone! Picture above only showing 18 when I did the print screen. The two red balls are the high magnitude ones that I felt this noon if not mistaken, all orange balls are the earthquake occurring today alone. Only one word to describe how I felt, “EERIE”. In a single day, over roughly the same area, there could be 20 earthquakes occurring. This is something very new to me and suddenly felt that how helpless we are if mother nature decided to go against us.

Just wanted to jot down this incident like a diary and hopefully everything and everyone will be alright. The ‘shake’ might have awaken some of us. What you wanna do when still alive that added meaning to your life? How you wanna be remembered as a human being when you are dead? I wanna hold one principle till the day I die, I don’t wanna live with regrets. How about you?

&.b.t.w. - I am having goosebumps revisiting the earthquake map. 58 of them happening within 36 hours, can’t imagine what will happen if most of them are of high magnitudes… I pray for mother earth to recover.

As the name suggests…. I’m not selling ice cream, if you read this shout out below from my Facebook.

But hey, there’s some truth in this! I don’t know why but there’s a rush in me to have my site revamped to a newer look and I decided to put a week time to really going for a transformation. Having need to work on my usual stuff like shooting, editing, customer service thingy, I’m squeezing in time to make this happen.

I thought it would be easy but I was wrong, encountered whole lot of problems, bugs, and time constrain. That explain why it’s a day late opening to the public than what I expected. Luckily am able to go through all despite not an IT or designer guy but there’s 5 nights I worked till 5.30am – this is the time my eyes were so watery cause tired & sleepy. LOL~ The term simple but not easy comes into play, I initially didn’t thought it’ll take so much time from me. The whole site looked fairly ‘simple’, eh?

Let’s talk about what’s new here for this site now. The whole color theme & design is inspired by Cold Stone Creamery ice cream that I get to taste in Singapore recently and my iPad, the objective is to make the site user friendly and all content is easy to navigate around – clean, simple, happy mood.

Apart from this, something that I’d like to introduce is Pinterest to readers here – the red P icon located at the bottom left of every blogpost. It’s a ‘online pinboard’ service for you to organize what you like, for an instance, wedding images. I’ve just registered an account for myself, really easy via Facebook or Twitter.

Another time wasting social thingy you wonder? I disagree. Imagine you’re in a static traffic jam, waiting for meals to come or rail looking for wedding ideas through your mobile, if you can pin only those photos you like that inspires you without needing to worry where to save the image, what folder to create in the phone or computer later, it actually saves you time. You can follow someone with that aesthetic or artistic sense that is similar to you too and repin what they like to your own board. I am looking forward to pin more FOOD!

Guess I wouldn’t need to explain much for navigating around this site, they are really intuitive now in my opinion, things that I need to worry now is to add even more content to the blog :p How do you like the change? Let me know.

&.b.t.w. – Google’s April fool prank yesterday is cute.

&.&.b.t.w. – It’s so sad to know Cold Stone Creamery can only be found at Singapore but not Malaysia. I love the strawberry cheese cake ones, the texture and taste is heavenly! Anyone knows where to get in Malaysia or even Penang I wonder?

I was, indeed an active flute player for the span of about 8 years, ended few years back before I touched the DSLR. Recalling back, it is still a huge pain having to decide to give up music for my tertiary education due to some personal and financial concerns I have written in a personal blog post before. I missed the time performing at public, hearing applause and “encore!” from the audience, rehearsing in orchestra every Friday at the P.Ramlee place which would flood every time it rains heavily, tuning “A…” with the orchestra(if you know what I mean), and joining fellow musician friends for supper after that. Been several years now since I get to catch up with them as my time is mostly the opposite.

Getting back to this post, this gentlemen that I photographed is a good friend I knew since high school and we joined the same school band and orchestra. Am happy for him cause he gets a place in the NUS music conservatory which I drooled all over few years back as it’s one of the top music conservatories available in Asia and entry to this music school is very, very competitive. He will be performing for his graduation recital this April, or in other words, I’d call it the ‘final exam’ just before he graduates. Students will have a sort of booklet with a profile picture of them together with the instrument and this is what I’m doing for him. It’s kinda awkward now for me to meet fellow musicians cause what I’m holding now doesn’t really make music, unless it’s considered a “percussion instrument” with the help of a speaker. lol…

Now, believe me. This whole series were taken in Penang and this beach of the first photo is really that beautiful and clean when we were shooting. Happy Friday!

&.b.t.w. – This instrument is called the Bassoon. Good ones were made from Maple wood which if not mistaken, is getting rare. So this piece of ‘wood’ cost a car and would crack in places too hot/dry/cold.

&.&.b.t.w. – I want to save money to buy a good handmade Japanese flute, in 3 years time(I hope so). Sold mine few years back cause I have no time to touch it.

&.&.&.b.t.w. – Please visit our Page this month(March 2012), I’ve pinned something on the top of it. Need you guys’ inputs for a giveaway to celebrate our second anniversary!

&.&.&.&.b.t.w. – I wonder if I could make a living playing flute during a wedding reception’s march in. Any takers, brides?! :p

&.&.&.&.&.b.t.w. – How I wish to have a decent profile picture of me with the flute…taken professionally.

Did this series around Chinese New Year of year 2012 where a local garage in Penang – Chan Brothers would like to do a night shooting session having models with oriental attire & nice cars in their garage. Am honored being invited to shoot this assignment and all the oriental attires were sponsored by Keith Kee Couture for this shoot.

Was initially curious what I’m able to create with models, cars, oriental attires, and shooting at night in a garage as I have yet to encounter all these elements to meet at once before. The process was real fun, kept on trying to create what I think looks good using multiple Nikon flashes to light the subject. Here you go, some of my favorites for the session!

&.b.t.w. – Watched “This Means War” recently and it’s seriously funny & awesome! Those of you who loves romantic movies or comedy for good laughs, it’s a movie you won’t want to miss. My face went hot in an air-conditioned cinema hall from laughing.

&.&.b.t.w. – I’m thinking of celebrating our MTS second anniversary with a giveaway. Collecting inputs now and what you’d like us to giveaway? Comment below or drop us your thoughts in Facebook this month.

I guess this entry will fit today nicely. Never thought that I would have the opportunity to witness a real 50 years golden wedding anniversary, am real lucky enough to shoot one on last Christmas.

Dato & Datin Chuang are two active person in the field of education, that explains why I met many teachers and headmasters that I knew or taught me before during my primary and secondary school time. 50 years of wedding life makes no exception to being able to touch people in the heart from Dato Chuang’s speech about their love life. I have never heard one wedding speech from a wedding of 50 years long but am certainly impressed that it moves me.

You won’t believe me but the thing that I find it real shocking from the speech is that Datin Chuang never said “I love you” to her husband before approaching their 50 years of marriage. Dato Chuang mentioned in his speech that he used to try a lot of ways to coax Datin Chuang to say it but he never succeeded. Until one day in November 2011, she wrote a short note to him(the photo below ) saying, “I have no regrets marrying you, I love you.”

I guess, it could only be felt by heart but not being able to describe with words on how one feels for being able to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary, seeing their child having own family and grandchild growing. This celebration was actually a surprise planned wholly by the children without their parent’s notice, one grand concert-scale-alike celebration at Pisa in Penang. Beautiful & heart warming.

&.b.t.w. – If the saying is right about end of the world, I do hope I get my Valentine before the earth explodes.

&.&.b.t.w. – Girls, I’m curious on what is the triggering point that you said “Yes” to that relationship? Comment below and share with us

It was the first day of 2011, when iPhone in the whole wide world have problem with the alarm. Lucky that it all went good here with not much hiccups. Despite being in Klang, I felt at home cause people here speaks Hokkien even though the accent is different than Penang’s. I find it interesting to have a Christmas tree in a wedding day. See the shot below, it’s so rare you get a view like this!

One year is coming, since I last shot the wedding of Joshua and Wendy. Joshua is actually a photographer too who shoots wedding, he has a nice aesthetic sense and a good taste in picking music which I really adore based from his work and a video he prepared on the wedding day. He found me through an online directory where he also advertised in. Well, sometimes your competitors need to hire you too. hehe.. Kidding, we’re cool!

Both Joshua and Wendy are very kind and nice couple from how they treat and talk to people, I have a peaceful feeling every time seeing both of their faces and smile. Happened that this wedding has a lot of photo opportunity thanks to the people and environment, I’ve created a shoe shot with some blings that says ‘I DO’ which I really love until today, looking forward on creating my next best shots in 2012 and the following years to come. Before I go, Joshua sang “Stand by me” with his ‘Heng Tais’ via the a Capella way, you can see from the sameday slideshow done for them here.  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone of you!

&.b.t.w. - For 2012, I hope that I can be a 60% artist and 40% of business person. I want to focus on solidifying a style or way of creating images that is unique to myself. Of course, need the 40% business side so I won’t starve!

&.&.b.t.w. - I hope to shoot more at places I’ve never been to out of Penang or even Malaysia on 2012. New places means new problems to solve and that leads to new inspirations!

&.&.&.b.t.w. – 2011 has been a great great year. We are blessed with a lot of very kind clients and our total sales grew a +139% compared to year 2010 when we just started out. Thank you so much for your support! You know what, even by simply giving us a LIKE for a blog post would have turned to an opportunity for us to be known by your friends that could be our prospective clients. Can’t thank all of you more with all the supports given to us!

&.&.&.&.b.t.w. – Placed an order of 5 books from Amazon. I think it’ll be my Christmas present for myself. What you get for your Christmas?

Shot the wedding of Li Ling & Chang Chian this early November that happens across Penang & Klang within the same day & before I was admitted to hospital due to Dengue just not long ago.

Being hospitalized got me thinking and made me start questioning myself what I am doing for the past 2 years and why I’m doing so… Why do I want to risk the rest of my life with a career I’m not sure whether it could last good? Why do I want to bear such heavy responsibility each week? Why do I want to go through hectic ‘competitions’ among so many other photographers out there? Why do I have to stress myself so much physically and mentally every week? Is it all worth it?

Seriously I don’t know and maybe I won’t even know this life time, there’s no guarantee in life too. Perhaps not everything in this world could be explained logically or we would know the true worth of something before we start doing it, career or relationship wise for an instance. I’m seeing what I do now like raising my own ‘child’, our parents don’t question whether is it worth it to have us on earth isn’t it? Maybe I’m thinking too much during the time being hospitalized but it’s good that I am thinking instead of feeling comfortable on what I’m doing. Just feeling wanted to voice out a bit cause sometimes working alone most of the time is really… not easy.

The shot below was an applause by the bride just after the same day slideshow ended. This photo alone means a lot to me, for the effort put on to the whole event and ensuring the slideshow could be played on time etc. It feels awesome to be appreciated I’m glad both Li Ling & Chang Chian love the show I put on the screen and there’s lots of laughter thanks to the group of very fun Heng Tais that make the slideshow a joy to watch! Enjoy the show below.

&.b.t.w. – My Dengue was caught when I’m at a car park warming up the car. The car door was opened only for seconds then there’s more than 30 mosquitoes inside! So, be careful you guys.

Yoke Sun & Wee Han are from KL and Johor respectively but both kinda met & knew from a basketball tournament in the same engineering factory they worked in Penang. How small a world could be?

Being a wedding photographer is really an interesting occupation as I get to know everyone’s love story whether they like it or not. lol. Seriously, not for any other purposes but just in hoping that I get to know more about them in the shortest time possible while producing photographs that tags nearest to the couple’s real self.

Something worth mentioning is that Wee Han is an awesome hubby many girls dreamt of cause he loves to cook! He even made me and Joan some nice sandwiches when we were there for the makeover early in the morning. Now here’s my favorite picks for their Love Diary session done wholly in Penang and with Sol Cover‘s dinner gown. Have a great great weekend ahead everyone!

&.b.t.w. – The first shot was not a sunrise but a ‘Flash Rise’ with Joan’s help. Cause when we start to shoot, the sky was actually gloomy and rained a bit too, that explains where the rainbow comes from.

&.&.b.t.w. – I am inspired by Wee Han’s new Honda Insight’s huge rear boot space. Thus tried to create the last shot. They looked very happy but the fact is, we trial and error for a couple of minutes to squeeze them in + having the head angled right + triggering my flash on their hands + keeping them happy in the boot. Applause to the couple!!!

&.&.&.b.t.w. – We did an online contest namely All About U + U recently. Today is the last day of voting(with Likes), hope that some of you could help these participants to win a prize from us. Simply go here and vote for your favorite contestants. Thanks!