I was invited by Oxfam (http://www.oxfam.org.hk) to be their photographer for a china trip this week (Sept 7-14) to 陝西 & 甘肅.   My duty will be to capture images for Oxfam’s work done for these villages for their newsletter.

As the two locations that I will be heading are very poor,  I doubt there will be daily internet access available.  If there is anything, do email me and I will get back to you as soon as I return.

This is a long awaited for opportunity for me as I had always wanted to do something like this…  going to places under poverty and service non-profit organizations like Oxfam with my camera.  I believe I will get many valuable inspirations from this experience, about life and people.   I AM VERY EXCITED!

The more I shoot, the more I admire people, not for visual beauty, but for inner beauty.  I hope to get some real nice images from this trip to share with you.

Today, my client & I headed out to South Bay to do some summer portraits.  This is actually the first time I went to South Bay and it was quite a nice quiet beach. No tourists, easy to drive to, and has shaded areas.  We did some bikini shots and roaring hot sexy portraits… :)   Today was soooo hot that I wanted to jump into the water right after the session but too bad I didn’t have my swimsuit.  My client and I ended up going to Stanley’s Seafront for lunch and enjoyed a great chat with pizza & pasta + gallons of drinks since we were both super dehydrated after the session.  LOL.

Today I did some business portraits for the upcoming Usana Health Advancement Magazine that is going to be published in couple of weeks.  This husband and wife team got promoted again and this month, they would be on the cover as the 7-Star Diamond Directors and would be sharing some success stories with the readers.  This is the third time I took editorial portraits of them and all the posing just became second nature :) . Looking forward for their next promotion again!  They are one hard working team!

More to be posted soon.

Today, I was invited by Regeneration Society to help their members do some beautiful portraits for memories.  More details to be posted soon.

Today, I was photographing for a 2 year old girl’s birthday party at the Harbour Plaza Metropolis Hotel.  The party theme was Winnie-the-Pooh and the event organizer Kareena from Personalizestuff.com did a really good job.  The whole party was very well planned and beautifully decorated. All the guests had a great time.  Besides taking picture for the party, I also helped the guests and families take some family portraits on the spot and give them instant photos to take home for memory.  This is a new service that I had been carrying at parties.

Today, I went to photograph for a 1 year old sweet boy’s birthday party held at the Aberdeen Marina Club.  There was so much to share and I will post this one up soon!!

Today, I joined with 突破十九 to do some instant portraits to fund-raise for the under-privilege children via this Halloween Party!  It was real fun!  I will post more details to share with you soon.

More details to be posted soon.

Today, I was really really excited to have been invited by HKFB to help their members take some family portraits.  This lovely lady Obi contacted me thru Ho-sum.org few months ago as she thought it would be nice to give some family portraits for their members.  As their members are all visually impaired, thus, their children rarely have the chance to take family portraits.  I thought this was a very meaningful idea and I was all up for this!

Obi arranged over 10 dress-ups and costumes for the children to put on for the photo session.  She even arranged a professional makeup artist to help the kids do the hair and makeup.  I shot for 8 hours straight and I was still super hyper and clicking my shutters non-stop till the last session.  I really enjoyed kids from the 4yo-9yo range. They are so full of character and personality. During the session, the kids were so keen to learn photography and wanted to try shooting themselves. I gave them my camera, gave them few quick instructions (such as how to turn the lens to zoom), and they ended up directing the shoot within minutes.  They already observed how I did it, so they just regurgitate what was seen.  They directed the model, told them how to pose, help them fix their dress, told them what expressions to make etc..  It was totally funny and I truly enjoyed looking at them shooting their way.  They looked like mini art directors or fashion stylist to me.   Too bad I didn”t have a second camera with me that day otherwise I would definitely snap the scene and show you.  Frankly speaking, their works rock!   Some of them, you can’t tell the difference whether it was I who shot it or them :P

I hope I can teach them some day!   I always have the idea that it would be so good if I could have a team of photographers who are either all children, all 更生人仕, or all youths, who can go out with me to service the community as a professional team. It would be such a nice concept and I think it would be loads of fun!

I basically shot over 1800 photos today, for 11 families.. around 45 mins photo session each.  Loads and loads to post process!
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Today, I went to one of the elderly homes of Caritas at Sheung Wan to take some portraits for the elders and their family.  I will share some photos and thoughts with you soon.

Today, I had a super wonderful time capturing the smiles for the members of 1st Step Association during their 10th Anniversary Gala Dinner held at the Regal Oriental Hotel.  I setup a portable studio at a corner of their dinner venue and the members and families could just come to the set and take some portraits for some fun time and memories.  What’s different from my past volunteering events was that this time 1st Step had brilliantly arranged facilities to do instant printouts of the photos on the spot!!   I felt so hyper and excited to see a long line up of members, waiting patiently and wheeling excitingly to the set to have their photographs taken.  I had a wonderful time and I’m sure the members did too!  As this is my first time working for the physically handicapped, this opportunity had brought me many inspirations as well.    In roughly 2 hrs, I have took portraits for around 60 members and staffs, some with families, some with their friends.  I sincerely hope they liked their photos.   Well, it was really sweet to have a member came up to me to ask for my autograph on his photo :)))).  Moments like these would fuel me, as it means they liked the photo.

I hope 1st Step can allow me to spend some time  on editing the rest of the good shots so that I can post more prints back to their members to keep for memories.  As they only printed one photo for each member that day, and I took more than 5  good shots each. …. but guess the handling part might be too complicated as this is suppose to be an one-off event.

Today, it’s China 60th Anniversary and it’s a public holiday.  Helping Hand has organized a day camp and dinner for their members and families to go to Cheung Muk Tau Holiday Centre  ( 樟木頭老人度假中心 ) to spend their day.  The elders can freely participate in any activity booths (i.e. : making their own mooncake, lantern workshops etc).  My part was to give them some beautiful family portraits using the mid-autumn festival as theme (we have got many different lanterns as props).  What’s satisfying for my part today is, when I show the elders the photos from the back of my camera’s LCD after the session, many of them said to me with the most grateful voice that they love the photo!  They kept on saying ‘thank you thank you. very beautiful! really very beautiful!’.   They sound as if they haven’t seen themselves looking this beautiful for a long time.   I felt very happy about this.    I hope my final prints will give them another big smile!

I always feel blessed to have really gorgeous families contact me for family shoot…gorgeous meaning beauty inside out.  Nice and friendly people with beautiful face and personality.   Their grandparents came to HK for visit, and the girls will be leaving HK for college very soon so this time is a perfect time for an in-home family portraiture session.   We’ve got tonnes of nice moments captured.  More photos to be posted soon.

More details to be posted soon.

This is the 2nd part from the 10th Anniversary Brochure shoot.. just a couple more executives business portraits done at their office.  More photos to be shared with you soon.

Today, I went to their office to setup a portable studio inside their meeting room and were shooting some shots for their 10th anniversary brochure. More photos to be posted soon.

I feel extremely excited throughout the session.  These girls rock!   I mean rock hard!   Shooting them makes me feel younger :P  They are full of energies! More photos would be posted soon.

More details to be posted soon.

More exciting details and photos to be posted soon

More photos and details to be posted soon.

There are so many wonderful moments worth capturing for this family of 7 today … A baby girl just turned one, two of the family members just got graduated in the same week, and fall is also a perfect time for family pictures!  We did everything in this in-home session today.  Although I overran (AGAIN) in terms of time but I am sure we got many shots.  Exciting photos to be posted soon!

More details and photos to be posted soon.

In celebration of the mid-autumn festival, Beautiful Moments project is at work delivering more smiles and memories to these wonderful elderly couples in our community through my lens. More details to be posted soon.

More exciting details and photos of this 5 year old beautiful birthday party held at Shatin Jockey Club to be posted soon!

Exciting details and photos to be posted soon.

Exciting details and photos to be posted soon.

I had the opportunity to take some portraits of this team of elders volunteers at Cyber Senior today. I was quite touched and impressed by their devotions, spirits, energies, and friendliness. Each of them had decided to share their talents and devoted their time after retirement in helping other elders to build up their computer knowledge and learn new skills. This team composes of teachers teaching the internet, blogging, typesetting, web design, photography, and video editing. I see this as very meaningful as one will never know how much fun and memories their action could bring to their students. It may mean a new hobby developed. The positive inspiration as a result of this is unimaginable.