Subscribe to RSSFamily Photoshoot - Beverly
This was a challenging photoshoot because both children are pretty shy, kinda like their parents. :P But we had a rather good session in the end, and it was particularly victorious squeezing a slight smile out of the littlest one.
Steve McCurry
Remember the famed Afghan girl picture on National Geographic? The man who photographed her is Steve McCurry and he currently has an exhibition here at Asian Civilisations Museum, as part of Month of Photography. He was also here the past week, conducting a master course.
My friend, Pat Law, scored an interview with him and invited me along to photograph him for the article. Needless to say, I was stoked! However, on the morning of the shoot, I started panicking over the fact that I was going to photograph a world renowned photographer. I was terrified of being judged on my technique, style, etc, because as my friend Dan says, I’m a photographer with a small ‘p’ and Steve’s a PHOTOGRAPHER (in all caps!). LOL!
But my fears flew right out of the window when I met him because he was pretty warm and started oogling at Pat’s tattoos. Which led up to a discussion about tattoos and I ended up flashing him my lawnmower man! Awesome moment!
He did art direct my photographs though, and apologised for it. I had a picture in my mind and was all ready to execute it when he started moving me and himself around, saying, “OK, let’s do a pose like this because I want to capture the eyes, …” and “You have to move here because the light is coming in this way, and I have to be here so that I can catch the light …” So I just said, “OK, just tell me when to press the button!”
It was good fun and the half hour we had really reminded me of the days when I was working as a photojournalist at The New Paper. Truth be told, I miss it so much.
Photograph by Paul Seow, my awesome party + commercial photographer friend who was there attending the master class.
Family Photoshoot - Andrea
Some time ago, Andrea asked me to photograph her family. This was one of the more heartwarming (and amusing) photoshoots I’ve been on because of the wonderful relationship their family dog has with her parents.
Wii Goodness
Clare discovered the Wii over the weekend, when we had a gathering at Meng Choo’s place. After most of the older kids left, I asked Megan, Meng Choo’s eldest kid, if Clare could have a go at a simple game. That sweet girl chose a running game for Clare and suddenly my daughter was bursting with excitement. My heart melted to see her finally able to play with some other kids, and especially, enjoying it so much! Thanks Angelia for the pictures!
Mama’s 88th & 60s Music Giveaway!
My grandmother celebrated her birthday yesterday. She turns 88, going by the Chinese calendar. I think it’s so lovely that she has very many great grandchildren to help her blow out the candles, not that she needs much help in the first place. Even with a sprained back, which she suffered a lot from over the past two years, she won’t be slowed down!
I’ve no idea what my dad (in red) was exclaiming about.
Great grandkids helping to blow out the candles.
My favourite photo of the lot.
Clare and Taipo (great grandma in Cantonese).
Especially for the birthday girl. Happy birthday Mama!
Talking about family love, I bought this CD box set to surprise my dad, on a tip-off by Kevin Matthews. It’s a box set of 5 CDs featuring the music of Singaporean bands in the 60s. My dad’s band, Cells Unlimited, is in it too, and when Kevin told me about it, I quickly picked one up from Borders. The minute I bought it, I rang my dad to congratulate him, only to find out that he already has 26 copies at home (for distribution in the Leong family, LOL!). He said, “How can you not expect me to know about them wanting to put our music in the CD?”, which kinda made sense. D’oh!
Go get your copy today! :) And I can arrange to have your copy autographed by my daddy, if you’re interested.
UP FOR GRABS: One autographed box set to giveaway! Leave a comment or send me an email (at joanATvalskaDOTcom), telling me why you love the music of the 60s. The person with the best entry will be the proud new owner of 100 Greatest Singapore 60s: The Definitive Collection.
From The BlackBerry
This is Clare’s ill morning face. She woke up with a 39.2 deg celcius fever.
And this is what Clare does when she has a whole bunch of stickers, despite being sick. I have become her sticker book.
Bored in Bikinis
In the episode of Desperate Housewives where Bree’s first husband, Rex, dies, we see Bree sitting in the dining room, holding on to the phone, and waiting for the clock to strike 10am before telling her friends that her husband had passed away.
While this is a rather extreme case, I firmly believe that there should be appropriate times in contacting people. Whenever I receive calls before 9am and after 10pm, I panic a little because I start worrying about it being an emergency.
My dad once rang me at 7.30am, gruffly looking for Terence on the phone. Worried, I asked if everything was OK and it turned out that he was just trying to purchase something over iTunes.
The same rule, I feel, applies to IM. I had this MSN conversation at 4:09, this morning:
Friend: joan
Friend: clicknetwork.tv
Friend: are you associated with it?
Friend: in the past?
Friend: or now?
Me: (thinking there was a problem with the website, or something major based on the ‘tone’ of his messages, or perhaps he has a business proposition for the website) Yes, why?
Friend: sonia is one hot chick man
Friend: hahahahahahaha
Me: You msged me this at 4am to tell me that?
I’ve got to learn to log off, or switch off the sounds to my phone before I sleep at night.
—
What said friend was referring to, was the new show on clicknetwork.tv — Bored in Bikinis. It stars Sonia and Xuesha (who were in S Factor), as two bikini babes who get up to random stuff when they are bored. I helped them out with the photos:
Catch the first episode, ‘How To Ace A Reality Show Audition’, here! It’s hilarious because it’s so true to life!
ADV: June 2009 Promotion
Back in 2004, my dad and I actually did offroad cycling a fair bit. We used to go with his friends to Mandai and needless to say, we were always the last of the group. But it was fun and something I always enjoyed doing together with my dad. He was very excited about it and spent a lot of time kitting out both our bikes.
I’m sure most of you have activities you do with your dad, so in this photoshoot, we want to capture that. Send me an email at info@joanleong.com or call me at 9477 1444 if you’ve any queries.
Clare’s Mid-Year Report
Celebrating Dinky’s 4th birthday last month
The past month has been terrible for me, health wise. Strangely, the moment I start exercising, I start falling ill. Terribly ill, for that matter. Couple of weeks back, I was hit by a flu bug that gave me a fever, cough, cold and bodyaches. I finally recovered after a week and was just celebrating how nice it feels to not be ill, when out of the blue, I got hit by the flu AGAIN! This time, the doctor loaded me on meds so powerful, I was constantly groggy and spent almost the entire weekend in bed.
I’m finally well enough to sit upright without feeling like the world is spinning madly around me today, and hence, am going to make a feeble attempt to do some work. I’m still coughing up a storm and I’m trying to take in shallow breaths because any attempt to fill up my lungs more sends my body into a major coughing fit.
Clare’s at her grandmother’s and I suddenly miss her so much. I had a strange feeling wash over me during the weekend, where suddenly all memories of being pregnant and giving birth to her seemed to have disappeared. And it feels like I stole this cute little toddler home instead.
She’s finally completed half a year in school and is on the start of her school holidays. One that even I appreciate. No more dragging her out of bed, packing her stuff, trying to stay on top of school related matters, and it’s nice to have her around at any time of the day. I really hate that her school hours are right smack in the middle of the day, which [a] makes me start my day really late at noon; [b] leave no time for after school activity if I decide to take time off to bring her out. We are still on the waiting list for the earlier session next year and I think I’m going to have to beg them to try to transfer her to the earlier session, if not, it’ll be very hard for me to cope business-wise.
We got her progress report some weeks back, and had our first Parent-Teacher-Conference. Generally, she’s doing alright in school and is displaying most of the milestones of a 2-year-old. Some of the drawbacks of being an only child is also apparent in her behaviour in school, such as, not being able to share. She is rather bossy (although her teacher did not phrase it in those words), and I’m guessing it’s because she’s used to ordering her dogs around the house.
One thing that really took me by surprise in her progress report is her almost non-existent manners — apparently, she doesn’t really say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. This horrified us because we always thought we enforced it on her, but upon hindsight, we enforce ‘thank you’ more and always forget about the ‘please’. Her manners scored as well as her chinese, by the way, which is something else we have to look into. Anyone’s got recommendations for chinese enrichment classes for pre-nursery kids?
Overall, her teacher was most impressed by Clare’s independence, marvelling at the fact that Clare’s always first to get ready, on her own, when it comes to water play. She also wants to do a lot of things by herself, like going to the toilet and washing her hands, and that just makes me beam with pride because I don’t want Clare to be overly dependent on others to do things when she can very well do it on her own.
Her teacher also noted that Clare has since learned to defend herself. She now holds her own in class and stands up against bullies.
I must also say that I’m very impressed by the level of patience and care the teachers have in this school. Clare’s been diaper free for at least a month now and it’s by no means any credit of mine. When I came back from Bali, one day, Clare decided that she didn’t want to wear diapers anymore. Her father was a little apprehensive about it but I told him that we’ve got to back her up in decisions like this to show that we are confident in her. Since then, she’s had a couple of accidents but that’s mostly because she was having too much fun and only realised her urgency to pee at the last minute.
My little girl is growing in leaps and bounds. She can now hold logical conversations with me and tell me about her day (in bits). I love how she can be headstrong, but is also reasonable. With explanation, she’ll be willing to accept why I say ‘no’ or ‘later’ to certain requests.
She’s also an amazing animal lover: Jaws bit her hand pretty hard last week, which left Clare shocked and crying from the pain. No doubt, having the Princess plaster on her hand made he feel heaps better, but still, she never fails to either pet or hug Jaws every day since.
I relish spending the end of the day with her because that’s our time together, when she wants to be with me, hugging me, before she sleeps.
Wedding - Jamus & Lavinia
I can’t believe I’ve not updated this blog for two weeks! Sorry for the radio silence — I guess I have been a lot busier than I expected to. I’ve photo jobs from February onwards to share and never seem to be able to find the time to put them up!
Anyway, here’s a small set. My college mate, Jamus, had a really small, intimate and simple wedding at the Registry of Marriages. We did a very quick and casual photoshoot at Fort Canning later. Quick because as always, it was really hot and the poor couple were roasting while trying to look comfortable for the photos. The few of us had drinks afterwards at Novus, which was nice. I count myself lucky to be one of the few at the wedding.
Stealing a kiss before going into the solemnisation room.
Jamus’ mother with the marriage certificate number to buy 4D!
The marriage certificate number.
