yap’s photoblog

Today, officially I stop shooting for CDQA, the publisher of Bridal Guide (pic above), Ratu Sehari & Shaadi magazines.

The cover of Bridal Guide  vol 11 (pic above) will be the last cover I shoot for CDQA.

I started shooting for CDQA in June 2006. Three years down the road, my direction is not the same with CDQA anymore. There were some differences. So it is time for me to stop and rethink what I want to do next.

These past 3 years, there were ups and downs, but I have learnt a lot, and improved a lot, doing fashion, products & events shoots for them.

Life is like that. Nothing stays the same. People come and go. Time for me to move on.

this is the new  www.catchlights.net

Getting a good website designer is not easy. Everyone promised me the sky and the earth, but it has been a disappointing few years. Thousands of ringgit spent but I got the short end of the stick.  No matter how good the photos are, I can’t do much with a lousy website layout and design.

Finally found somebody who provided me a solution. He asked me to use templates. Thousands of templates out there. Choose one and he will help me put it up. He even helped me set up this blog.

He did not promise the Sky or the Earth, he told me what he can do and what he cannot, with the budget that I am willing to spend.

Thank you Mr. Ken Chan for your effort these past few weeks.

For those of you looking for a solution, you might want to contact Ken.

His email is ken@bluemission.com.my

(Temple in PJ Old Town, approx 6 am)

 Thanendran & Kalpana’s wedding event in November 2008 was a major change in my work flow. At that time I have just gotten our new Nikon D3 and Nikon D700. I decided to switch to shooting RAW (NEF) fully and focus on shooting more quality photos than to overwhelm clients with thousands of normal photos.

This switch was not as easy as I thought. I had to invest thousands of ringgit on higher capacity memory cards to cater to the large amounts of data. Secondly, my existing PC runs too slow when dealing with these 15 mb per photo RAW files. No choice but to upgrade to a faster PC.

But it was worth it.

The month of June is a month of change. Legalizing my photography business’s softwares was a change that I am proud of. With encouragement and support from good friend Jonathan, I finally did it.  He has been for many years telling me that I should use original stuff.

Some people say I am stupid for buying original. “Why waste money? It is the same one la.” they say.

No, it is not the same. Opening the original software boxes and installing the original stuff, being able to register online proudly is a feeling that I have never felt before this.

Now, I can confidently say, “CatchLights Photography support and use Genuine Software”

(left is Nataliya M from Brazil, right is Nataliya A from Denmark)

As a fashion a photographer, I get to take photos of beautiful women from all over the world. I also get to take photos with them. But that’s all, I will ever get.

(from left Wai Yin, Mr & Mrs Desmond Lee, Kelly, & me) in our modest 3meter X 3meter booth.

Indian Wedding Fair (30th Apr- 3rd May 2009) at Mid Valley. It is the 1st time we decided to participate in fairs to open up ourselves to the bigger market. We have been covering Indian Weddings for sometime. It was time for us to take the next step.

Here we compete with the bigger players in an open playing field. After 4 days of intense battle, our sales figures proved what we do is appreciated and accepted. Exceeded our initial targets. This gaved us the needed boost to work harder.