I always wondered who started the term "the Monday Blues", even after searching through Wikipedia, there hasn't been any entry on it and yet I am somewhat curious how the term came to coin. Maybe its because I got a latest dose of mystery cum adventure in the form of Dan Brown's latest book, "The Lost Symbol", which made me realised that I have been taking a lot of things for granted.

One of them is being the way I do things. How many times have I ever given my 110% in anything that I have done? Truthfully, I find it extremely difficult trying to perform at a 110% in all physical, mental and spiritual context. Even if my average is at say 75%, an increase of 1% may or may not prove significant, but in actual sense, the end product can have many leaps and bounds.

In truth, I am slowly coming to terms that in life, there are certain things that we take for granted, that we tend to procrastinate, that we tend to just shun off for another time. There are things that we take up, only to know that it hinders us from our actual goal. If you ask me now, what is my goal in life, my answer would have been the same 10 years ago. "No idea", "get rich?", "don't need to work ever again", seems to pop into my mind but apparently it doesn't work just that way in life. I realised that everyday is an effort, an effort to find oneself, an effort to realise what I am and what I can accomplish.

Over lunch, I had an interesting conversation with my colleagues in reference to the show, "Yesman!", starring Jim Carrey. It was a show about a guy who usually said "no" to things in life having suddenly have to say "Yes" to everything. It changed his life tremendously. So how many times is it that we said "no" to things when it should have been a "yes"? Okay, here comes the twist. How many times have we said "yes" to things when we should have said "no" instead? I have a feeling the latter occurs more often.

A good example was over the week, I said "yes" to so many things that it left me utterly exhausted. But what did I get from saying "yes"? Quite a fair bit as well. I watched my first orchestral performance at the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. On the other hand, I gained a bit of weight from eating too much at California Pizza kitchen instead as there was just too much food on the table.

Right now, I've got about 5 more days before I have an important meeting to discuss over my annual review. I definitely need to map out a path for myself but I have been procrastinating it for way too long. Maybe its time I took that extra 1% and channel it to what my goal is.

So, have you set your own personal goals and development plan? In your career? As a photographer? As a parent?

Don't wait, lets start working on it.

p.s. I still can't find out where the term Monday blues came about especially when we have cultures where the first day of work does not begin on a Monday!

Both Colin and Lucille hailed from Klang and I thought that since they were already there, why not take a drive down to Klang and shoot their portraiture session over there. I had to thank munZ a lot for this shoot because she totally helped me by showing me the way around (she had a recent job at Pulau Ketam) and of course, helping me lug my equipment about (its not that bad, my camera bag now has wheels!)

We started the day taking a couple of shots about the jetty area with plenty of sun light from what I thought would be a torrential downpour.











And after lots and lots of praying that it wouldn't rain, the clouds came in fast and the raindrops started to pour down. Of course that didn't really stop me from continuing on with the shoot and using what ever we had available.







I even managed to sneak in a couple of individual shots of the each of them.



Man, I really thought that Colin looked pretty macho here in the shot below.



After the rain stopped and right before we were heading home, there were some new perspective of things especially with the absense of rain water.





I had a lot of fun that day shooting the two of them as well as experiencing that part of Klang. I even saw some interesting location to shoot in the future as well but it is a very long drive there.

By the way, Lucille is also an event manager and a freelance designer. Do check out her blog here at http://www.lucillejoyce.blogspot.com/.

As my usual habit of gobbling down food in a rather quick manner, I managed to get a little bit of spare time in between training sessions and since today was a significant event in the Nikon world, I was not surprised by the announcement of the new Nikon D3s as well as the new Nikon 85mm DX f3.5G VR Micro lens. If you want to know more about these products, there is a brief hands-on review on the Nikon D3s over at dPreview.

 

What actually caught my eye was this review of the already released 70-200mm VRII lens by Cliff Mautner. I was amazed by the performance of this lens and so far after being bogged down by minimum focusing distance and slow autofocus on my already older 80-200mm lens, this is definitely very tempting but alas my ROI for this still prevents me from even having the slightest consideration of getting this lens. Maybe in the future, who knows, but of course, I have other priorities greater than just the usual gear lust.

Anyway, I would recommend heading over to  Cliff Mautner's site to check out the stunning images he took at night at 1/10th of a second to prove that the VRII's capabilities are that good. It includes also the 100% crop for those of you who are pixel peepers.

Ok, its almost time to prep for my exam later. Yes, I am currently sitting for my ITIL V3 certification right now.

Press releases from Nikon Malaysia

• Nikon D3s


• Nikon 85mm f3.5G VRII lens

I learned some invaluable tips over the weekend especially when I was working with the Wedding Story team capturing a wedding on Saturday and then later joining Ian on Sunday to shoot another wedding. I really believe that the more I shoot, the more I get to know about the whole industry and how it affects me as a shooter.

Let me try my best to relate as much as I can about what happened over the weekend.

On Saturday, I realised that Bangsar Seafood Garden is a total garden wedding paradise hidden in the midst of urban development. Seriously, the place was awesome and I have to give it to the folks who decorated the place. I will blog more about the wedding on a later date. Makes me want to really consider having a garden wedding for my own wedding.

Secondly, I learned that no matter how nicely you speak to some guest with a camera, they would take that to offense and act extremely hostile towards you. It all happened when the guest started getting into our shots during the ceremony but instead of being completely irritated, I learned that this is a good opportunity for me to think harder on composition. How can I find a good composition without compromising the moment as well.

The third thing I learned also was a result from the same guest. Imagine trying to go table to table with the couple and capturing guests and whilst you are about to capture the shot, this "guest" would suddenly appear behind you with his lens located right next to my ear taking the shot. To make matters worse, the "guest" kept bumping into my camera and pushing me whilst trying to maneuver tables and other guests. Why this was a problem for me was because the people/group I was trying to take kept looking at his camera so there were shots where they were not looking into my camera. Remember, the last thing you want to do is to get angry and cause a whole commotion. Face the fact, the other person is still a "guest" hence he has every right to do what he wanted to do. So logically, we asked if he could take his photos separately, meaning we take turns taking the shot and I wouldn't mind help set up the group for the shot. Apparently that went as well as hitting your head on a brick wall.

This was when I realised that in order to get the attention from the guests/group that I am taking, I had to be extremely vocal and in constant communication. Here are some of the things I did to gain the attention I needed.

• I directed them on where to stand even though they were already in the right spot.


• I constantly reminded them to look at my camera.


• I smiled, a lot!


• I asked them to smile, a lot!


• I laughed, a lot!


• I invited them to stand as a group


• I always told them thank you for their time


• I waved my hands around to get the attention of kids


• I made funny but yet stupid jokes

To be honest, it was extremely fun interacting with the guests and the couple as well. A valuable lesson indeed.

The last lesson I learned is that usually during meal times (say during the dinner ceremony), the couple might invite you to sit down and eat as well with other guests. Most of the time I might say no because I would rather be going around shooting or have a separately meal prepared so that I don't waste time waiting for dishes to arrive. Now, when the couple says that they want you to sit down, make sure you ask what the menu is first! Because you never know when they might just serve a whole load of soft shell crabs.....sob...

Okay, the last point might be stretching it a little but hey, I learned it the hard way.

I had the privilege to shoot both Wai Seng & Mavis a while back. They were a fun couple and definitely have a little pizazz in them. One thing I appreciated them about was that they were willing to wake up in the early morning of a weekend and still be energetic even though the weather looked threatening. I didn't manage to get the light I wanted as the clouds were overcast but I believe we all had a great time on that Saturday morning.

Here are some of the shots I took.



I wanted the shoot to be fun and a relaxed environment where both WS and Mavis can just be themselves.









I guess the shot below would probably have revealed the location of the shoot :D.



Of course we had a little bit of fun under the bridge.





One thing I got to love about our administrative capital on a weekend is that the roads are always so clear! Then again, even during the weekdays, the roads are still clear (subtly hinting and poking fun).



And out of no where, there is this interesting blue backdrop for me steal a couple more shots.



Till the next post! I've got about 5 more in draft mode ready to be churned out :)