I guess my blog has been reduced to about 1-2 posts a week and most of the time its just 1 post but that is because I have been quite busy at work, multiple projects and activities to run and also weekend shoots but now I am glad to introduce to everyone, RedNinja.tv! In late 2009, when the stars and planets aligned in perfect harmony, it was then that 5 young and enterprising individuals banded together to discuss a common idea that had been brewing in their minds. The rough and sketchy idea was to bring quality, fun training camps and workshops to Asia.

After all, why should all the quality programmes by held in the US or Australia?

As the idea was birthed over various meals (we are very much Asian-foodies at heart!), it was decided that the training would focus on three areas: creativity, technology and business. With that, we began brainstorming on a name and late one night, RedNinja.tv was born.

And by we, I mean Alex Lam, Grace Tan, Jenny Sun, Jon Low and me with Mun Tzin helping us in the background.

Our first event that we are organising is not one but two events, the got Mojo? Seminar (23rd April 2010) and the got Mojo? Camp (24th and 25th April 2010). The got Mojo? camp is a highly experiential and fun weekend away at Port Dickson. It is a 2-day retreat for intermediate, semi-professional and professional photographers. The camp combines two vital elements that every photographer must master: the ability to identify their style and also the secrets of marketing your business successfully. The anchor speaker is Wiki Lee who is a famous wedding photographer from Australia.

Here are some examples of Wiki's work.















So head over to RedNinja.tv to sign up and register for either the seminar or the camp or even better, both!



Stay tuned for more updates!

After a grueling time throughout yesterday's wedding shoot, I was just asking myself how does one recuperate from a long day's work? That got to both me and Grace talking about those photographers who shoot two to three weddings in a row.

Now the story began yesterday when I was up very early for a shoot in Puchong. I dragged myself out of bed at 5ish and reached the groom's place before 6.30am. By that time I was already wishing that I had slept earlier the night before but thanks to some printer problems, that kept me up till way past midnight. Anyway the shoot went on until about 2pm in the afternoon so that would mean we have already shot for 8 hours non-stop.

During the morning shoot where we were shooting at the indian temple in Shah Alam, we had to go about barefoot and walk around barefooted on the tarred road which was riddled with small pebbles and stones (extremely painful experience). And not to also mention that it was broad daylight and the road was definitely heated up!

By the time I got back home after the shoot, I was completely wiped out and my feet were aching! I just couldn't help but take a long and refreshing cold shower and rest as much.

Now the question comes to mind, how do you recuperate from a long shoot?

I know some photographers tend to take power naps.

Others might go for foot massages.

Some eat extra energy bars.

Anyone knows a quick and easy way to recuperate some of that lost energy and aching feet? If you do know, please write them down in the comment section.

Note: This question is open to all, not just those in the photography line :)

Image by Maggie Smith - source

I actually had this post sitting in my draft post section in this blog for almost more than a week already and I totally forgot to post this up. Anyway about a month ago, I took a trip to Cameron Highlands. Now I haven't been there since 1999, so it has been almost 11 years since I last been there, I totally can't remember how it looks like.





Some images I took at a local Strawberry Farm which also had plenty of cactus for sale as well.







Then we headed to another strawberry farm with the main goal of eating strawberry and scones and we found some waffels as well.







Here is a fun fact, aside from the British army, Cameron Highlands has the 2nd most highest number of Range Rovers in the world. They even use it as taxis and shuttles to ferry tourists about.



If you do not know, vegetables are very very cheap in Cameron Highlands.



Unfortunately at this time, strawberries were not in season so they weren't very very sweet.



Nevertheless we still managed to get some yummy strawberry themed food, such as strawberry strudels.



Strawberry juice.



And strawberry white coffee. Yes, you heard that correct. Strawberry white coffee!



We got all of that wonderful food (including the strawberry white coffee) at Strawberry Moments.



After a heavy load of food, we decided to walk about our apartment area and I found some flowers and scenery about.









The drive up to Camerons was quite a tiring one with the single lane going up and down the hill and when there is a slow driver or a truck on those lanes, it tends to get really boring and slow.

I recently shot Eric and Chew Yong's wedding and usually most of the time when I shoot weddings, it would be under the Stories.My banner hence most of the images are posted there. This time, I thought I would also add them here on my blog. Here are some of my shots from the wedding.























A big thanks to Ian Chew for helping me out on that day as well.

About 6 months ago, I toyed with the idea of going for LASIK surgery. Of course it wasn't any easy choice especially when I get a lot of objections especially from my mum, my optician (duh, of course she was going to object. I would have stopped buying glasses and contact lenses from her!) but I got plenty of encouragement from quite a few number of my colleagues who went and completed this procedure with no issues.

So after checking about and mucking about, one fine day after a training session, I decided to pop by over Vista at The Curve to have a check. Mind you that about 4 years prior to this, I also went to Vista to have a check and they gave me the go ahead to get the surgery. So why was it after 4 years that I only decided to go for the surgery. Well I can say that finances is definitely one of the main reason because it wasn't cheap!

The procedure for LASIK surgery is very straight forward and easy! First, go for a round of tests. Lots of them. If you pass the test, the doctor will then recommend which surgery you should go for (this is all based on the conditions of your eye). Once you have decided which surgery you want, you can then proceed to either think about it or just schedule your surgery. Secondly, you go for the surgery and after the surgery, get 4 hours of sleep and voila! You can see clearly without your specs/contact lenses.

The first round of checks included a series of tests to determine the condition of my eye, to see if it is thick enough so that if LASIK was done, would there be enough space. There were so many tests that I completed, I couldn't remember how long it took but the after effects of these tests was that since they dilated your pupils, driving back was not going to be possible at all! Yup, so remember to plan your transportation home after your test.

As mentioned earlier, after receiving the results of your initial tests, the doctor would then explain to you which of the procedures would be more suitable for you. Luckily for me, my test results were good and I could go for any of the surgery. Unluckily for me, that means also the most expensive ones! So I was deciding to go for either the best or 2nd best. The price difference was a few thousand so the decision was quite tough! I kept asking myself, is the extra few thousand all worth it or not?

Then my mum said the most brilliant thing (I tell myself that to convince myself :P). She said, "since you only have 1 pair of eyes, you better get the best". Yup, that prompted me to unwillingly say to the doctor, I will take the best procedure out there.

So here I was sitting in the room informing them which surgery I opted for. I quickly set my appointment date and planned in my leave at work. The surgery would commence on Friday morning and they promised that after a good sleep (4 hours minimum) after the surgery, I would be able to see clearly. So me being extremely "kiasu", I stayed up as late as I could on Thursday night in order to be able to easily sleep after my surgery.

That didn't work too well because on my day of my surgery, there were a few other people who were there as well. Good thing was that a lot of people had faith in LASIK surgery but the bad thing was that I had to wait about 20 minutes for my turn and while waiting I fell asleep.

By the time it was my turn, I lied down on the chair/bed/surgery thingy and the doctor used a clamp to ensure that my eyes were open throughout the surgery. When the nurse was applying the clamp, I did feel a bit of pain an uneasiness. I was extremely nervous and I kept moving, so much so that the doctor gave me a pillow to hug in order to release some of the tension.

The first bit of the procedure after the prep would be to cut a flap on my eye using lasers. How this is done is that the lasers create a small air bubble in a circle and once that is done, the flap is removed (manually from my eye). It took the machine about half a minute to create this flap for each eye. So technically that took only a minute.

Now that the flap has been created, I moved to another chair/surgery bed and lied down there. This was when the doctor manually opened the flap to my eyes (one flap at a time). Once the flap was removed, another machine would then correct my eyes using a laser. This took about 45 seconds and it also depends on how still you can remain (it takes time for the machine to track your eye movements). So in total, the procedure for both eyes took about 2-3 minutes.

Once the machine has corrected your eyes, the doctor would then put the flap back into the correct position over your eye and voila, that is the end of the procedure. The doctor then proceeded to ask to me read the time which I could do immediately (although not 100 perfectly clear because it takes a while to get the "mist" out and also at that time my pupils were fully dilated hence not everything was perfectly clear.

After taking a quick photo with the doctor, I was checked out (took less than 5 minutes) and the nurse gave me a bag containing a pair of sunglasses, loads of eye drops (natural tears and antibiotics), surgical tape and eye protectors. I got my dad to send me home and once I was home, I put on my eye protectors and slept for about 4-5 hours.

The moment I woke up, I could see everything quite clearly except for the small side effects of halo or ring around lights. That cleared up after about a month. My eyes looked bloodshot but that was one of the side effects as well and that cleared up after 2 weeks. Every time I went to sleep I had to put on my eye protectors (this lasted 2 weeks) and every time I went out I had to use sun glasses.

Some things to note after procedures are:

• You need to wear sunglasses outside especially during the day. This helps reduce the glare as well as dust from getting into your eyes


• You need to refrain from rubbing your eyes!


• You can't play sports for a month (especially contact sports, poker games are fine :P)


• You can't swim for a month


• You need to wear eye protectors when you sleep at night (quite uncomfortable initially but you will get used to it)


• You need to apply eye drops on your eyes (side effect after the surgery is dry eyes). The eye drops come in the form of both antibiotics and natural tears

Frankly I am extremely satisfied with the whole procedure and how everything turned out very well. I now have good vision and I noticed that I see less glaring lights especially when I drive at night. To me, it was one of the best decisions I have made in my life. So much so that after I told two of my colleagues about it, they went and had LASIK surgery as well. Now one is very happy with her new vision and another colleague of mine is planning his surgery soon.

For more information, I would suggest you schedule an appointment with your nearest LASIK centre. I went to Vista at The Curve at Mutiara Damansara and the procedure I took was the NASA iLasik procedure.

Disclaimer: The opinions and story here only accounts for my own personal experience with LASIK at Vista. With every other type of surgeries, not all results and experiences are the same.

After it's inaugural launch a couple of months back, I decided that I needed to send in one of my DSLR bodies to get it's sensor cleaned. One of the big annoyances I had was that previously, sensor cleaning was a free service which Nikon Malaysia provided but recently since the 1st of February, Nikon has decided to charge for it. Anyway before I head into that bit, I was fairly impressed with the new Nikon Discovery Centre located at Berjaya Times square. A huge difference from the service office located at Menara PKNS at PJ State.

The showcase area wasn't exactly ginormous or anything but it displayed quite a fair bit of Nikon's equipment as well as had some 300mm, 400mm and 500mm lens mounted on tripods available to be tested out. I could spy on several taxi drivers sitting by their cars having a smoke and they never suspected a thing. It's a pity the lenses didn't reach any of the adjacent buildings but hey, I guess this is one of the few times I ever get to touch one of those huge lenses.

Anyway, back to my purpose of heading to the new centre was to inquire on how long is the current queue it would take to service my cameras which I intend to send them in as well as send in my D700 to have it's sensor cleaned. Now you must be asking me why would I need to have it cleaned since it had a sensor cleaner in it as well. Well I kept seeing spots in my viewfinder and hence that sort of annoyed the hell out of me.

Upon arrival at the service desk, I was asked to pick a queue number. Now that was a surprise as I was the only person in line. But processes are there for a reason, I know, I implement processes in IT organizations so I do know how effective it might be. The moment I picked the number, it was already my turn so I brought my cameras to the desk and informed the agent that I wanted to have my sensor cleaned and inquired how long it would take to have my cameras serviced.

At that time, she informed me that it could take 7-10 working days so I needed to plan in my time so that I don't have any shoots at that time and send in my cameras for a thorough servicing. Back to cleaning my sensor, I saw a notice there in regards to the charges and at first I saw a price of RM20 charged. Upon further inspection, I noticed that RM20 was to be charged for cameras which are still under warranty. All I know that, in order to clean the sensor for my D700, it would cost me RM80. That was the price I paid.

Oh well, I guess ever since Nikon has outsourced their services to Futuromic, there has been definitely a lot of good praises about their quality of service. Good things don't come cheap. Not too annoyed by it, frankly I was glad it took them only 20 minutes to clean it. Now I can really consider getting a sensor cleaner myself and clean my own sensor the next time!

p.s. Even after getting my sensor cleaned, I kept seeing dust in my viewfinder only to find out that the dust is located in the viewfinder and not on my sensor. Just a point to note, the Nikon Center at Berjaya Times square can't clean the viewfinder and they asked me to go to the Nikon Service Center at PJ State.