Continued from part 1.

The dinner reception was at OGH – a familiar place, having shot a wedding there recently… I suppose there are only so many options in Brunei. First things first, I went to get shots of the details.

7D + 50L… love how the confetti’s colours pop. The 7D’s focus tracking wasn’t perfect, but at 8fps I got plenty of usable images. Right before this I chatted to Liz and Hua to walk a little bit slower as they made their entrance… many times the couple just marches right in and it’s over before the guests get a chance to have a good look at the newly married!

The Master of Ceremonies, Donny. He did a great job entertaining us all that night.

These ladies performed a number of dances throughout the night. In fact, there was plenty of entertainment as you’ll see.

She’s a familiar face! Oh and the 135L reminds me again why it’s my favourite…

Liz & Hua enjoying some of the performances.

I can tell you the crowd loved her! :p

The couple shares a light moment – and I got a shot of the little accessories on her hair that I hadn’t noticed before.

On to the toast…

Soon after, the couple and their parents make their way to the exit in order to say goodbye to guests.

Another HUGE congratulations to Liz and Hua!

December’s going to be a busy month with two weddings, but in a way I’m looking forward to the rush. And for those that know, the “Epic” is coming…

I met Liz from a wedding I shot earlier this year where she was the make-up artist, and I’m really honoured that she chose me to shoot her wedding. Once again, I shot this wedding with Jeff, and having covered a number of weddings together now, I have to say we’re really quite a team. Check out his coverage here.

Congratulations to Liz & Hua and I wish you the very best in your life together as husband and wife!

I shot this wedding with two bodies, the 5D2 and my newly acquired 7D. Lenses used were mostly 16-35mm on the 5D2 and a 50mm on the 7D for just that little bit of telephoto. We don’t get a lot of working distance when it comes to chinese weddings!

I took a few images of their wedding invitation and I really like how these turned out. In case you’re wondering about the first photo, the invite had a heart cut-out which I used to create that effect.

I wonder if this is in chronological order from left to right, but if I had to guess I’d say the centre photo was taken first.

Liz did her own make-up, but a friend helps her put on the finishing touches for her hair.

The first attempt at this, the flowers weren’t in the frame, I just waited for Hua’s smiling face and flowers to be aligned in the little gap and grabbed this shot.

After the tea ceremony and family portraits, it’s off to the groom’s place – a 1.5 hour journey from KB to Bandar!

Upon arrival, one of the first things is to pay respects to ancestors.

Hua serves tea to a proud father.

His mother is very happy too.

A couple of quick portraits with the couple using window light. I’m quite proud of these – no fancy poses, compositions or complicated lighting setups – just simple photos of Liz & Hua on their most memorable of days.

To be continued in part 2 – the wedding dinner. Stay tuned!

Continued from part 1.

The dinner reception was at OGH. Jeff and I worked from one of the hotel’s room to prepare a slideshow of shots from the morning… Initially we had not arranged to shoot the evening getting ready part, but when the make-up artist came, I couldn’t resist but to pop over and grab the obligatory mirror shot. :p

Caryn’s brother helps her try on a couple of necklaces…

Went to get shots of the cake. Apparently it’s real – note… no artificial slot where you would put the knife into. Oh and I love that 35L bokeh.

First entrace. The shot is out of focus, but they look so happy here, it’s one of my favourites.

Caryn has a moment with her niece before they make their second entrance. If you’re on facebook, check out Jeff’s take on this shot.

Wonder what that photog in the background is taking a pic of…

The MC entertains the couple.

Hungarian Dance No.5 – the whole song! I was really impressed.

Jeff in action.

BFFs…

Congratulations once again to Elvin & Caryn! I had a great time and it was especially a lot of fun during the “challenges”.

Once again, I shot this wedding with Jeff, and go check out his coverage here. Shot with one body, my 5D Mark II swapping between 16-35, 35 and 135. Here are some of my favourites from the morning…

When Caryn saw this photo, she remarked that she could see her pores… 135L goodness.

Square crop – I’m not sure it works, but I like her expression.

Haha we got them to pose just like in the picture in the background.

On to Part 2 for the dinner reception.

The reception was at the same place as the Henna party the night before. The cake was simple, but looks great. The purple is a spotlight off to the left which added an interesting colour to it. 

The newly married couple makes their entrance. 

They look like stars walking up the red carpet. Actually Rim remarked earlier that she had requested for one, but for some reason they couldn’t do it. I “borrowed” the videographer’s light heh heh.

The groom is lifted up on the shoulders of his groomsman while the bride and the rest of the crowd cheer him on.

The couple poses for photos. I went to a different vantage point for something different and chose this composition partly to exclude the group of people taking photos of them, but also partly because I like these kinds of shots.

First dance. 135L goodness. Rim light (no pun intended) courtesy of the videographer. They look so happy!

My personal favourite. I don’t think he will ever read my blog, but thanks to Tony Hoffer from FM for providing the inspiration for this shot.

The bride and groom dance among other couples…

Cutting the cake.

Some things transcend all customs… like cake… and the arm-in-arm champagne drinking technique. 

Another fave.

We partied all night long! 

A huge congratulations once again to Rim & Ala!

The wedding day! It starts off with the bride coming to the groom’s place for something like a tea ceremony. Except it was coffee. And the groom wasn’t there either! Hmm… I must find out what the reason behind the customs are. Will update this post once I do have that info. (wikipedia isn’t any help at the moment – not that I use wiki for any serious research, I must state!) 

Not wanting to be intrusive, I stayed behind the guests and relatives as Rim made her entrance. 

Stuck my camera out in between a couple of guests and just shot blindly! That’s another way to go.

The bride poses for friends as they grab pictures of her.

Rim looked over and I managed to get this one posed shot of her. Gorgeous, isn’t she? I didn’t need to pp this one bit!

Off to the church – it’s an orthodox church.

I’m loving my 16-35L. But the next series of shots are why it’s the 135L that I would take to my grave. (if I could only have one lens buried with me…)

The groom, Ala, makes his entrance. 

Followed by the groomsmen and bridesmaids…

Here comes the bride…

The crowns represent matyrdom – marriage represents self-sacrifice and unconditional devotion. 

The priest leads the couple to walk around three times representing their first steps as husband and wife.

Preparing to make their exit…

Check out part 3 for photos of the reception!

I am back from Jordan! I’ve got pics on my facebook… 

Anyway, Jordan is not a country I would have ever thought of visiting, but definitely no regrets. It was an unexpectedly amazing experience. Petra, The Dead Sea & Ancient Roman towns – but I also got to experience a Jordanian wedding. So anyway, this series of photos are some snaps of the night before the wedding. It’s called a “Henna” night – I’ve read that originally it’s meant for girls only, but we were all invited. I didn’t set out to do this intentionally, but I think I will give this series of photos a theme – “Motion Blur”. Sharpness if overrated I say – lol or maybe it was just too dark! 

Anyway, Rim is Rena’s best friend from Uni and Ala is (now) her husband.

It was great to have met you guys and I hope you enjoy the photos – they’re something a little different, but these photos really brought me back to being there, and similarly I hope that it brings you back to those moments – the feelings and emotions that defined the day.  

Here’s Rim explaining some stuff to us on the bus. 

The yellow bus that took us to the place. 

Jordanians love to party! Practically everyone there was on the dance floor!

I like how she stands out among everyone else in the frame.

I actually took this shot at the end, but I just wanted to show a simple candlelight portrait of the bride and groom with their traditional clothes on.

The Henna… basically there’s a cake of mud with candles on it… the mud is then applied to the pinky finger, and when left over a couple of hours, will leave an orange pigmentation. The bride and groom get it, then all the single people too – it symbolises blessing of luck, joy and beauty. I got some applied too!

Lots of cameras and video!

All the guests chanting “Henna!” – blessing the married couple to be.

Photos of the wedding day in Part 2!

I’ve been neglecting my blog lately… Definitely haven’t been shooting as much as I’d like to… BUT I’m heading to Jordan tomorrow and am looking forward to a holiday + taking photos. In the meantime, the anniversaries of a couple of friends are in July and so I thought I’d post a few pictures I took of them. Congratulations to Ed, Rachel, Ken & Chris!

Edmund & Rachel, 1st Year Anniversary, Married 19th July 2008.

And welcome to the world, Thomas Teo.

Ken & Christina, 1st Year Anniversary, Married 31st July 2009. 

This is not really a review of the Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 Ai-S – so I won’t really be talking about sharpness (although it’s pretty damn sharp), contrast (great from f/2 onwards) etc etc. Just my thoughts on using this lens on my 5D Mark II. Firstly, a couple of shots of it mounted on my 5D via an adapter I got from Singapore. It fits nicely enough and there’s a little bit of play – but again, even my canon lenses move a tiny bit when mounted – certainly nothing to worry about in terms of affecting image quality. 

A little bit about the lens. It was released in 1981, so the design is older than I am. It weighs around 600 grams – feels perfectly balanced on the 5D – not too front heavy, which is the feeling I got when I used the Canon 85mm f/1.2L (don’t have that lens… I wish I did tho!). 

Why did I get it? Well, let’s just say I can’t afford the Canon equivalent right now. Got it off ebay for a pretty decent price.

A quick and dirty shot using my 40D + 100mm Macro on a tripod with available light. 

Manual aperture, manual focus with depth of field markings… 

Aside from f/1.4 light gathering abilities, this lens is all about bokeh. Wide open shot. Love the shapes – they are circular in the centre of the frame and become more elliptical towards the edges.

At f/1.4, I could isolate Rena (well, not completely) from the distracting mess that is my apartment. 

I took the lens to the yacht club – a friend of Rena’s was having her birthday party there. This was shot almost directly into the sunset… I’d say the lens handles flare pretty well.  

Blowing bubbles… 

This shot was taken at ISO 3200, f/1.4, 1/50. Nowadays with supersonic ISOs in DSLRs and IS lenses, it’s opened up a new world in low light photography – but sometimes you just need f/1.4. If I had an f/2.8 lens with image stabilizer, I could probably still take the shot – but with a shutter speed of 1/15 which would certainly have had a healthy amount of motion blur.

This lens ultimately shines as a portrait lens. Ah, back-lit portraits with sunset glow… who needs a reflector when you’ve got photoshop? 

A candid of CP and HV – I like the patterns on their dresses. ISO3200, f/1.4, 1/50 again.

My favourite shot from this lens. ISO 1600, f/1.4, 1/10. Yup that 1/10. A single low-power florescent light bulb behind her. Depth of field is ridiculously thin as you can see.

I’m still getting to use to this lens. Manual focus is certainly tough and something I’m yet to master. For static objects, live view with 10x magnification makes it infinitely easier to get accurate focus – but for moving subjects, I find that it’s not practical. Especially when trying to capture the moment, live view shooting blacks out the LCD for too long and I might miss shots as a result. 

I doubt I’d use this lens for wedding photography, which is a pity because I love the perspective, the bokeh and its low light ability. Perhaps for a portrait session or for detail shots. Even then, I’ll concede that autofocus will win out 9 out of 10 times – so I’ll use this lens when:

• It’s so dark that autofocus won’t work anyway;
• Detail shots where autofocus can be a little off if I want to focus on a point that doesn’t have a lot of contrast;
• Low light portraits, when I really want an 85mm perspective.

Ok that’s it for now – I’m hunting around ebay for more cheap second hand manual lenses. :p

Apparently it’s chinese custom for the groom to deliver cakes to relatives (and close friends?) upon announcement of an engagement. Marilyn and Allen spent 6 hours(!) on Friday delivering cakes to a number of relatives… driving all around Bandar… I can only imagine how tiring that must be. Nevertheless, that evening after dinner at Excapade, they came over to my place and there was a cake for me too. The cake, from Breadstop, came with a card you see here. 

The announcement card… the caricature of Allen and Marilyn was done in… can you guess? It should be obvious. :p

This is the back of the card, I went for an old school look to it. Super grainy and vignette+blurring of the edges. 

A couple of random shots… I was trying to emulate the look/colours that came out from the Hexar+35mm Summicron+Fuji 400 that I used at a christmas party last year. Somehow I still think the film shots look better – no time wasted post processing either! Having said that, I do not think that my Canon 35L loses out to the 35mm Summicron-M in terms of sharpness. And… I could shoot in ISO1600 – four times the shutter speed of ISO 400 film (the fastest I could find available in Brunei)… 

A group shot…

With a X-process action. Haha my red shirt really pops out here.

It’s not immediately obvious from this small size pic, but I did a comic book effect thingie here which was something interesting.

Oh… what about the cake you say? Here it is… after numerous attempts. :p Set up my flash off-camera to the right – the cake was sitting on a white chair. Ed commented that he loved the “negative space” – I like it too, but I thought I’d put a commemorative message – definitely not as artistic, but maybe it’d make a nice greeting card – what do you think?