A weekend of consecutive wedding shoots, of a couple of experiments, of the champagne cork hitting my forehead, and a weekend of satisfaction.

It's also a weekend of missed opportunities because my wife told me my 17-month-old daughter can increasingly string 2 words together in a conversation, or a monologue (sometimes we can't tell the difference). For example "sit....bus", "Aunty.....wipe", "read...book". I am happy that she is growing up healthily and we never give her any pressure or force her to do things she doesn't like.

However, there was one incident that troubled me a bit. Last month,she was at her gym class (not exactly gymnastics, but the toddlers get to sing, run, jump and learn to be independent and confident through some physical activities) and was interacting with one of the boys there. They were of the same age but my daughter has always been the "smaller" one in stature. She was able to identify and said "toes", "knees" and stuff, and I think the father of the boy was mighty impressed. Sadly, I think the pressure and competitive streak got into him and he said to his son:"Quick, son! What's that? Say it. Don't lose out."

I thought that was totally unnecessary and if he is going to grow up getting compared to everyone else, I think his childhood will be quite sad.

Come on. Give them a break!

June 16/2007

This is HOT from the press.
Cillian & Chez got married at Burkhill Hall in a simple and intimate ceremony.
They are happy clients of Angels Atelier whom I am proud to display my sample album with. I think they make great-looking gowns and Wendy (the boss) is so friendly and easy to talk to.

It was a rather tiring day because I didn't get to rest during the break.
Nontheless, the opportunities to make good pictures presented themselves and that really kept my energy level up. I'll be going to JB on Sunday (which is in a few hours' time!), so I reckon I might not have time to update my blog soon enough.

Here it is.

It's always a good feeling when my former wedding clients come and look for me to take more photos of their "new" or extended families. In this case, Karen and Thio have been married for more than a year, and they have added Cookie, a spritely Golden Retriever who is a testimony of their love. We had a fun time at Punggol end, but none more than Cookie, who had a splashing good time.

Both Paolo & Yiting live and work in Los Angeles and have had their wedding held in the states before they flew back to Singapore for the traditional Chinese tea ceremony and dinner (Meritus Mandarin). That didn't stop us from having fun in sunny Singapore though.

Just returned from a 2-and-a-half-day workshop conducted by a world-class wedding photographer based in US (see www.josevillaphoto.com). He actually flew 18 hours to this tiny island and conducted this workshop to a select group of wedding photographers who are serious about taking their business to the next level.

Even though his style of shooting is different from mine, that doesn't stop me from being able to learn from him the business side of wedding photography.

More importantly, I finally got to meet some of the finest wedding photographers in Singapore through the workshop. The networking and the sharing sessions certainly are worth the ticket prices alone.I sincerely hope this community can grow and progress on a platform that is competitive but not combative, and at the same time to mature with the vision of promoting wedding photography in Singapore.

This is all made possible courtesy of the Wedding Photographers Network (www.wpn.sg) and thanks to Gilbert, Eadwine, Kate, Kuang, Eng Hong, Gary, Aloycius, Lawrence, Gabriel, Wan Sheng, & Jose Pang for the wonderful sharing. Looking forward for more.

here are some of the shootout pictures I did at Changi beach for the workshop. It's interesting to have a group of us shooting the same subjects and marvel at the various angles that other photographers captured. The difference in style and vision become quite apparent.