Here’s a showcase of a most recent summer shoot from Berlin.

If you’re interested to have your pictures taken in Berlin, email me: mindyshoots@gmail.com

Visit http://mindytan.com/blog for more updates.

A Photo Story has been in the wedding industry for 8 years and it is time for a major change. I first started the wedding photography business shooting with film for my very first wedding assignment, and have since moved on to become a digital convert due to the many advantages digital photography has to offer today.

In a moment of reflection, I came to realise how unimportant the medium is. What is most important is still the feeling one experiences when looking at a photograph.

Love should be simple.

“I love you and you love me; and we live happily ever after. muack! muack!”

xoxo,

George

www.quietshoes.com/

“let the pictures do the talking.:)”

jessica in embrace, fuji colour negative film, 2011

On the 5th of April, the Wedding Photographers Network (WPN) will embark on our inaugural retreat. Over the years, we’ve been talking about heading out of Singapore for a collective overseas trip, to re-charge, re-fresh and re-treat ourselves.

So as the stars would have it, we will be taking a journey via the KTM railway line through Malaysia, where we will be documenting our trip armed with backpacks, cameras and our mobile phones. Very little about the trip has been planned apart from the route and the train stops. And we’re looking forward to exploring sites along the KTM line with brand new eyes.

We also plan to update our Facebook page live, by streaming updates via wall posts, Twitter, Foursquare and Instagram. We’ve never attempted something like this before, so we’ll see where the wonders of technology will lead us.

As part of our hope to return something to the photographic community, three photographers just starting out in the wedding industry will be joining us for the trip. These three photographers were shortlisted from a portfolio review and interview session, from a call-for-submission from the online photography community. Their train tickets and lodging for the trip have been fully sponsored by the WPN.

But that is not just it, coming along for the journey will also be the cinematographers from Ichiro Films. The awesome guys from Ichiro Films will be joining us in exploring and documenting the railway trip.

We are looking forward to the journey, so come along for the ride on our journey along the KTM railway via Facebook from the 5th of April. See you then.

For couples who are keen to do a shoot in Rome in April 2011…do drop me a mail at will03@williamchua.com for more details.

A Prosperous and Happy Lunar New Ear!

The number of threatened shark species listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List has increased 8 folds in the mere span of just 11 years. Three shark species (basking shark, whale shark and great white shark) were listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 2006. By February 2008, it was announced that 9 new species of sharks, including the once common scalloped hammerhead, tiger, dusky and bull sharks, are to be added to the IUCN Red List’s categories of species at global risk of extinction.

The reason for this dwindling population of one of the most ancient creatures on Earth can be attributed to the voracious demand for sharks’ fins in Asia. The sharks’ low rate of reproduction and their long maturity periods make the shark population impossible to catch up with the rate at which the sharks are killed.

And it is for this reason that all the photographers in WPN are offering a credit of S$200* for clients who consciously take sharks’ fin soup off their wedding banquets menu. We would like to propose to our clients in replacing sharks-fin soup with alternatives that are equally popular, for example; a shark-fin-less ‘Buddha-Jump-Over-The-Wall’, which is a melting pot of high-quality abalone, scallops, mushrooms etc. (KC from Tinydot had this delicious dish at his own wedding banquet more than seven years ago and it was still being talked about by his friends even today).

We at Wedding Photographers Network (WPNetwork) strongly believe that if an animal species is being endangered, we should do our part and stop killing that species for food. What we take from nature, we must give back.

Even though we are merely a small group of individuals, we all share the love for our natural environment and its protection. We want to do our part in making sure there are enough resources to sustain our children and the future generations. And so we hope, with our little gesture to encourage couples and families to take Sharks-fin soup off their wedding banquets, that we might be able to affect a cultural change in time to come.

Suggested Articles:
WWF Hong Kong Shark Fin Initiative:

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/pelagic_sharks/?UprojectID=HK0042

Oceanic Defence – Stop Shark Finning
http://www.oceanicdefense.org/campaigns/stop-shark-finning.html

*Terms and Conditions:
1) S$200 credit only valid for full Chinese wedding dinner that do not serve Sharks-fin dishes.

4) Valid for bookings made from December 2010 for new sign ups up to 31st March 2011.

Emotions: AG|WPJA Q2 2010 Award

Food and Drink: WPJA Q2 2010 Award.

Check out what Dazza has to say about the awards at his blog – The one about the single tear.

The photographers are:
21st Place – Eng Hong (39East) and Yu Hsin (Tinydot)
60th Place – Wansheng (Feldberyl)

Congratulations are in order for the other Singaporean winners too!

Here are the results for 2009 – http://www.wpja.com/for_the_photographer/wpja_contests/top-photographers/