After conference

After attending the conference, the way I view photography have changed dramastically! One of the obvious change is when I look back some of my photo and I think all of them suck! XD I began to be more critical towards photo, but my way of composition and vision is still kind of lacking, I suppose this have to come with more practice? But one thing for sure, I started to see more detail in the view finder compare to last time where I will just happily snapping away.

While this look like a normal dog portrait, this was snap without into the view finder and holding it below my knees almost touching the ground. It was one of the technique that I learned during the conference, it is a technique make you more versatile and able to come out with more interesting angle. I actually tried a few other technique that I learned from Michael; the more I tried, the more I know how good Michael is, the flash in one hand, shooting without looking at view finder and his signature panorama shoot is a skill and ability that show how much time he have spend to master it / his ability to photography it. Of course I don’t expect to be like him right after the 2day workshop, but I know what I learn from him is something that I can continue to work on.

Other than the conference, my another objective is to be able to meet up with some of my old friends from Perth. Is kind of waste that Shen Han unable to join us since he have to go back early. But indeed it was a joy to be able to meet them face to face again and caught up with how they doing in their life. I have a good time chit chatting with them and I am pretty sure I will try to caught them out again whenever I visit KL.

Creative Asia Conference 2011

Part of my 7days in KL is to attempt Creative Asia Conference, it is one of the first international photography conference that hosted in Malaysia which invite various big name photographers. Joe McNally, Michael Greenberg, Dane Sanders, Jason Magbanua, Manny Librodo, Daniel Capobianco, Louis Pang and Mike Langford, those name will link you to creative asia website which contain their portfolio information and link to their site, have a check on them if you like.

Basically this is a 3days conference which consist of photo judging, speech by various speakers, shootout within 3 photographers and award given night. It was intensive, inspirational and highly educating. But it also wasn’t for the faint hearted or for those have a DSLR but do not have any understanding with ISO, shutter speed, F-Stop etc.

Why I said that?

First and foremost, I actually submitted some of my photo to the competition, while hoping to win (which highly unlikely) but more on wanting to see where my photography skill stand, how well I am doing regard photography and how is it compare to other photographers.

 

And I was surprise to see all my photo won Bronze award! Especially if you look through all the top 125 finalist photo in real size, those photo will make you drop your jaws and may even make some of you drop photography altogether. It is that good! By the way, those photo entries doesn’t just limit to Malaysia, there are competitors from USA, Australia and some other countries, so the photo is really international standard. Go check the link if you can:

http://awards.creativeasia.tv/

The photo judging is delivered by the inviting speakers, sometime can be quiet discouraging in a way that all those photo that amazed you and wow you in so many ways only getting a score around 82 83, hardly any above 85 (silver award) and those photos that got a gold award is only a handful. But on other hand, the judge able to point out the strength and the flaws of the photo and let you know what it need to deliver a world class standard. So after the session, I learn to see photo in a more analyse way but on a flip side, all my photo sucks! XD

Speech by various speakers

All of the speakers during the conference is giving their top notch, informative, inspiration and challenging speech and some of their work is like out of this world. What I really like about them is that they don’t just share about their success, but also their failure and struggle while being humble and personnel; so photography as a profession wasn’t just about sunrise or flowery all the way. I particularly like Joe McNally, Jason Magbanua and Dane Sanders.

Joe McNally life as a photographer is really really amazing, and seeing him talk about his career as a Life Magazine Photographers, National Geography photographer and the inside story is really amazing stuffs.

 

Jason Magbanua is one of the top videographer base on Philippine, one of his trademark skill is capable to broadcast his wedding photography within a day, to be more precise is within a few hours while still producing top quality works. He talk a lot about his work, branding and marketing for videographer business.

Dane Sanders, it is a waste that he cannot make it to KL to deliver the speech. He is one of the speakers that I really like to meet, I have read his book and also some of his education video. What I can said is that he is the same person through the book, video and during the speech. So during his session he is basically having a live web seminar with us and answering question through twitter. He delivered a really inspiration speech about being unique, authentic and how to standout in a market that is really saturated.

Michael Greenberg, easily my flavour among the togs, attending his 2days workshop give him a unfair advantages among other speakers in term of impact and inspiration to me. Through the 2 days workshop, we get to know him better, the amount of knowledge and information that he gave to us is just mind blowing! He delivered a workshop not just good for you for the 2days and it will continue to linger in you for the rest of your life (provided you do what he told you) And his style of photographing his wedding is truly unique, orthodox yet classical and artistic (what a contradiction statement you may said). he is like the only photographer that don’t need to look into the viewfinder and yet able to capture amazing photo.

What I will wish or complaint regarding the conference will be having more booth regarding photographing stuffs. For whatever reason it is, the only company that is displaying is Epson with their Epson printing products. I really love to see some other products like lighting equipments, camera equipments or even books, album and etc. Then the 2nd thing is to have refreshment during the break, which will be easier for the participants to network with one another. Both of this points was also raised by other participants when I chit chat with them so hopefully CreativeAsia can look into this if they are planning their next conference.

Finally, I really like to thanks Louis Pang and his team for taking such responsibility and burden to host such an event. It wasn’t easy, it is tough and challenging, but the result is well worth the cost. While it is really tiring through out the conference, but I truly enjoyed my time through and I know many other participants shared the same views as me.

THANK YOU!!!

Creative Asia KL, Michael Greenberg workshop

Creative Asia Conference, Michael Greenberg workshop are the main reason that I decided to make my ways to KL. If you not sure about his work, you can go to www.phototerra.com, his work will astound & amazed you.
While being excited, I was also a bit of skeptical of fearing that the speaker cannot really deliver. While you can be among the top in your field, it isn't necessary mean that you can teach as well as you perform your job.  Ok, he is not those dynamic, charismatics speaker with lots of movement and action. In fact, most of the session he just sit down and talk, and answering our questions; but the amount of depths of information, though processes, how he work, and how he make use of locations bring you to the reigns of possibility to almost infinity. Putting into the facts that 15 participant can sit in his class all the ways til 6pm with minor break in between show how much we are trying to absorb from him (The class suppose to finish at 5pm)

A group photo of the participants with Michael GreenBerg, if you are from Brunei, you will realized Jason from Masamichi Studio & Sazali from Moments. Of course there are others from UK, Middle East and mainly Malaysia photographers. Great peoples to talk with!

Great time, great peoples, and great workshop, so wish that we can extended  the workshop hour. Truly enjoy it and well worth the cost. Once I have enough time I will try to show and talk more about it. :)

On the Edges

Ever went through a day or time where everything just doesn't work for you? Where thing just decided to fail on you on the critical moments?
Basically I just went through this situation yesterday. I was given an assignment to put together a photo slide to show to the congregation.What really tickle me is that while I am working on the slide, the program will constantly crush. It came to the point like it will crash almost every 10-15mins, what is interesting is that when I use my the other computer for working the slide it will also crash. =w=”
Then on the night before the actual events, the projector having communication problems where it doesn’t want to display due to weird display resolution requirements (which don’t happen often), to ensure and make myself stress free for the actual day, I spend the like 30mins to troubleshoot and rectify the problem.
Now come actual day, I setup the presentation and give it a fast trial run

• Projector – Go

• Sound – Go

• Actual slide show – Go

So everything work fine as it should be, “Great!” I thought, and go on with preparing my equipments; I am also playing as a guitarist for the day. Then 5minute before the services, I realized the projector wasn’t displaying any image with the message showing “Source not found”. Doubt and anxiety started to climb unto me. Went to the technical room, tried to restart the pc, projector, going through few ways of configuration trying to get it done. Not valid, and we are behind schedule. Thanks God that I bring the laptop with me, so I decided to use the laptop instead of the pc, bring the laptop all the way in front, unplug the cable and connect it to the laptop. WORK!
Now I need a extension cable for the laptop since the laptop battery is below 50% and I’m sure it wouldn’t be able to go through the whole session. So looking for extension cable, remember that I got one in my bag, so quickly take out the extension plug it to the wall socket. Boom! The whole electrical went down, so it turn out that my extension is faulty,run across the stage and almost fell down in front of everyone (will be one of my most embarrassing moment if that happen :p ). Finally, we disamble the extension from the CCTV in order to make room for the laptop and officially start the service.
Time for the presentation, I have run the audio cable to the patch panel so it can go straight to the PA system, it turn out that the sound cannot properly project for technical reason and I have to resolve using microphone to amplify the music. Which is definitely not optimized but I left with little choice since we don’t have time to diagnose and finding other alternative.
Through out the whole event of trouble, no doubt frustration and burden was on me, but now I looking at it, I am pleasantly surprise that I didn’t blow out. I manage to keep myself under control and resolve the issues. Of course, through out the whole time this is not a one man show, there are others doing various stuffs to keep the congregation attention and vice versa. Definitely is one heck of event that I will not forget, yet no way I want it to happen again. Well thank God that in the end every thing work fine. Now I seriously need sleep >w<

My year 2011 resolution

I think this is my first time to blog about my new year resolution. Gonna see how well I will be fulfilling all of them.

Well, Happy Year 2010 to all of you!!! Will be a challenging year and stay tune for more to come ^w^