If you’re feeling frustrated that your photos do not look like the American or European rockstar photographers’ work, here’s what I learned:
The location makes a big difference.
The sun path is different.
The luminance is different.
Shooting at Hobart during 5pm is different from shooting at Milan during 5pm.
The tungsten and florescent lights behaves differently too.
Last September I went to Malaysia to shoot the wedding between Darius and Huey Meng, an old college friend.
KL was going through a severe case of haze fever.
Imagine a massive diffuser in the sky, screwing up everything you’re used to.
What I’m trying to say is, wedding photography is interesting because it is so easy and difficult at the same time.
The first five years you try to make your work process as consistent as possible.
You curse when the lighting is different and you try your best to match everything to the process you are familiar with.
And then you realised, everything looks the same.
So you start to think, what’s wrong with things being different anyway?
I joked to Huey Meng and Darius that we should put on masks because, you know, haze.
” Can. We’ll wear it if you bring it, ” they said.
What I’m trying to say is, interesting things happen whenever I joke.
Rockstar photographers say to be a successful photographer, you need passion, creativity, a strong backbone, a flexible mindset, thick skin, unique point of view, batch edit, presets, persistence, social media engineering, to work for free, not to work for free, Canon, Nikon, Fuji, a ‘voice’, no, a ‘style’, actually just use film, are you still reading this good pay me two thousand dollars.
What I’m trying to say is, having a sense of humour and good clients work for me.
The sun may shine differently in other countries, but other photographers don’t necessarily have what you have either.
