Earlier today, I dropped by Rozalin’s office to pass her the pics from the recent portraiture session of her with her husband Andi.

Imagine my surprise when she passed me a box, saying that it was a gift for my first year anniversary!

I was beyond touched by their kind gesture I never expect my couples to give me gifts and when something like this happens, I’m absolutely flabbergasted!

Andi and Rozalin got me a little black dress and it fits perfectly! Hehe…Rozalin, I’ll wear it to my friend’s wedding dinner this Sat and post up some pics k?

Seriously, even the homemade card that you guys made was one of the best gifts ever - it’s so cute that I just have to share it here on my blog

Thanks Rozalin and Andi - for making my week, for giving me the opportunity to shoot (and enforce a workout?) you both, for sharing your love with me.

Words can’t express how grateful and blessed I am to have met kindred souls like you through photography. Thank you

Here’s to an awesome year ahead for all of us! Woot!

Disclaimer: While writing this post, I’m thinking that it’s a good idea to post it up. I might not think so later. So, friends, bang me if you will after reading this post, but remember, I’m only human too. Nyeh nyeh nyeh :p

I have a confession.

Besides reading autobiographies, novels and travelogues, I read self-help books. And I’m not (that) ashamed to say I do.

Young Sze Ning recently read my blog and she said it sounds like I’m constantly high on opium.

“No, no young one”, I wanted to reply through gtalk,”it is life that I’m high on”. But I could imagine her rolling her eyes upon reading that line, so I decided not to.

Honestly speaking, I’m not constantly as upbeat as I am when I’m shooting or when I’m blogging. After all, I’m only human.

I’m so human that it was only recently that I got over a 6-year relationship which ended 8 months ago for reasons that till this day still eludes me. But that’s another story for another day.

I think I managed to finally get over it after months and months of wallowing in self-pity after rereading ‘S.U.M.O - Shut Up Move On’ by Paul McGee a couple of days ago.

I don’t normally recommend the shit that I read cos books are like relationships - some might float your boat, some might sink them so I would usually let my friends ‘feel up’ a book for themselves before going”Good choice, mate”.

But S.U.M.O is a great read.

If you’ve been bitching about your job for too long, pining away for unrequited love for yonks or just thinking that life sucks in general, well, reading the book is like getting a smack in the head.

S.U.M.O is not your typical heavy self-help book. It’s an absolutely easy read and you can finish it within 2-hours. While it is true that one doesn’t need a book to tell them how to live, for me reading books like these are a reminder to myself.

A reminder that one is responsible for how one’s life turns out, one is responsible for how happy (or sad) they want to be, that it is never too late to change the circumstances of our lives.

Why am I writing this post?

Recently, I noticed that quite a few of my friends have been complaining about their jobs (like I used to when I was a minion in the corporate line).

You know who you are peeps.

You sooooo have to do something about the complaining - either talk to the management, review how work can be made more interesting or have a heart to heart with the colleague/manager who’s annoying the shit out of you.

Pic above from www.postsecret.blogspot.com

I am worried just to see and hear how stressed out you guys are and I really, really wanna see you happy (if not all the time, well sometimes is good enough).

Go check out this book. If you’re too cheap to buy it, go hang out at Borders for an hour or two this weekend and finish it off there. I kid, I kiiiid.

Or maybe I should buy it for your respective birthdays. On second thoughts, just go to Borders :p

Till something is done for the situation to get better, Godspeed and I’ll see you guys again soon.

Love and hugs, me.

P/S - Our regular programming of opium-induced happy blog posts will resume in a couple of days time after I finish editing all the pictures I shot for the month of July (5 weddings and 4 portraiture sessions. Ye Gads!).

Thank you for dropping by and reading my grandma story.

Sekian announcement terkini. Jeng jeng jeng.

A couple of months ago, I was assigned by the Malaysian Men’s Health magazine to shoot some pictures of Francis for the rock climbing feature story. Francis is one of Malaysia’s top rock climber and he’s also the first person in the country to be a certified route setter for international sport climbing competitions.

When I received the call from Kenneth to shoot for a feature story on climbing, I was flabbergasted. Being paid to climb AND shoot? No wayyyy.

It was a sunny day when we had the shoot and headed off to Damai area in Batu Caves for the session. Tong set up the route and I top roped it while carrying my camera equipment in a sling bag.

While I was climbing halfway up, Tong shouted up at me, “Aiya Anna, you should’ve told me you were carrying your gear up. I would’ve helped you hang it up there instead”. Gee, how helpful of him to tell me while I was already halfway up with all my gear :p Hehe…

Here’s a shot of the feature story which is in this month’s Men’s Health. The one below was shot with my camera phone, hence the low quality (yea, yea blame it on the phone ;p). For a clearer view of the article, check out the July 2008 issue of Men’s Health.

And here’s one of my favourite shot which didn’t make the final cut for the magazine. Notice the blue patch at the background? That’s where Tong was belaying Francis from.

I was suspended nearly 25 metres off the ground for about 20 minutes as I asked Francis to take his time since I wanted to take as many shots as possible and throughout the whole time, I just thought “Life is bliss”

To the Men’s Health team, thanks for giving me the opportunity to work with you guys! Much, much appreciated!

It’s time for a celebration, woot!

Yes, I just had to post up this picture of me with my standard ‘fly trap’ expression shot by Sherrie :p

Well, not yet BUT in another month’s time, Anna-Rina Photography will be 1-year’s old.

Yup! August 23, 2007 is THE date that I took the leap into full-time photography and never looked back Wheeeeee!

To celebrate, from now till August 23, 2008 any confirmed bookings which I receive for 2009 will get to enjoy the 2008 rates. Rates for 2009 will be applicable for bookings taken in after that.

Aaaaannddd, for portrait sessions done during weekdays, you’ll enjoy a special weekday rate which is a significant discount from my standard portrait rates.

To find out more, just drop me an email at info(at)anna-rina(dot)com. Spread the word

Cheerio!

Omigawd.

Guess what? I just spent the past hour sorting out all my work related documentations and doing up my work schedule and I realised that I am nearly fully booked for the rest of the year.

For other photographers this may be no biggie, but for me, it’s unbelievable!

Less than a year ago when I quit my ‘real job’ to pursue this on a full time basis, I had qualms about getting enough business to sustain myself. I was worried, thinking that people would never like my pictures and I would have to pimp myself out big time just to score some work. Err…okay that sounded a bit wrong but anywayyy….

In my wildest dreams I would never have expected what has happened in that short period of time since I started doing this on a professional basis - I received enquiries from those who googled for wedding photography, I received phonecalls from friends of my clients who referred me, I received emails from couples who saw some of my work on flickr.

I know it’s kinda weird for me to write this down in my blog, but I just felt like sharing how I feel. So I figured even though I don’t have anyone to share this moment with, at least I still have you, my blog readers to (kinda) talk to :p

I don’t know what the future holds for me or how long I’ll be able to sustain myself in this ever growing and competitive industry but for now, I feel absolutely blessed - blessed to have what I consider one of the best jobs in the world, blessed to be shooting awesome couples, blessed that there are people out there who wants to hire me, blessed that some of you do like me, you really like me (well, the pictures that I take anyway ;p).

Man oh man. I know I say this waaaaayyyyyy too many times, but thank you.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, thank you from the top of my head to the tip of my toe. Thank you, thank you, thank you

Have a blessed week ahead.

With love, me.

Beng Cheang and Chui Yan will be getting married at the end of August and thanks to a referral from Tom, I had the pleasure of shooting their pre-wedding session for them last Friday.

We started off the session at Concorde Shah Alam and then headed off to the Rimba Kiara Park in TTDI. Despite the fact that I don’t always shoot bridal sessions, the session was the same as my other shoots - casual, relaxed and fun (dayum, I’m starting to sound like one of those bad, corny TV ads :p).

Here are some of my favourite shots from the day;

Chui Yan is gonna be an absolutely gorgeous bride

The following picture is my fave shot from the session

Beng Cheang and Chui Yan, hope you both enjoyed the session as much as I did. Have fun during your wedding day See ya soon!

My friends (and clients :D) Sim, See Ming and baby Max are coincidentally close friends of Beng Cheang and Chui Yan too. Talk about it being a small world eh? They dropped by to check out the shoot as well as practise shooting with their new Tamron lens. It was nice seeing you all again

Megat spoke to me a couple of months ago about shooting a couple portraiture session with Sarah, his girlfriend from uni days.

We had to reschedule a couple of times due to conflicting schedules but we finally managed to shoot the session earlier today under beautiful blue skies.

I had fun shooting Megat and Sarah as they were full of enthusiasm and open to ideas as well It was such a breeze to shoot them that we managed to wrap up the session within an hour.

That gave us plenty of time to go to Khana Curry House for lunch straightafter the shoot. Woot!

Megat and Sarah, hope you both had fun throughout the session (even tho someone was sweating profusely ;p hehehe..). And thanks for lunch too

Here are some of my favourite pics from the day. Enjoy!

Aren’t they gorgeous?

I met JJ & Mardhiah over a drink at the mamak a couple of months ago. JJ’s a colleague of Sherrie and she actually referred me to shoot his wedding - thanks young one

My first impression of JJ & Mardhiah during our brief meet up is that they were a fun loving couple and genuinely nice people. This was reaffirmed ten-folds when I shot their solemnisation ceremony. They are absolutely awesome!

Mardhiah’s family members made me feel like I was part of the family, I seriously had a blast shooting for them and it felt really, really nice to be part of a strong family unit even though it was for one day only. Hehe… To Mardhiah’s family members who are reading this, you all rock big time!

The day started off with slight rain, I was a bit worried when the dark clouds rolled as half of the ceremony was planned for outdoors. Blessed be, the clouds cleared up right before JJ arrived at the house and beautiful weather was to be had for the rest of the day.

It was a short ceremony and though we initially had plans to drive out somewhere to shoot JJ & Mardhiah’s portraits after the ceremony, we ended up shooting around Mardhiah’s parents house as it was absolutely gorgeous!

Here are some of my favourite pictures from the day,

To view slideshow, just click on play and wait for awhile for the pictures to finish loading. Depending on your connection, this could take anything between one to three minutes.

JJ & Mardhiah, thank you for having me be part of your special day. I truly, truly had fun hanging out with you two and also your family members (cousinssssssss!! ;p).

You both make an awesome couple, here’s wishing you love, prosperity and joy for the years ahead.

Have a fun and relaxing time during your honeymoon in Bali! See you both soon

Best wishes from the one who laughs louder than Mardhiah’s loudest cousin (tak sedar diri pulak masa aku ketawa kuat-kuat :p oops!). Hehehe…

That’s Idzwan Junaidi (3rd from left) together with his videographer, they’re from GI Photoshoot and they too were covering JJ & Mardhiah’s big day. It was nice meeting you all there! Cheerio

Earlier today (well technically speaking yesterday), I had the pleasure of shooting a sporting couple’s pre-wedding session. They were up for every single thing I suggested, I likeeee! Hehehehe…

Am itching to share some of my favourite shots from the day - but guess what? I forgot to ask them about posting their pics up on my blog! Silly me.

They mentioned that they were planning to showcase the pics during their reception dinner end of next month so I might just wait till then to post the rest up, but in the meantime here’s a lil preview.

On a personal note, I’ve got such a packed weekend ahead that I’m feeling abit overwhelmed. 1 solemnisation ceremony and 1 couple portraiture session to shoot as well as 2 album layouts to finish off by Sunday. Ye gads!

Funny thing is, at the same time, I know it’ll be an absolute blast! Hehe…yes, I tend to contradict myself quite often.

Wokey, am off to catch some winks before I collapse from lack of sleep :p Toodle-loo!

Some friends have asked me how I get my pictures to look the way they do - the slightly saturated colors, the bright lighting, the vignetting on the sides,etc.

While it is important to get all your settings, compositions and what-nots correct IN camera, I believe that post processing helps in enhancing pictures.It won’t be possible for me to get my pictures to look the way I want them to look straight out of the camera. I like my pictures to be slightly punchier in terms of color. I looooveeeeee colors!

Truth be told, I spend a looooootttt of time on post processing. On an average, after shooting a full day wedding, I’ll be spending a couple of days after that just on editing these pics (and that’s not including designing the photobook layouts).

I do bulk post-processing of my pics through Adobe Lightroom (currently trying out the Beta version of LR2) and I also use Adobe CS3 for the more detailed editing - clearing off spots and wrinkles, cloning out stray hairs, removing that unwanted fire hydrant or the annoying relative (I kid, I kiiiid) from the background, etc.

There are free trials for Lightroom (interface as above) and CS3 on the Adobe website. Once the trial period has ended, you have the option of purchasing both these softwares online. Definitely something I would recommend

Besides that, for selected pictures I also use action packs like Totally Rad Actions and Kubota Image Tools for that extra ‘umph!’.

Yes, some might say that they’re really pricey but ever since purchasing these actions, I’ve managed to save a lil bit more time on post-processing and that in turn, enables me to have more fun doing what I love to do - take pictures. Wheeee!

There are also tons of other actions and borders (complimentary ones!) which are available online, one just needs to take some time to google and download these to experiment with.

To find the above mentioned softwares and action packs online, just google the names mentioned and walla! You’ll have the link to the respective sites Google rocks ma world!

Hope that helps. Have an awesome weekend ahead!