In conjunction to its multi-million dollars campaign to rebrand Oriental Hotel to Mandarin Oriental, the hotel organised a competitive photo shootout on a saturday morning for 10 shortlisted photographers. I was one of them, and the competition was real-time and it was from 830am to 230pm.

It was very challenging because we had to conceptualise, plan, and execute within the given time. as always, the execution is always the "easy" part....it's the conceptualisation that takes far longer time. We the photographers basically just dispersed after the briefing and we were seen jostling and hiding and crawling amongst the hotel guests, all over the hotel.

Frankly speaking, not all photographers know what to shoot from scratch, without direction from 3rd party, and without a clear agenda. I am sure many seasoned photojournalists can testify to that. Many times, the photojournalists were sent to cover certain events, only to find them a non-event. However, we still "die die" have to document the most interesting aspect of it. That's how we were trained.

I sort of miss those adrenalin rushes after leaving the newspaper. Hence, this competition kind of brought me down memory lane and evoked the sense of desperation so common in my newspaper days.

I don't know the rest of the contestants, except for Bob Lee, a well-recognised name in the field of local photojournalism (He is currently the chief photographer at MyPaper).
At least there was some kind of support from a peer.

The other photographers came well-prepared (too prepared, in my opinion). Armed with an arsenal of lenses, tripods, medium format digital backs, and even strobe lights and models to boot. The theme of the competition "Moments at Mandarin Oriental", and even though there might be a possibility that the hotel could just be hoping to get some nice interior shots for its publicity use, I decided against following that route and stuck to my own interpretation of "Moments".

The results of my labour were as follows:

1st prize "Greetings....Rain or Shine"


The bright red cape of the bellhop struck me. It was a gloomy and rainy morning, and he was seen holding an umbrella and waving to the taxis coming from the main road. This seemed like going out of the way to help the hotel guests, so I thought he might be a good subject. So basically I just asked him to hold the umbrella and re-enact what he did just now, albeit at a chosen spot where I could see the hotel's "fan" logo, the sculpture in front of the hotel and him. Graphically, it looks nice; story-wise it shows him as caring and helpful, but personally, the fact that it was posed didn't go down too well with me.

I was a bit surprised it won 1st prize. I guess it's because it's a bit different from the rest of the entries as I didn't see any other photogs actively photographing the bellhop.

4th prize "We Worship Excellent Service"


The buddha carvings on the wall of the hotel tell something "oriental" about the hotel, and that piqued my interest in exploring this detail. The figure on the wall looks like he is praying, and so I choreographed (yes, I know) another move that resulted in the above image.

My personal favourites hardly got a mention.

"Getting Ready"


"To Be Continued..."


I quite like the last picture because as much as I found the art pieces interesting, I didn't know how to photograph it. Just that moment, a group of early risers who were gathering outside the cafe for their breakfast seemed to blend in well with the art. i quickly snapped one frame and right after, the dynamics changed and I couldn't get another shot like that again (truth be told, I didn't have the patience to wait for another group lah).

It wasn't the feeling of winning that perked me.
It was the feeling of being able to conjure "something meaningful" out of "nothing" and a good throwback to my old ways that made this win one to savour.