You know how as a kid, when someone tells you not to tell on a secret, you have this uncontrollable surge of adrenaline to know what-if the victim involved knows about it?

This is one smart idea from the students of Berghs School of Communication. The more you don’t want somebody (Ashton!) to find out, the more obvious you make it, and how better than to create a masterpiece of art by engaging social media, Twitter users?

So one day when you see the frame filled up, you know Ashton’s been popping by. This is definitely something viral. Viral media/awareness campaigns have never been hotter. It’s so easy to get an idea spread around the world. If you can create good content which people want to share, then you definitely have the social media as a channel to do so.

Not bad at all…

Now that I think back about how I ventured into food photography, I have to credit Monica from Gourmet Club for it. I can’t seem to remember how I was put into contact with her, but I went with her to my first shoot, and till date I still vividly picture the scene of Sebastiens @ Bukit Timah. That was when i first met Chef Paul, and had no idea he was pretty famous in the industry at that time.

Going to the first shoot was nerve-wreaking. I had never shot food before and heck, I hadn’t even shot much with my camera back then. Equipped with nothing but my D50, 50mm, and a tripod, (and some last minute research from Google) I went into that restaurant on a cloudy day. Bad lighting. Never mind, I have the sun outdoor light. No I don’t. Ok maybe they can turn up the ambient lights or something. Didn’t work.

I was more freaked out about getting a good picture rather than enjoy the feast presented.

The photos turned out ok-ish for a first-time but there was definitely more room for improvement. This was when I realised that this could be a niche that I can carve for myself. There are too many people doing fashion, events, weddings – and they are all extremely good in their own fields. Here I was as a newbie looking to invest his time in something worthy.

Of course as I shot more food in time to come I’ve learned to appreciate what I’m shooting more, and really try to understand what goes on behind the cooking, and what goes through the chef’s mind when coming up with the dish. All these opportunities came because I started shooting voluntarily for the school magazine – of which I would probably be stoned by many of the mainstream photographers out there for not shooting for a remuneration. My school of though lies in having the opportunity to increase in my portfolio. I was willing to shoot anything related to food. If I didn’t had the chances to shoot food, I would never have had the opportunity to go freelance and shoot for income. Everyone has to start somewhere.

I’m always learning, and I guess it’s always good that I pick up some new knowledge per shoot, so that I’ll be better prepared for the next.

Keep Shooting.

So I was googling around for the most expensive cities to live in, because i’m contemplating to apply for a job in Dubai (ranked 20th) – I wanted to see if I could live with the pay I was going to get there. Here’s what I found from Forbes.

“Think your morning commute is expensive? Think again. The ride on a bus or subway in Tokyo costs $3.25. Grab a newspaper and a cup of coffee on the way and the total comes to $11.70. That’s more than anywhere else in the world–24% more than what those same things cost in New York, even.

Tokyo is the world’s most expensive city, according to Mercer’s 2009 Worldwide Cost of Living survey released today, with the cost of living up 13.1% from 2008; the city ranked at No. 2 in 2008′s survey. Japan’s capital is followed by Osaka and Moscow, which held the top spot in last year’s rankings. Geneva comes in fourth.

In Depth: World’s Most Expensive Cities

The significant changes from last year are due to massive swings in exchange rates, with many currencies at their weakest in years against the U.S. dollar, during the March 2009 survey period. Because of this, New York moved up 14 spaces to No. 8 from No. 22. London dropped to No. 16 from No. 3 as the pound dropped as low as 1.37 against the U.S. dollar during the study period. Six months earlier, one pound was worth $1.86.

“Changes in exchange rate tend to be one of the major drivers, I would argue the major driver, in cost of living,” says Rebecca Powers, a principal consultant at Mercer. Even with the U.S. dollar weakening over the past four months–it’s now worth $1.65–due in part to the Obama administration’s stimulus package, the cost of living in London, when measured against the value of the U.S. dollar, is significantly lower than it was a year ago, when the pound was worth more than $2.

Other notable jumps from last year’s ranking to this year’s are Dubai, which moved to No. 20 from No. 52, and Caracas, which moved to No. 15 from No. 89. Both climbed so quickly because the local currencies are pegged to the greenback; the more the dollar’s value increased, so did the cost of living in those places (but Caracas also has a high rate of inflation, pushing up prices for basic goods).

All U.S. cities included in the ranking also experienced a rise, including Los Angeles, up 32 places, and Washington, D.C., up 41 places.

Behind the Numbers
To generate its ranking of the world’s most expensive cities, Mercer, an international consulting firm, looked at more than 200 cities across six continents, examining the cost of over 200 items in each location, including housing, food, clothing, transport, household goods and entertainment to calculate an overall cost of living. The survey is used to help multinational companies determine compensation packages for employees living abroad. Mercer uses New York as the base city for the index and scores the cost of living there at 100 points. Cities scoring higher are more expensive; lower than 100, and they’re cheaper. All cities included in the ranking are in comparison to New York, and currency is measured against the U.S. dollar.

“Since we’re polling those places in a local environment, we’re getting costs in a local currency,” Powers says. “When the currencies fluctuate, that has a significant affect on costs.” Powers says these cost fluctuations are making multinational companies reassess the need for expansion abroad.

“Companies have been much more guarded about their investments,” she says. “While you can still argue that there is interest in emerging markets, the general pattern of money flowing into the same markets was interrupted when companies started looking at their money.”

Johannesburg, South Africa (No. 143) bottoms out the complete list of cities with a score of 49.6. Also at the tail end are Monterrey, Mexico (No. 142), and Asuncion, Paraguay (No. 141).

Tokyo Steady, Shaky Everywhere Else
The main constant in these rankings, since Mercer’s first set was released in 1994, is Tokyo’s place at or close to the top. Osaka has only fallen outside the top 10, once, when it slipped to the No. 11 spot last year. While the value of the yen is strong against the dollar, Japan–and Tokyo in particular–has always featured prominently due to the high cost of international goods, says Mercer senior researcher Nathalie Constantin-Metral. One can count on Japan being expensive in good times and bad alike for the yen.

But there’s no telling what will happen in a place like Moscow–which zoomed up to the top spot last year, and fell out of it this year. It will all depend, says Constantin-Metral, on the performance of Russia’s currency. The ruble had been on a long, steady climb against the greenback as of March 2008; but it bottomed out at the beginning of March 2009. It’s been on a recovery trajectory ever since, but still has a long way to go. Either way, the rankings make clear that the more the ruble slips, the less expensive a city Moscow becomes.

American cities, then, have more in common with a place like Moscow than anywhere in Japan. The more the dollar–and prices–move, the more or less expensive U.S. cities get, which means it’s all up in the air as to what will happen over the year ahead. Tokyo and Osaka may be expensive, but at least everyone knows it for certain. Just about everywhere else, it seems, nobody knows for sure what the cost of living is like until the year is already in the rear-view mirror.”

Damn, even my own country is more expensive than Dubai. Things get very subjective and you’re never sure what criteria they judge the cost on, but it’s good enough for me to go ahead with the application.

Have… to… get… out… of… this… fishing… village… *gasp*

Here are 9 good tutorials I’ve found online which may be useful to those who’d like to experiment with it. Most people either use Photoshop or Photomatix to go around doing it. The following tutorials have a good mix of both. See which suits your taste best.

1. Single Image HDR Creation from Beyond Pixels

2. HDR tutorial from a travel photography blog Stuck in Customs

3. HDR Tutorial from dannorcott.co.uk

4. Tone Mapping HDR tutorial from Second Picture

5. HDR Tutorial Guide from Vanilla Days

6. HDR Tutorial by Markus Linke

7. Photomatix Pro HDR tutorial from Before the Coffee

8. HDR Tutorial with Photoshop post processing techniques

9. Merging HDR in Photoshop CS3 Tutorial from Photoshopcafe.com

1. Business Mind

When you first decide to start earning an income from your hobby, decide first whether you are one with a business mind. Come on. Be honest. If you don’t have a sensing of how much to charge for your work, whether your time invest gives you a good enough return, or whether the equipment to invest in gives you value for money which will eventually pay itself off – all at your finger tips when negotiating a deal with your potential client, then please do yourself a favour and think twice.

It’s a tough world out there with professional camera prices being more affordable. Every TDH (Tom, Dick & Harry) is trying to become an overnight Franco Fontana or Elliott Erwitt. They are all your competitors and there will be clients dumb enough to go for the next-to-free prices these TDH offer.

The whole idea of going into this business is not only to earn an income, but to be sustainably profitable in the long run.

Yes there will be mistakes made and many other bumps along the road, but hey, it all adds to the learning experience. That being said, apprenticeship helps. Very few people are born with the flair to be a natural when it comes to doing business.

Just like how Sam Levenson aptly puts:

“You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.”

2. First Impressions

So it’s your first time meeting your client. You’d probably have done up your portfolio and stuff, online or not.

Dress up! Look cool!

(Well, not exactly)

Bring equipment. Lots of it(which fits into your budget). If you are taking on your first few deals, you want to make sure you give the impression that you are professional and know what you are doing. For indoor shoots, bring along a laptop, or even a portable DVD player to hook up to your camera. Bring your lights, umbrellas, softboxes, reflectors…. Blah blah blah… – even if you do not use it in the end. It never rains but pours. Shit happens. In series. It is always better to bring along insurance, and it really looks good to the client.

“You don’t need great equipment to make great pictures.”

Screw that. You’re a first timer and nobody in the world cares what award winning photographs you have. You need to be the right fit to be hired, and nobody will give you a second chance if you look weak and sloppy. This may sound harsh, but hey, welcome to the real world.

3. Be outgoing and outspoken (at least try)

Having an outgoing personality really helps. Having an inquisitive nature enables you to get engaged with your client. Each one of them have a different background in their respective industry. When you shoot, they don’t want to hear about all your technical photography alien jargons. They’ll feel happier if you show interest in their product/services or just them. It’s an ego thing for human beings. It’s all about them. Did I just mention it’s all about them?

Do not be afraid to speak up and ask questions. They are the experts in their field. Talk to them. Entertain them. They’ll love it. In psychology you learn that people usually like people who like them. It works both ways.

4. Situational Awareness

Know when to shut up. Know your own strengths and shortcomings to better deal with tricky situations. I believe that having an eye for, perhaps, events photography can be trained. You gain experience every time you shoot, and make sure you remember the lessons and learn from it to improve.

Try to see whether your client is happy with your work. Be confident enough to shoot tethered. Know what are his/her likes/dislikes and try to cater a suitable package towards that. No point forcing you way through on the business end. You bring across your own ideas through photography, while trying to keep a balance between their pockets and yours.

5. Not all fishies are edible

Know your limits. Know what you can shoot. Know what you like to shoot. You know you’re slow and probably will be unable to sustain more than a 3 hour shoot with your full attention. Don’t shoot weddings then. Go take up jobs of other nature, like product still shots, or just shoots which doesn’t expose your shortcomings.

Just because someone wants to pay you enough to do a shoot doesn’t mean you should just do it. Screw up a wedding and you screw up your first start.

6. Credibility

Lastly, keep your word. When you tell clients you will take 3 days to deliver, make sure you do it in 2. Obviously you don’t go around telling people you need 2 weeks to process a set of events photo – don’t overdo it. To the clients, it feels the same like kids getting their Christmas present early.

<strong>Conclusion</strong>

In a nutshell, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. You’ve got to prepare yourself 110% before you actually even think of wanting to do this. In actual, there will be many friends who look to you to help do photography, just because they do not know other more “professional” photographers (you have a DSLR, remember?). Either that or for whatsoever reasons they do not have a lot of budget, if any at all.

Doing it once or twice, or even for charity is fine, but do watch out for yourself to make sure you don’t get taken advantage of.

Keep your passion for shooting, and don’t let irrational reasons from abstract situations deter you from pursuing your hobby while earning some extra dough from it.

Happy shooting.

So along came the first tough decision I had to make in life after high school. Should I go to college? Or should I have more fun in life by going straight to tertiary education offered by local polytechnics? What kind of education should I go for?

At that time, in the early 2000s after the dot com bubble burst, not many people want to jump into the IT industry, but I went ahead anyway – to go with the latter and opt for polytechnic. I knew this would equip me with a skill set which would prove useful in years to come. Like a typical Singaporean, everyone wants to go to University, and that final goal alone pushed many to take up a college education. In those days, only the top 5% of polytechnic cohort made it to local Universities. I’ve never doubt that I won’t be able to make it, but I’ve just decided to take a different stepping stone than others. Of course to be able to make such a choice means to do pretty decent in high school, enough to pick either option. This counts as the first incidence of my philosophy in life – Choose your options, don’t let your options choose you. In life, you are always happier and better off if you able to choose what you like. Choose a car you like because your education gets you a better paying job, choose a location you like for travels because you can afford it. You get to choose the better paying job because you did well in your education. You get to choose a better education because you worked hard to get good results. Bottom line, it’s all about you and how you want your outcome to be.

People hate it when they are forced to accept an outcome they dislike. Don’t get yourself into that situation. Get a hold of your destiny. Nobody controls it better than you do. Don’t be afraid to be different. You don’t always need to follow the masses.

In the past two Red Cliff movies though, I found something interesting about Zhuge Liang that Takeshi played, which is worth mentioning.

略懂. Translated simply means “knowing a little“.

That pretty much sums up what I’ve been trying to do much of my life – jack of all trades, but master of none. No pun intended. I really adore this character of his. You know how much fun you get when you’re in a conversation you can be part of? A little general knowledge goes a long way in holding a conversation.

But seriously, I think it really makes one’s life more fruitful by not resisting change to environment, and by finding joy in learning everything and anything. I never say no to a healthy dose of fun or beer, but I guess it’s the mindset one needs to set himself in to find more joy in life. You don’t need a PhD in everything you do or learn, but just knowing a little, or knowing enough – is good enough.

I caught Hachiko today. Tearjerker.

This is adapted from a heartwarming true story of a Japanese tale about a loyal dog named Hachiko. This very special friend would accompany his master (Richard Gere) to the train station every day and return each afternoon to greet him after work. Sadly Gere, a professor, one day passes away and never returns to the station. Hachiko faithfully returns to the same spot at the station the very next day, and every day for the next nine years to wait for his beloved master.

Whether you’re a dog lover makes no difference as this story is touching enough in a depressed world we live in today. If only you find such loyalty in friends as in dogs. Seats were selling fast at all cinemas, which was a surprise. I’d give it two thumbs up even though the plot was as predictable as it was, and that the “blue-screen” shot of Hachiko against the changing seasons of trees in the background was as fake as it could get.

Do give it a try.