I plan to post this up last month but was ‘consumed’ by work, sorry about that. Have you heard of ‘Thirty Two At The Mansion‘ or the restaurant better known as the ‘Mansion 32‘ in Penang? If you have not heard of this place, it’s located just opposite the new Lexus showroom(near E&O hotel). I always wanted to visit this place, matter fact, it’s my second time visiting this restaurant after seeing so much great shots taken by fellow photographers. Almost one year ago, I was here, on the position of assistant photographer, holding studio flash/reflector for a guest photographer hired by the bridal house. That time, the beautiful scene around this restaurant and the fragrant of the food attracted me deeply! The restaurant remained great but a lot had changed in my life and I’m glad I made the change.

This round, Irene, James & I, we want something indoor and glamorous. And so, we decided to pick on this location and get the gown & coat from Sol Cover. In case you’d want to know, photo shooting is available by appointment at ‘Mansion 32‘ after you bought a food voucher from them You can also hold your wedding banquet here too. So, back to this shoot. This marks the first collaboration of Milan Teh Studio with Sol Cover for couple that I shoot. Before this, all my clients had their clothes ready for me. That’s a good case for me as before this, I imagined that it would be a really tedious process to engage gown shops or bridal shop for gown rental but our first experience with Sol Cover turned other wise. To make things short, it’s like this for gown rental:

1) Make appointment. Visit Sol Cover, take measurement & select gown/coat.
2) Before shooting day, try altered gown (lots of brides are on a diet marathon before pre-wedding shoot!).
3) Collect clothes. Return clothes.

If you may asked, the reason we choose Sol Cover because we are alike ie: based in Penang. All their gowns, designers, tailors are all under one roof in Penang. So, our clients would have no hassle engaging their service especially when the shoot and where they live are Penang based. Therefore, all your attire needs could be fulfilled here. Furthermore, if you have a specific look/theme you’d like to have for your shoot, let us know! We have Joan, which is our professional makeup artist and image consultant, she could help out on your gown selection day to help you pick the best that suit what you love and some matching accessories. The makeup and hairstyling for Irene on this shoot is all done by Joan.

By the way, the gown above is called ‘Flume of Love’, I really love the color and design personally, it matches the venue perfectly. Enjoy the rest of the series

I wonder, have everyone enjoy this blog so far since Jan 2010? I’m constantly thinking and absorbing ways to make this blog more decent from time to time. We’d love to hear what you’ll say about the experience reading this so far. Drop us a comment please I’m all ears and thank you!

Mi

Hope that everyone would have a great weekend ahead!

Mi

Also, if you would like to have a look at how the photobook of Milan Teh Studio will be using looks like, pay a visit to ILovePhotobook booth at Pisa too! I have 2 sets of Photo Diary work featured there. (Photos below are part of them.)

See you there!

Mi

The shot above is Joan doing makeup for Pei Ying in their hotel room. I was told by Pei Ying that Nilson is kind of camera shy and I did a short ‘warm up exercise’ with them in their hotel room to let them have a feel on how I work, what will be happening later on when we go out and, to make them feel at ease in front of the camera.

Both of them have very sweet smile and I really enjoy shooting for them with no problem.

High key shots of the angelic looked Pei Ying.

And then, we move on to one of the beaches along Batu Feringghi at Penang, Malaysia. Pei Ying loves blue sky, blue sea and white clouds. I told her a very cruel truth about Penang is that, the bluest sea & sky could only be found at mid-noon. She was okay with that and so we went to search for a suitable beach to carry out the shoot.

I’ve seen this kind of blue sky and sea many times in Penang but never photographed them cause the sun is REALLY too hot at this hour. Credits to Pei Ying & Nilson for being able to pose that comfortable under the hot sun. Don’t you just love the color? The shot below is straight out of camera.

After we’re done with the first gown. We hit New World Park for some Penang ‘Char Kuey Tiao‘. Next, we went to a Bodhi activity center that I really love. It’s my first time to shoot there with a bride & groom and there are a lot of photographic possibilities yet to be explored there. Thanks to a friend, See Won for bringing me to this place. Below are some of my favorite shots.

I love this shoot. Love the color and the natural expressions the most. I wanted to thank Pei Ying and Nilson for giving us this opportunity to serve them and hope that they’ll live happily ever after.

Last shot, a group photo when we sent Pei Ying & Nilson to the airport to catch a flight back to KL.

Mi

I’ll be sticking with this for quite a while by then until I find the right designer to do a design of logo/watermark for me. The larger watermark in the picture below is the latest. Thanks for bearing with me everyone!

This post is to answer everyone of you. Here(www.milanteh.com), we will only feature photos that we shoot for clients of Milan Teh Studio. We don’t have clients for Love Diary from January to March 2010 yet. You might then wonder, how about what I shot previously before 2010?

I used to work with a bridal house in Penang. Starting from the position of assistant photographer, I was then appointed and given the camera to shoot there after one month of working. Throughout my service, I dealt with a lot of glamor shoots, family portraits, baby portraits, and last but not least, pre-wedding photographs. I left(on February 2010) because the working environment there is not what I adore and I would wanna try new things and develop my own way of getting things done. However, due to copyright agreements, I am not allowed to use any photos that I have shot for that bridal house.

Wedding is one of the occasion that we spend a lot in our life time. I could understand some clients’ concern since they don’t have much sample to see from our website. Starting from today until June 2010, we are offering Love Diary-Beta. This is a special offering that lets you test run our pre-wedding photographs with the cost of one makeup & hairdo only, which is RM300.00 for couples who confirmed with us before 1st of July. We believe in getting paid for how much effort we put in every assignment.

So for this price, you will get:
1) TWO(2) one hour pre-wedding shoot from me on TWO(2) different locations.
2) Bride’s makeup & hairdo by Joan.

Interested? Contact us for more info.

Since January until now, because that Milan Teh Studio is very new to everyone, I’ve noticed that I kept telling people what do we offer and I could sense confusion among them because these information were included in different blog posts. Worry not, as I’m writing, I’m in the midst of creating a page that summarizes all our services, offerings and price. Therefore, you can easily understand what I was saying all these long. To be exact, it is the new “Services & Rates” button above.

Update: In order to get a quote for your unique pre-wedding needs, click on CONTACT US on top right of this page and we will get back to you soon. Thank you!

After being long winded previously, hope that all of you would enjoy the first set of pre-wedding photos I’m posting here, taken at Limbang, Sarawak.

*DISCLAIMER*(Both the male and female subject in the photos are not couples in real life, they were models for the purpose of this shoot only. Makeup & hairdo was NOT done by Joan.)

Mi

Next, back to this shoot. If you haven’t read our services before, this is under Photo Diary. This time, I’m hired by our very own makeup artist, Joan for this shoot. In order to get the right kind of mood for this shoot, we need the right kind of clothes, shoes, makeup & hairdo, location, and props. Makeup and hairdo was done by Joan herself. Other than doing makeup & hairdo for female clients, Joan possesses a good sense in fashion and is very good at giving advice on overall outlook(ie. image consulting). I’m glad to inform everyone that, this ‘image consulting’ service comes free of charge for clients that take both our photographic & makeup services.

Finally, I’m glad that she loves all the photos and I don’t know about all of you. Well, if any of you like the shots too, feel free to drop a comment down there. (This could brighten up her day I supposed ) Have a great weekend everyone! Hope you’ll enjoy the photos posted below. TQ~

Suddenly, the rain poured so heavily but I took the risk. The umbrella was my lighting tool, loaned to her to ‘act’ as a real umbrella. lol~

After the rain stopped, we’re very lucky to get a rainbow that goes from one road to another(one FULL rainbow!). Too bad they couldn’t fit into my lens.

Almost every time after the rain, we get a really great view of the sky during sunset. So, if you are opting to shoot great sky/sunset, go to find one after rain. You’ll be amazed

*Up next, an explanation of the way I shoot with photos as example.

During this Chinese New Year, I was hired for an outdoor family shoot at Hard Rock Hotel, Penang on the first day of Chinese New Year. My client, Pik Yoke and her 2 elder sisters are staying at different countries and it is quite a rare opportunity that all 3 of them could gather together in Malaysia at the same time.

What I thought is the most happy thing for me is looking at how happy they were during the shoot especially my client’s mother. Her mother was really happy about all 3 daughters being able to gather at the same time during this New Year. I could really feel her mother and the process of the 3 hours shoot was like having fun all the time!

As for myself, I did volunteered to shoot some pictures for my family this year. At the end of the day looking back to the pictures, no words could describe my happiness to see everyone is inside and all the spontaneous moments like how I do for actual day weddings that was captured with the camera. It’s like a gift I’m giving myself and the reward is simply, priceless. Perhaps every photographer should do this once in a while too. It’s not about how much we will earn but rather, how happy we will be.

Back to family diary, why I wanted to ‘assign’ a diary name for my shoots? Simply because I see them as a diary, when you ‘flip’ through the photos, they will evoke emotions and memories. Like wise for what I did for my clients, have a look at the photo slide show I’ve made for them at below. I’m not posting photos this round as there are too many of them that I love! Thanks to the generosity of my client, Pik Yoke, she has been very kind to allow me to put this up here.  So, do enjoy the rest of Chinese New Year with your loved ones people! Happy Chinese New Year to all of you. TQ~

UPDATE 16 Oct 2010: We are experiencing some problem with the slideshow uploaded previously and I’m replacing them with photos. Sorry for the inconveniences caused.

*Up next, introducing photo diary.

As for photographers whom their main field of focus is in human portraiture, they should have heard of the name RED PORCUPINE before.

RED PORCUPINE lives in Taiwan and he is one of the most popular professional photographer who shoots human portraiture there. Some of his photography work were published by DIGIPHOTO on 2009 in the book, ‘Portrait Photographer: Hall of Fame‘.

Possessing academic qualification of Master in Fine Arts department at TungHai University in Taiwan, RED PORCUPINE has the aesthetic ideas that are unique compared to many other photographers. From his ideas, shooting to post processing, we could easily identify his original & signature style inherited in his work.

He has once said before, the success or failure of one’s work is largely dependent on the aesthetic view of the artist themselves. In his portraiture seminar that will be held in Penang, he will share his aesthetic experiences with every participant. Also, he will help participants to explore their unique aesthetic potential. Therefore, he had prepared necessary contents and set the title of the seminar to: “Start from beauty“.

It is very lucky that with the collaborations of photoSYOK! and several organizers, RED PORCUPINE accepted the invitation to come over Malaysia for a face to face seminar to exchange ideas and share knowledge with fellow Malaysians despite of his busy schedules.

After some discussions among the organizers, below are the details of the seminar that will be conducted at Penang, Malaysia.

Date:
03 April 2010 (a)
04 April 2010 (b)

Time:
12:30p.m. to 5:30p.m.

Venue:
Evergreen Hotel – Penang, Malaysia

Fees:
RM230.00 (light refreshments will be served)

Participants:
Limited to 50 pax per seminar session.

Organizers:
Hayashi Artz.com, Sin Chew Daily, photoSYOK!!!, PhotoWalkers

Topics that will be covered in the seminar:
01 ) Selection of view.
02 ) Composition.
03 ) Lighting.
04 ) Guiding.
05 ) Selection of colors.
06 ) Spirituality.
07 ) Painterly.
08 ) Style.
09 ) Sharing on experience in wedding actual day photography.
10 ) Sharing & discussion.

UPDATE* this seminar will be conducted in Mandarin.(Chinese language)

Registration for the seminar starts now and early birds are entitled to get rebates of RM50.00 which means they will have to pay RM180.00 only. This offer valid until 28th of February 2010.

For those who are interested to this seminar, kindly contact:
a) Hayashi Lim – 012-681 2699
b) Kaye – 012-491 0909

A bit more about RED PORCUPINE.

Photos posted below are redporcupine’s work and posted with his permission on www.milanteh.com

On one hand, as the bride and groom are both photographers, they would have higher expectations to my photos than non-photographer bride and groom. On the other hand, due to the reason that they are photographer, I could try shooting style that’s different than usual freely without needing to worry whether they could accept or not because they can ‘understand’ me better from the point of view of a photographer especially for what I shot during the dinner session.

It was fun to cover the actual day of Soo Fong & Sehu, the whole event is really merry with the very sporting groom, Sehu and all the fun ‘heng-tai‘ or should I say seniors of mine, ex-Chung Ling High School boys. As for how sporting the groom is, the photo of Sehu needing to pickup a heart shaped paper from someone’s backside with his lips speak for himself. He did it immediately without any hesitation, he’s a role model for all the grooms-to-be. 

I’ve shot a lot for this wedding as I’m covering the morning session till the wedding banquet and I had hard times deciding which to blog about! Hope you’ll enjoy the photos below. TQ~

A big salute to Sehu!

I don’t know when I will get myself into trouble by sticking 1/3 of my body out of a car window but I love this kind of shot!

The wedding banquet of Soo Fong & Sehu is really beautiful. This is also my first time to put a warm gel on my flash head. I never thought that warm gel could be useful until I had a few test shots at the dinner place. Things that was illuminated by the non-gelled flash has a big difference of color as compared to the ambient light. However, by using a warm gel, the extreme ‘yellow-ness’ of the ambient light could be pulled down and balance out the color difference of my subject and the ambient light

This must be the beautiful culprit for the very ‘yellowish’ color.

When everyone was invited to the dance floor, no one turned up. To everyone’s surprise, a very young lady came and dance so happily!

Even the groom can’t resist and took his friend’s camera to take a few shots. I took 5 shots of Sehu photographing the dancing girl and ended with only 1 sharp shot. Sehu was moving real FAST!

Coming next in a few hours time, all portrait photographers must not miss. I’ll be blogging about a portrait photography seminar at Penang conducted by a well known portrait and wedding photographer from Taiwan. Do not miss out this rare opportunity!

Both Eunice & Terence are Penangites and they were married at London but haven’t got the chance to have their wedding banquet at Penang inviting all relatives to come by. It’s really an honor for me to be trusted & appointed as their official wedding photographer for covering this memorable event of theirs and I simply love every details, from the flowers to the design of their wedding banquet and the lovely bride and charming groom.

It is a freestyle buffet dinner and the available lighting at night is really challenging to shoot at this venue. The experience I get from this assignment is priceless and I’m glad that I’ve been able to cope with all lighting difficulties I’ve met with the help of Nikon equipments shooting with Jpeg for the whole task. hehe I would like to share some of my favorite shots with all of you starting from Eunice’s makeup session until the banquet venue. TQ~

When I was shooting their wedding dress and coat, I realized that Terence’s coat has this ‘anti-theft’ thingy still attached to his coat that was bought from London. Immediately, I tell him to pose for me. haha.

Then, family members of Eunice tried hard to get rid of this piece of really hard ‘plastic’. This thing is built really tough!

Coming real soon, a full day wedding coverage of a photographer friend of mine, Mr. Sehu.