Kam Cheng Session - May 2009 at Moey's Condo.

It's been a long time since our last "Kam Cheng" session (the last one being in January last year at Sibaraku). So, a couple of us pooled together and organized another gathering last week, in conjunction with the Chinese dumpling (Bak Chang) festival. What is a Bak Chang? Well, it can be best described as glutinous rice with various fillings ranging from beans to pork wrapped up in lotus leaves and tied in a shape of a tetrahedron. Um, better follow this LINK to get a better idea....

Apparently, there's a story to this. Sometime during the Warring States period, this festival commemorates the death of a famous Chinese poet named Qu Yuan from the kingdom of Chu. This famous poet is well known for his patriotism - he tried (unsuccessfully) to warn his king and countrymen against the policy of expanding his country's economy for their Qin neighbors. When the Qin Dynasty general Bai Qi took Yingdu, the Chu capital, in 278 BC, Qu Yuan's grief was so intense that he drowned himself in the Miluo river after penning the Lament for Ying. According to legend, packets of rice were thrown into the river to prevent fish from eating the poet's body. There is another version which states that the dumpling were given to placate a dragon that lived in the river.


No, we don't make these Bak Chang to throw into the river. After the enormous sum of money the Melaka government spent to clean up the Melaka river, dumping anything of the sort into the river would probably get you a night in jail and a lighter wallet....

Anyway, back to our party. The "mastermind" of the operation was most likely Koh LS or Cho LY. Anyway, we each paid ~RM20 to cover the cost of the food. Mr Moey was generous enough to sponsor the Satay, and chicken wings were the courtesy of Mr Law.

We ate heartily, a mixture of various types of food, ranging from fried noodles, steam boat, and satay + fried chicken mentioned earlier.


After eating, we retreated to the side of the pool where we listened to some soft music and chatted, leaving all our cares behind. The occupancy of the Golden Coast Condominium was really low, with most of the units owned by Singaporeans. Since it was a weekday, you could say we practically had the entire place to ourselves.

After awhile, when things were starting to get boring, Mr Moey brought out his indoor putting set and we started to play a game, each taking turns putting the golf ball into one of the two holes. Miss all 3 tries, and you have to eat Satay (initially, everyone was rushing to eat some, but after awhile, everyone's full, so this became now some form of penalty instead!).




Having much fun, we soon lost track of the passage of time, and finally came the time for us to go home. We helped tidy up and carry down the cooking utensils (we were on the 3rd floor) to Lye Yin's car.

Well, it was truly good that we have such people like Koh LS and Lye Yin to take the initiative to organize such events, that really helped us to release some of the tension from everyday work, as well as to foster closer ties amongst working colleagues.

Looking forward to the next upcoming event then (most likely the mid-autumn festival sometime in September)!

Check out the rest of the photos [HERE]

My first Studio Portrait Photo shoot (with Sara & Deep)

Last Saturday was my first time - shooting in a Studio (what were you thinking...?).

I chanced upon a class for Portrait Studio Lighting conducted by RS Digital Station Melaka. Actually, this was the 2nd intake for the class, as the first one had already been successfully conducted in early May. Each class was made up of 8 photographers max, to avoid overcrowding and to allow for ample time for each one to shoot the models.

Upon arriving, I saw two familiar cars belonging to my Civic buddies, Hanne and Nick. OK, at least I'd have some friends in today's class.

The class was conducted by Mr Heng Ching Chuan, who seems like a really experienced photographer and is quite friendly too. Most importantly, the class was conducted in a mixture of English, BM and Chinese - to suit the wide range of audience.

We started off with some brief slides on the various flash positioning techniques using studio flash. Now this isn't your average "hot-shot mounted flash bounced off the ceiling with diffuser" technique. We had the hands-on opportunity to dismantle and fix up the studio flash units and backdrops. Didn't ask how much one of those cost, but I'm sure each flash was really really expensive.

By the way, time to introduce the models - There was Sara, local Chinese lady and then there was Deep, from India. There was supposed to be a third model, but unfortunately she was ill on that day. No matter, as Sara and Deep were very friendly, experienced models who could offer a variety of poses should the photographer lack ideas or experience (like me, for instance....). Sara had on a sweet pink outfit, that she later swapped for a black dress when we put up the a pink backdrop. Deep had a good macho physique, but was really quite friendly despite some of the "killer" look in his photos.

Heng and Hoe (also working at RS Digital) were very helpful, giving pointers on how to position the studio lights (main, fill flash, barn door snoot) to achieve various photographic effects. The flash units were triggered wirelessly using a remote trigger that was mounted on the hot shoe. Good thing was that it worked regardless of DSLR model, whether Canon, Nikon or others.

I brought along my S5 Pro, with my D200 in the bag as backup in case my sole battery was depleted. Lens-wise, I was a little under-prepared with my 50mm F1.8 and 17-50mm F2.8 lens only (and the other guys were shooting with 80-200 type zooms). Well, in the studio, you'll quickly learn that besides the unflattering barrel distortion, wide angle lenses also include much more of the background that you'd like to see (like the air con, light stand, top of the backdrop, etc.). OK, lesson learned....

I did not shoot RAW at first, as my 1 GB CF card would only store 30+ shots (A RAW file from the S5 Pro at ISO100 is roughly 25Mb). However, towards the later half of the class, I noticed that we don't exactly shoot that many photos in rapid succession, since we spent time after each shot reviewing the results on LCD, repositioning the lights, communicating with the models on poses, etc..

Deep and Sara took turns in front of the camera, and at times, both were posing together. Now, these sessions are not all girl models only - in fact, it was good to have Deep on the set to add variety to the mix. Deep was a practitioner of Yoga, so he was able to pose in some yoga stances, like the Sun Salutation, etc..

Throughout the 4 hour session, light refreshments were provided at the side table, with hot water in the pantry for a steaming hot cup of coffee or mee-in-a-cup.

After the last shots were fired, we retreated back to the classroom behind the curtains for a post-mortem session. Each photographer could volunteer to have his photos displayed up on the wall via projector for some comments and constructive criticism. The models were on the scene too, and Heng gave some tips and pointers on how some poses could be improved, positioning of the head, lighting, etc..

Well, in the end, I'm really happy to have attended this class. A good return on my RM150. There's already a plan for another photography class - this time it would be outdoors. And you can bet I'll be signing up for it soon! :)

Check out some of the photos in my small gallery on Multiply [HERE]