On Valentine’s Day evening, I headed off to the Sutera Harbour docks to go on a ‘romantic sunset cruise’…

…with my clients, Justin and Joey as well as a few of their family members. Hehe..thank goodness I wasn’t the only one there, otherwise I would’ve felt like a lamppost!

Justin and Joey invited me along for the cruise as it was a great opportunity for me to shoot some ‘day after’ portraits for them.

And y’know what? Justin was an absolute trooper! Despite feeling seasick for almost the entire duration of the cruise, he still put on a brave face whenever I shoved the camera in their faces.

As for Joey, she looks absolutely gorgeous! From certain angles she reminded me of the Taiwanese singer, Jolin Tsai. I kid you not.

Yes, I shot the food as well. Couldn’t help myself!

Here’s one of the my fave shots from the session.

Justin, Joey, Darin, Abbey, Mrs Wong and Mrs Quan workin’ it for the camera

Thanks again for inviting me along for the cruise you two

While I would usually be booked for weddings at least 3 months before the actual day, I was booked for this wedding 2 weeks before the actual day and I am so, so glad that I wasn’t booked for any other shoots then

Justin and Joey are an absolute joy to shoot. Their love and affection for each other really shone through even though the weather in KK during their wedding day wasn’t anything to shout about.

I arrived back in KK a day before the big day and met up with them briefly at Joey’s parents house. Imagine my surprise when I found out that they did their own pre-wedding shoot.

Yup. Pre-wedding shoot. Make-up, photography, bridal attire - all by themselves.

It was basically a self-portrait session as Justin’s a photography enthusiast (he owns a 40D too!) and they decided to take a pre-wedding honeymoon to Paris, Venice and Korea (or was it Japan? oh dear, short-term memory loss) and have their pre-wedding shots done there at the same time.

Talk about efficiency!

The pictures were done up really nicely in a coffee table book and it also contained the story of how they met and how they came up with the idea to do their own pre-wedding shoot.

It’s an awesome idea! Imagine how sweet it’ll be for them when they look back on that album and recall all the memories of their experience

I was both impressed and honestly speaking? I felt a bit worried as well as I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to meet their high expectations (Justin’s mom is a professional photographer too!).

As with all weddings I shoot, I still get butterflies in my stomach and for this wedding, I had both caterpillars and butterflies in my stomach.

Despite the constant rain on their wedding day, everything went well and both of them looked absolutely radiant! Here are some shots from Justin & Joey’s big day.

The tea ceremony was held in the wee hours of the morning at Joey’s family home. She had tons of relatives and there was constant laughter throughout the ceremony as they jested with each other.

We then headed over to Pan Pacific where the tea ceremony for Justin’s side of the family was held. One funny moment from the tea ceremony happened when Justin’s younger brother, Victor was serving tea to Justin and Joey.While Victor was serving tea to Joey, he said something along the lines of “Thank you for choosing us”. Justin looked at his brother and with a deadpan look on his face, “Hey, I’m not an airline”.

I nearly burst out laughing when I heard that. LOL!

2 of Joey’s bridesmaid are from my high school, All Saints in Kota Kinabalu. Yes, KK is that small! And FYI, these 4 young pretty ladies are 2 - 3 years my junior. Eeeps! It made me think back to what I was doing when I was 26 ;p

And regarding the slideshow? It’s a collection of pictures which are chronologically correct - starting off with their tea ceremony in the morning, to the garden ceremony in the afternoon till the dinner reception at Pan Pacific.

Justin and Joey, thanks again for giving me the honour of capturing your big day for you. To see a love like yours overcome the complexity of a long-distance relationship makes one absolutely happy to be part of your wedding day

All the best with your new journey together!

Hugs from your super-cheesy photographer - Anna Cheesy ;p

A month after their solemnisation and reception in Kota Kinabalu, Carliff & Niney had another reception for their family and friends in KL.

Their reception in KL was held at the TTDI Community Hall and let me tell you, the hall was waaaay impressive. I’ve shot at the hall a couple of times prior to this but this was the first time that I’ve seen it decked out so grandly (yes, my grammar is way off but its my blog so let it be ;p)

It was a grand affair with a lunch AND dinner reception. Below are some pics from the lunch reception, but most of my fave shots were from the dinner reception which you can see in the slideshow

And you know what? Carliff & Niney plan on having a kid asap! Wheee! Can’t wait to shoot their maternity and baby shots for them as well!

All the best with the ‘making of’ ;p Hehe…can’t wait to hear some good news from you two!

Emily celebrated her 10th birthday a couple of weeks ago and to mark the happy occassion, her mum Tracy decided to give her an additional present which turned out to be a photo session.

I met Tracy and Emily at their beautiful home one cloudy weekday afternoon. Was a bit concerned initially as the dark clouds were looming and it looked like it was gonna start raining anytime soon.

But lady luck was on my side as the not so favourable weather turned out to be perfect for the shoot Wheee! The overcast skies provided us with soft lighting and helped in making the colors of the shots yummier than usual.

Emily is an absolute delight to shoot! I love it when kids are absolutely enthusiastic about hamming it up for the camera. Makes the shoot twice as fun!

You can check out some of the pictures from the session in the slideshow below.

Tracy, thanks again for inviting me over to your home. And Emily, I hope you had fun throughout the shoot

It was an absolute pleasure to meet the both of you and I absolutely love the shots of you two together.

See you soon!

Recently I went to Penang for the weekend with Sherrie, Adrian and Amos.

While Amos and Adrian had already stated that this was gonna be purely a ‘food fiesta’ roadtrip, I not-so-secretly harboured hopes that we will get to squeeze in one or two mini photo-outing in between.

Imagine this scene;

Amos is driving and Adrian is sitting in the passengers seat next to him while Sherrie and I are at the back. I look out of the window and go “Ooooo….nice walls. And what a rustic looking door!”. Then I hear Amos asking Adrian, “Eh, where’s that cendol store you were talking about arr?”. Sherrie looks at me and says, “Anna, that’s not Nee On you’re talking to. Amos will only stop for food”.

Tiu.

And so, almost all my Penang pictures involved food.

Btw, I didn’t bother remembering the exact names and locations of where we ate as half the time. Sherrie, where were we?!?

First up, here’s a picture of the trio pigging out at that Chinese store near Komtar.

Thanks to someone’s not-so-clear directions (what end of the cross?!!? ;p), we went round and round and round and round for approx 30 minutes just to look for this Chinese store which had an obscure signage.

Next up, we headed to that famous cendol store which apparently serves Penang’s best cendol. I wouldn’t know cos I’m not a big fan of cendol. Perhaps this picture can attest to it.

The trio seems to be looking at each other and going “Dontcha dare touch my cendol!”

As you can imagine, they were absolutely stuffed at this point. Naturally, we all decided to go back to Sherrie’s apartment to take a nap. I kid you not.

Upon waking up, guess what we did?

You’re so right! We continued eating! Abaden?!?

This time round, we went to that night stall area near Sunway Hotel. It’s basically a street where there’s loads and loads of stalls which sells all sorta food.

It was food haven.

Amongst the stuff that we had included satay, porridge, fried chicken, fried chicken skin (oh so unhealthy but oh sooooo gooooddd), beef noodle, ‘o-chien’ and errr…I can’t remember what else we had as my brains malfunctioned due to the overdose of food.

Here’s the trio feeling as stuffed as turkeys during Thanksgiving

We ended the first night stuffed silly and humming that “I feeeeeeellll youuuuuu Johaaaaaannaaaaaaaa” song from Sweeney Todd. Yes, we managed to catch that movie after dinner and I love it! (Yes, I like all things Tim Burton and Johnny Depp)

The following day, we had breakfast was at a kopi tiam and this time round, we were quite subdued and didn’t overdo things by ordering 8 - 10 dishes.

Instead we realistically had 1 dish per person (cheh! that’s cos we were planning to eat again in the next hour!)

.

After breakfast, it was cendol time again!

Yes, we headed back to the same store and back to the same cendol. Amos, Sherrie, Adrian - Nice arrrrr eat cendol so many times?!? ;p

That cendol store was our last stop for food in Penang.

It was already noontime and as we wanted to get back to KL before 6, we decided to call it a day and leave Penang - the land of food stalls, a glutton’s haven.

Ah well, all good things must come to an end.

No, no. We weren’t so stupid as to go straight back to KL.

Instead, we stopped by Ipoh to have that super yummy, super juicy chicken rice yo!

Layaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnn!

Sekian, stupid blog post yang terkini. Jengjengjeng.

I recently shot this beautiful mum and baby pair for Etsu. Like most of my photo sessions involving babies, we did this within an hour’s time as we didn’t wanna tire out the young one

I know it’s absolutely natural for people to have kids but sometimes I still find it amazing that the union of two people creates another person.

To me, motherhood is like the ultimate sacrifice. Imagine, for 9 months you’re incubating a live human being in your body. Thereafter the next 18 years of your life revolves around that human being. Dude, that takes a whole lotta love.

Yes, the more I write the more cliched I sound. So I better stop babbling and just post the pics up ;p

Gong Hei Fat Choy! Hope you’re all having an awesome CNY break so far

Been awhile since I last blogged. Now that I’ve got some time off work, for my own sake (so that I can look back and go “ohhh, so that’s what I was doing”) I wanna blog about what’s been happening for the past couple of weeks and what I’ve been shooting.

But before I start on that, here’s a short ‘me-me’ post. Yes, shameless I am. (Oh come on, we’re all narcissistic, it’s just that I do it openly while others do it in the closet :p Hehe..)

A couple of months ago, I received a call from Steph the beauty writer from Cleo magazine.

She asked me whether or not I would be interested to participate in Cleo’s annual Young Achiever’s Award. For sure!

The shoot was held in early December 2007 and when I found out who the other participants were, I was completely floored.

Imagine this - an Indian classical dancer who has danced internationally, a Miss Malaysia Universe, an awesome singer (whom I’m actually a big fan of) and a local actress. They’re all (waaaaay) younger than I am, absolutely talented and gorgeous to boot as well.

Wouldn’t you be floored too?

I was flabbergasted and I just had to say to Steph, “Man, you guys must’ve been desperate when you decided to give me a call”. And when she said something along the lines of how I deserve to be in the running, I just thought to myself “Somebody pinch me!”.

I remained in disbelief and didn’t tell many of my friends about this.

It just hit me that this was really happening when I picked up the February issue from the newstand and lo and behold! I really am in it.

Dayum! This is way surreal man.

To be in the running amongst these talented young women is absolutely unbelievable. I still think they made a mistake somewhere by picking me but at the same time, I’m thankful they decided to overlook that mistake ;p Heheh…

If you feel inclined to vote for lil me, you can do so by cutting out that voting coupon in the magazine and sending in a vote for me

Nah, don’t feel inclined to do it. Just go ahead and vote for me. Waahahaahahahha!

And about this picture of me in the magazine?

Besides being photoshopped (or ‘photo-chopped’) beyond recognition, just to let you know that I don’t always spot a bird’s nest on my head ok? Haha! It was Khir, the make up artist’s idea to have the ‘drama’ hair.

I reckon that hair was beyond drama. It was practically the birds nest of all birds nest.

I’ll look back on this and laugh at the hair.

And the fact that I’m the oldest of the bunch.

Ye Gads!