ANGKOR

Angkor. In Winter, of 2011. (Correction, 2007.)

Surely one of the most deeply spiritual of journeys.

A week on foot. One camera. One tripod. No map. No GPS. No food in between dawn and dusk.

Threading tenderly on thousand year-old stone.

Getting lost and going hungry has never been this much fun.

Mother Earth. 

What she giveth. 

Me.

Oh when the sun goes down...

I love it when the sun dips past the horizon in the temperate zones. Twilight is special light. Blue becomes Indigo, Flesh turns the color of brick and the low contrast flattens out everything. Which in turn forces the photographer in me to squint into the shadows and spend just that little bit more time in search of the perfect picture to frame.

I followed this wonderful character as he made his way from a public library into the park. He had a strange gait, a kind of hobble cum hop with the odd half-skip followed by two shuffles and a long drag-step. Almost as if he was walking to a song playing on an old vinyl that had half melted in a fire.

I do not know who looked more bizarre. Him in his Edgar Allen Poe-ish coat, or me walking sideways like mother crab as I fired off frame after frame in the twilight, until he disappeared into the shadows.

Twilight is good light.

Personal Work - Series 1

Baby Elephant

Nassim Park Residences. Available light tests.

Daniel Libeskind. March 2012

One day.

When I have a gazillion dollars in my bank account.

I'll ask him to design me a house by the beach.

TWILIGHT ON THE WATER

It's almost always great fun when we're shooting on the water.

I say almost, because while it's fairly comfortable when the vessel you're on is cruising, it's something else altogether when it's stationary and rocking wildly.

Especially when you're trying to frame a 30-tonne yacht that's coming at you at 25 knots through a camera viewfinder. Somehow the eye and middle ear conspire to trick the tummy into thinking it's been put in a bag and churned wildly.

Avomin, for the record, only seems to make things worse...

Fortunately, the challenge here wasn't so much the task of dealing with imminent sea-sickness. But the job of producing a shot, at twilight when all the lights in the Singapore skyline were on, along with setting off a bunch of strobes via radio. And trying to make sure the whole kit kaboodle came out sharp.

Fortunately a combination of high ISO, a camera platform that was a modified barge, and some daredevil runs by a certain almost-heroic Italian captain did the trick. In the end though, we put everything in the computer to even out the color grade and construction mess that speckled the waterline. So much for getting it all done in one go; but at least we tried...

I'd like to do this shot again with a larger yacht than the 63 footer here.

As soon as my stomach stops churning from the memory of the aforementioned experience.

DELHI - CITY OF DUST STORMS AND DISTANT DREAMS

There is a small but distinct possibility that I will eventually forget how to work this blog.

Practise, practise, practise!

Where has all the time gone.

DEFYING GRAVITY

Near perfect geometry.  Kudos to the builders. 

Another view of Reflections - from the exact opposite viewpoint. Twilight leading to dusk.

I can't quite decide which of the two views I prefer.

View from the marina breakwater. 

50 meters behind me, the Philippe Starck - designed 

'A' Yacht looked equally dazzling in the early morning light.

FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS OF THE WEALTHY?

Some years ago this brief landed on my lap. I was asked to shoot several musicians with their instruments of choice. The client was a bank. So I thought parallels were being drawn between music instruments and financial instruments. I think I read it too deeply. In the end, the campaign was to launch a premier banking service for high nett worth individuals. I guess the campaign must have worked, as the images ran for a long time. I was particularly proud of these because they were my first commission in B+W.

Frasers Chengdu

The days following a major photoshoot are usually a frenzy. Editing, can be a headache. Made more painful by the need to cull images that sometime number by the hundreds. While it's hard to cite a typical example, here are 4 contact sheets, out of a total of 8 from a project earlier this year. Me aching eyeballs.

NiteScapades

KALEIDOSCOPE

A and I spent a day at the museum - it was great fun. I wished I had time to do this on a regular basis. Just take a camera to all the tourist spots in Singapore and make like the tourists do.

It's amazing what subjects turn up around every corner. I might make a huge print of this. Only problem is figuring out where to put it. Wall space at the moment is almost at a premium.

PAUSE

A leaf from our Mulberry Treee.

The Serapong Course, Sentosa Island.

More plants from our garden.

FRASERS

I like working with clients who feel they have a role to play in the photography process - whether the role be that of creative director, stylist, or set decorator. The results are likely to be less contrived, more spontaneous and a lot more fun to produce. Photography, at least where subjects like the ones here are concerned, is a hugely collaborative effort. And anyone who shoots for a living that thinks otherwise is probably better off working for art, or self.

W RESIDENCES

W-Residences in Sentosa Cove. Another one of those to-die-for waterfront properties. What is it about human beings that draws us to water. Perhaps the fact that we are 70% made of that element has something to do with it. Or is it, as we move through one of the muggiest summers in recent memory, simply the heat.