I know alot of moms had been scratching your heads on ideas on how to make your kid’s birthday party special.  I just discovered this wonderful resourceful blog that shares alot of real party ideas.  Please check hwtm out and subscribe to their RSS!   Under category “Real Parties” or “Kid’s Party Ideas“, and “Baby Showers Ideas“  there are pages and pages of inspiring posts and resource on planning a wonderful party!  My favorite theme by far is the Lollipop! Coz I love colours!

I love taking photos for parties with heavy themes.   I especially love outdoor parties with loads and loads of colours, cakes, pastries, kids running around and hopefully chase me around while I work!  as I truly enjoyed it!

More details of this birthday party to be posted soon.

More details to be posted soon.

There will be some big changes on my Signature In-Home & Outdoor Packages very soon.  Alot fo clients may not know… due to the required workflow from my current packages, it is necessary for me to work at least 60 hours per project (from start to finish).  In-Home sessions may take up to 100 hours!!!  This doesn’t really make sense I know… and making clients wait too long isn’t something that I wanted, as I know all of you want to share your photos ASAP to friends and family.   I would launch some new revised packages very soon and I hope these new packages would facilitate the whole delivery process.  I believe clients come to me because they liked my work…definitely not based on the price.  I would stay focus and make everything as simple as possible by offering less options.  The main reason why I do what I do is simply because I wanted to give you some beautiful captures of a frame of your life, on prints, through my lens and artistic vision.  I hope these frame of memories would bring a smile in your future and by simply this, it makes my existence and contribution meaningful. I will try not to be too hard on myself on the final editing part (still learning tho) as I know what I had captured already served the purpose.

Please stay tune for updates! :)

Today, I was invited to photograph for this sharing forum, titled ” Pioneers’ Voices on Child Protection and Children’s Rights” , organized by ACA.   The event was highly packed with invaluable information, statistics, and insights; presented by a panel of 12 speakers.  This forum provided insights and resources on how Hong Kong should go about in bringing child protection and child rights to the next level in the coming decade. Some key speakers were Dr. Patricia Ip (葉麗嫦醫生）, Dr. Gladys Lam (林陳蘭德博士）, Dr. Chow Chun Bong （周鎮邦醫生）, Mrs. Selina Chow （周梁淑怡), and  Hon Cyd Ho Sau Lan (何秀蘭議員).  The forum was inspiring to me.  Almost everyone is aware of the child abuse problem in our society, but executing a more effective system requires time and are often bounded by limitations not within our control. I’d say the first determining step to protect the children of our future starts from every home.  Love your children in a way without disempowering them or disrespecting them.  We adults, actually have a lot to learn from children, thus, do not see ourselves as superior to them.  They know many truths in life on how to live happily which we have forgotten.  Hitting or spanking your child would result in alot of negative emotions for both you and your child.   IMO, I think parental love involves respect, understanding, freedom, friendship, acceptance, guidance, and support.  How about you?

I am jammed at post processing again~!!! Had been busy shooting recently and with one pair of hands, one head, and 2 computers… I am literally jammed with the aftermath @_@ . I would make myself available for new bookings starting mid-June and for this month, the only session types I would take in would be newborn sessions under 21 days old or last minute maternity sessions (i.e.: any sessions that are urgent and cannot miss the precious chance). For these new bookings, please allow extra time for post production. As most of my bookings tend to fall in in short notice (I totally do not mind when I am free :) ), this information is for moms or potential clients who are planning to have a session with me.

You know I love shooting so much that I always dream of shooting for my clients without the need to do any post-processing (i.e.: you give me your CF card, i shoot, and done!!!)… this way I could shoot continuously, capturing beautiful moments without stopping!! But with digital, this is quite something impossible. As every photo needs to go through some time consuming minimum procedures (adjusting raws, curves, levels, highlights, shadows, colour saturation etc) in order to look nice on prints. The photo itself is beautiful, but those procedures make it even more beautiful. .. and who wouldn’t make use of such chance to utilize the build-in potentials hidden within every photographs?

Here is a photo that could do the job of cheering for me during work… children’s laughter has alot of power on me.

Another sweetie…

Here is a hilarious site to keep your posing ideas frrrresh and interesting! Actually, to my surprise, as i was browsing thru, i realized i had directed clients to do similar poses before.. oh no!! :P

Awkward Family Photos

Today, I did a family portrait session at Stanley with a family of 3 (parent + 11 months old boy).   And the post title already hint what you would see from our shoot!  Stay tune..I will share some photos with you soon.

Today, I was happy to be invited by Hong Chi Association (www.hongchi.org.hk) to help them document this meaningful event. Over 50 mentally handicapped students were graduating today, and with the big help of HSBC’s generous funding and donations, Hong Chi had successfully empowered many students with really practical hands-on skills to compete with confidence in this harsh job market. Classes such as Oral English, Interviewing Skills, Project Management, Catering and even Investments are available. What I admired is that they did not bound the disabilities by providing them only simple trainings such as cleaning, packaging etc.., but had pushed them further so that their full potential can be realized. And from their sharing, many of the past students had benefited from the training and are now employed with a very good job title too!

The more I attend these events, the more I realize that there are really MANY good people and NGOs out there that had put their heart out to help others with very good project ideas. The more I see, the more I feel that I am just too little, and not doing enough good. The world is full of good things for us to look at and to glorify about. There are just too many inspiring people out there to learn from…

Lovely moment…

Today, I was invited by Against Child Abuse Ltd (www.aca.org.hk) to take some event pictures for the ACA 30th Anniversary Celebration 珍愛兒童-親一親 opening ceremony and charity sales at Harbour City TST. This is the 4th time I had assisted them on photography related works and my impression with this organization is that they are highly organized and professional in everything they do (from training to workshops to conference to events). They are a group of super event organizers and caring social workers! After glancing at today’s rundown, I was even more looking forward to the rest of the day. Here are some photos to share….

The key fundraising campaign was this… By submitting a photo of your child along with HK$30 donations, your photo will be exhibited at their 30th Anniversary exhibition. Many guests had made their submission in supporting this campaign.

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This charity sale booth seems quite popular and caught many kids’ attention. These toys are selling at a discounted price and all proceeds will be go to ACA.
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This proud girl is putting her donations into the money box! One child supporting another. She also receive a beautiful balloon twisted by Carson & Friends. Carson (the guy w glasses on the right hand side of the photo) is someone I admired. He started his volunteering team doing balloon twisting 1.5 years ago and just on this ACA 3-day event, they had raised nearly HK$20000 cash… What’s more is that their balloon twisting skills and levels are something I had not seen before (despite I had attended many birthday parties with professional balloon twisters). Their style of balloons are all very creative and unique…. He told me many were pure creations developed by their own volunteer team. As I said, there are just so many inspiring ppl out there to learn from.

Mascots always catch kids attention! Here we have Geoffrey from Toys’r'us….

…as well as Rabbit from CCFamily

and by donating $50, you would get a lovely polaroid with this cute character.

Karen Mok’s mother (right) was one of the guests today. She also brought a childhood photo of Karen and her brother in supporting the fundraising campaign.

Sharing their precious children’s photos…

樂易玲 from TVB was also one of the invited guests.

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Her fans are everywhere!

I always liked 張燊悅，and she now has a 3 months old newborn…. That motherly nurturing look in her eyes was quite apparent when I had eye contact with her today.

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The event begins with these amazing boys with their Chinese drum performance.
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Opening ceremony

Every guests had been brightened up by the cute ACA 30th anniversary sculpture… pretty cute huh!

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廖碧兒 donating her childhood photo in supporting the ACA campaign
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The show begins!! ACA had arranged many talented kids and youth to perform.. the message was to encourage all parents to love, listen, and cultivate your children by seeing their unique talents.

Orchestra

Yoyo: These guys are just amazing! They did all these yoyo tricks at light speed and all the audience froze with their mouth opened (including me) as they were performing. I can’t believe playing with yoyo can be so cool! I think I need to grab a video of their live performance and post here in order to fully tell you what I saw.

Chinese Opera: As she sang the first 20 seconds, the audience clapped.. why? because her voice was very powerful.. not as powerful as Susan Boyle but pretty close, IMO!

I had heard about it for so long and never really know what it was about. Well, the other day I had decided to join Twitter. I must say that it is a great tool to pull us (i.e.: me and you) closer together. You can ‘follow’ the people that you are interested in and receive instant update that answers the question “What are you doing?” right now. It is somewhat similar to rss newsfeed but just that you get all the news on same page, and the news are from real people that you know. You can post pictures and links via tools such as Twitpic or TinyUrl instantly via your phone to keep your followers updated. I followed some best friends, some photographers, vendors, business partners, plus some people / ezines that I am interested in.

I know at times I thought this seems like a pointless (or 無聊) habit… like why would someone care about what I do… like what I eat or who did I have lunch with. but actually, after joining nearly 2 weeks, it feels so good to have just few good friends up there that really cared. It is quite fun that I can check what they do everyday despite we are miles apart.

You can find me on: http://twitter.com/happyfotos
Click “Follow” to follow me.. but actually, you can still see updates of me without joining :)
Warning: As I prefer to be as-is, so bear with me when I become too personal / sentimental!

Another photographer posted a video on how Twitter impacted his life. [B]ecker is one of my favorite wedding photographers. His website and portfolio is amazing, and elegantly inspirational.

Oprah Winfrey also mentioned Twitter on her show on April 17, 2009… Twitter’s server went down the next day due to sudden increase of new signups. She actually got 36,800+ new followers the next day.–> more details on this article “Oprah will kill Twitter, right?”

Twitter has its power, just like Facebook. As a daily Facebook user myself, I think these two are really good tools to connect with people. If you are on Facebook, please join my newly launched group “Happymoments | Modern Children’s Portraiture“. :) Some useful resources will be send to all members periodically about photography and children.

Today, I was invited to document this 2 year old baby girl’s birthday party.  This is the 3rd time I photographed her as her beautiful mom just had an in-home pregnancy and newborn session with me few weeks ago (she had a baby boy!)  Besides having loads of toys, drawing pads, games, and yummy food for the party guests, her mom also wanted me to setup a portable studio at her party venue so that I can help her guests take some family photos!   I loved this idea so much!  The guests were very excited about the idea (including the kids) and I’ve captured many families that day.   I will share some photos with you all soon.

Today, I had an in-home session with a friendly family of four with 2 wonderful boys (3.5 yo and 9 yo). The session could not have been so amazing without their daddy’s help. Some children psychology techniques went into the session and I am amazed by their daddy’s skills with his boys! I basically got all the sibling and family shots that I wanted to captured for them. Alot of times, the essence and beauty you see from my works should be credited to my client instead of me. All my clients are really amazing people!

Today, I had an in-home session with an 8 months old baby boy. The session was heartwarming since his great grandmother and aunt came for visit during our session. And this little boy’s great grandmother was witnessing the whole photoshoot from behind. Laughter fills the air as his parents were doing tricks to catch the boy’s attention and making him smile and do the most adorable pose and expressions. Some really hilarious props were sourced from the house and put on him and we were all laughing so hard in the process. I really enjoyed the session! Totally happy moments! :D

Here is a sneak peek of this lovely handsome baby boy…

More cute cute pose will be shared with you soon.

Today, I went to Disneyland to help document this 1 year old boy’s family day in celebration of his 1st birthday! The weather was perfect and sunny and hot! From the smiles on this little boy’s face, flying in to HK all the way from Singapore for this Disney day celebration was really a thoughtful idea. I am impressed by his parent’s love and heart in the planning of this birthday for him.

I just returned from my 4 day expedition trip organized by The Society of Rehabilitation and Crime Prevention (SRACP) to China (連南縣). There were 31 of us (volunteers and social workers) in total and our focus was to play games with children, visit their homes, bring them some stationeries gift kits, donate blankets, inspect where the donated money went, and talk to the principals and understand each school’s needs so that SRACP could source more financial / material donations to make improvements. The two specific schools we placed emphasis on were located in very rural area. Due to their location, the children there rarely receive donations or volunteer visits / care. One of them is 后洞小學 (in which we also visited last year) and we had to hike 45 minutes to reach the school as it is located at the top of a hill. Another, is 盤石小學, which is 2.5 hour ride from our hotel.

After visiting these two schools, we were all very satisfied as it was a total success especially the 2nd day with 盤石小學. All the games went on smoothly and you can hear children’s laughter and children running to us smiling everywhere. We played many traditional nostalgic games in which many of you might have forgotten already… such as 掉手巾，麻鷹捉雞仔，放紙飛機，有隻雀仔跌落水，跳大繩，踏氣球，二人三足 etc.. (sorry i had to type in Chinese as i don’t have the name in English for some). While playing with them, it makes us children again. Happiness really can be so simple. The contrast of this world with our materialistic city makes me think whether we are really advancing as we claimed.

There aren’t many songs around that talks about photography. Recently, a new song by Eason Chan called “沙龍” caught my attention and I think the lyrics was quite true.

登高峯一秒 得獎一秒 再破紀錄的一秒
港灣晚燈 山頂破曉 摘下懷念 記住美妙
升職那刻 新婚那朝 成為父母的一秒
要拍照的事 可不少
* full lyrics here

After listening to this song, it reminds me of one of the wedding photo montages I created for my wedding client 4 years ago. I suddenly relook at it and their photographs and their childhood imagery really can make their past relive in front of my eyes. I would like to share with you here –> CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO.

Today, I did an in-home family session with one of my high school friends from Toronto. Well, another very GOOD high school friend of mine had bought them a family photo session as a gift for the arrival of their new baby few months ago. Their baby girl is now 5 months old. It is so great that I get to catchup updates of each other while shooting. I will prepare and post some photos up to show you soon (actually, i just had a client who asked me why I don’t update my blog with photos for every post..sorry guys for keeping you all waiting for the blog’s ’soon’ photos… time had always been an issue for me.. there are so many things i wanted to do, but so little time!).

This session is hilariously fun! This baby girl will turn 1 next week and her mom had decided to give her an in-home cake-smashing session to celebrate her first birthday today. This baby girl was quite gentle with the cake and we had to wait awhile before she engage into action.

Obviously, she had fun! This was taken in the first 5 minutes encounter with the cake.

And you may wonder how the cake and this baby girl ended up at the end? … stay tune! :)

Today, my whole student team went to an elderly home at Wanchai to help the elders take passport photos. We had to serve 30 elders in 1.5 hour and the whole process was extremely smooth. I truly think practice makes perfect and the students who participated in our last activity show much confident this time. It is very apparent in their body gesture.. by the way they stand behind the tripod.. looking quite professional as they click the shutter.

Besides teaching my students how to take pictures, I had also put much emphasis on basic gentle manner that are required when servicing the elderly. I had taught them how to politely and gently invite each elder to the photoshoot set, how to check their clothing to make sure everything looks good, how to direct the elder to look at the camera, and lastly, escort the elder back to their seat when we finish. We had role-played in our class many times (some students take the role of an elder, while another is the photographer). We also taught them do’s and don’ts.. such as we can’t shout at the elder in all cases, and that we must maintain our tone of voice as caring and loving as possible..with a smile.

In today’s service, we were astonished by our students. They helped the elder hold their walking stick and handbags, and guide the elders throughout the process with a big smile.  They would say “婆婆小心， 慢慢行”.. etc.. The elders were very happy and felt much warmth!

Next class will be our last class for this term. And what makes me happy is that St. James Settlement invited me to teach another advance photography class starting May. I plan to teach them more advance photography such as studio lighting with strobe lights, softbox etc.., and possibly desktop photography :))))

The weather these few weeks had been SOOOOOOO gloomy and unstable.   I had quite a number of outdoor shoots that had to reschedule due to no-sun.   Some even rescheduled over 3 times!!.. If you ask me.. sun is really important to an outdoor shoot… especially when taking pictures with children.  Children move really really fast and I must use a fast shutter speed to capture the moment.  If there is no sun, it means I have to use a much higher ISO to achieve the result… and the photos would end up MUCH grainier.   I basically prefer finer photos, unless conditions do not allow it.   I would also try to avoid using flash during outdoor sessions as I think the flash would kill all the mood.

Let’s hope the weather gets better in April.
Well… it is a good thing that I get more time to finish up my many post-production deadlines! :D

Today, I had an in-home session with a super cooperative and beautiful 14 days old baby boy! He was such a joy to work with and I owe him big on this! This little buddy was awake most of the time, but he was nice and calm, with quite a lot of expressions for a 14 day old! A special thanks to his wonderful mom for helping out throughout the session with all the posing and set :), thank you!!! Great photos will be shared here soon!.. aah. can’t wait to post!

Do you do backups? Recently a client of mine told me that her hard drive crashed and several months of family photos disappeared from her 1 year old baby. Luckily, she had been emailing her friends her baby’s photos all along and was able to ‘recovered’ some photos back from her friends. I would like to share this client’s story as it could happen to all of us. Basically, a normal hard disk would crash when it is around 2-3 years old. If you had not been doing backup of your family photos, I urge you to do it now. I really mean NOW. As at this digital age, not many of us would have our photos printed out, and we thought it was save to simply transfer all the files to our computer, but it is NOT! I had my HD crashed several times before, it was really a pain to see valuable memories disappeared within seconds. We all have poor memories (well, at least I do)… and I rely heavily on ‘tangible things’ such as photos or writing to recall my memories from time to time. I would basically use my camera to capture anything that I would like to remember, and would write down all my thoughts to every detail on my passworded private blog (a.k.a. diary) so that I have something to enjoy when I grow old. Memories, to me, is the most important thing in life. I even kept all the secret notes I passed to my classmates at grade 9!

Having learned from these painful experiences, I now do 2-3 backup copies of everything. This would include 2 extra external HD backups, plus, 2 copies on DVDs (which I think was the safest format).

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Some must backup memories:
- family pictures taken by digital camera
- family videos / sound files
- pictures taken by your mobile phone
- your family blog / personal blog
- emails

Suggestions on how to backup your memories:
- make 2 DVD copies (different brands) of your photos and store at different places
- set your computer to automatically do daily backup for all your files
- make prints regularly and store them in photo albums, sorted by year
- if you keep a blog / journal of your baby / family, check with your blog provider / hosting provider for backup options
- make backing up your HD a habit and a regular routine (eg: at least once every 2 months etc..)

Hope this post would be useful to you.

Today, 5 of my MR photography students had been selected to form our first photo team to service the community with the photography skills learned to-date! We are all very excited! We had been teaching them everything from setting up a tripod to basic photography to directing the model. We went to a kindergarten in CWB and our aim was to take simple passport photos for thirty K2 kids. As I mentioned earlier in previous post, setting this goal was abit challenging as this team of students are all medium to severely mentally handicapped adults (equivalent to 4-5 years old + illiterate). To our surprise, the target was met on time and the resulting photos were all very good (even this is their first time servicing!) . The children were all very happy and were fighting to shake hands with the photographers. What is most rewarding to me was to see my students feeling very happy about what they had done. On our ride back, I noticed several of them were smiling happily with a very satisfied and content look on their face (as if they were reliving what had just happened!). I guess we all feel good to give, and to do it with our own hands make us feel special and valuable. It always feels good to admire yourself when you know you had done something right. And this is what made them smile happily from their heart today.

Today, I was invited to a korean baby girl’s first birthday party.   More exciting details and photos to be shared with you soon.

The more I shoot birthday parties, the more I love it! Mainly because it is a place filled with ALOT of beautiful kids and loving parents. It is also a place where all the parents are having good times with their children. Family love basically fills the air. Every time I witness a loving relationship in front of my eyes, it warmed up my heart. And I would try my best to capture these moments for myself and for my subjects to remember. This party was held at a clubhouse and some details include giant bouncy castle, hand painting, puppet show, as well as a beautiful birthday cupcake tree.  More photos to be share with you all soon.

I am a loyal RTHK fans and I found out that they are running a photo competition that aims to promote family core values - “Love and Care”, “Respect and Responsibility”, and “Communication and Harmony”. By submitting a family photo which conveys the message “Loving Family - Feel it, Hear it, Hug it”, you might have a chance to win wonderful prizes and most importantly, spread your love and positive energies to others and increase public’s awareness on the importance of family love.

I believe a picture speaks a thousand words! Let others feel and share your love!

Deadline: Feb 28, 2009
Detail: http://www.rthk.org.hk/special/familycorevalues/photo.htm

Today, I had an in-home session with a beautiful mom at 36 weeks pregnancy. More exciting details to be shared with you soon!

During the Chinese New Year holiday, I went to Okinawa with my mom, sister and two aunts. Basically, every year I would have a family vocation during Chinese New Year times… it has became a yearly thing. This time, we went to Okinawa for 5 days! This place (IMO) doesn’t feels too much like Japan. It felt like Hawaii. Well, even Hawaii has more Japanese than this low populated Okinawa island. Besides stuffing ourselves with 3 buffet meals everyday (yes, we joined tour), the biggest highlight was that we have the opportunity to witness the whales. I will post a few photos up to share with you ’soon’. I should find time to update all pictures in my blog pretty soon.

I was invited by Salvation Army to participate in taking some family pictures for their members. More details to be posted soon

Chinese New Year is approaching and it is one of the biggest holidays here in Hong Kong.. I would like to take advantage of this period and take a REAL holiday… I mean RREEAL holiday :)))) .. to clear all pending works, do some serious thinking, and to relax. I realized some potential customers may have overlooked my previous post about my holiday (yes.. i know it is vaguely presented). Thus, I would like to have this reannounced here…

The following is my holiday dates and reopening dates:

HOLIDAY DATES: January 14 to February 28, 2009

• CLOSED for new photoshoot bookings inclusive
• all pre-booked sessions, post processing, photo deliveries, proofing deadlines, and email enquiry will be proceeded and answered as usual during January 14-24, February 7-28, 2009. All due schedules would not be affected.
  
• Official CNY holiday is January 25-February 6, 2009 (Chinese Calendar: 年三十至初十二). Office will be closed completely during this period. Please allow slower email responses during this time.

PHOTOSHOOT BOOKINGS REOPENING DATES: March 1, 2009

• for outdoor sessions only
• please check my online booking calendar for my availability

You may wonder why my holiday is so long (i.e. 1.5 months off). It is because I had been overworking myself for the past 10 months for every Sunday and public holiday. I think I really needed some time off to rejuvenate. I believe the more well rested I am, the better I can service my new clients in the coming year. Plus, I will also be doing some thinking for my whole workflow… which is worth to take the time to do this important change.

More exciting details and photos to be posted soon

More details and photos to be posted soon.