Friday, October 8, 2010

October Feasting

Grand Margherita Hotel Kuching is having its gourmet promotions for the month of October, featuring a wide and exciting array of dishes in a number of food promotions you wouldn't wanna miss. Exquisite ingredients are used and a multitude of colours are present in each dish that comes out of the kitchens of the various eating outlets at the hotel, making for a truly exciting dining experience, all for food lovers to enjoy this month! Anyways, following are photos of just some of the exciting dishes that will be served this month at Grand Margherita Hotel in Kuching City. Want to know more? Check out the hotel's Facebook page or visit its website. In the meantime, enjoy some more of the photos we have here in this post... - Mark

Thursday, October 7, 2010

A Dolce Experience

It certainly was a Dolce experience for those who turned up at the launching of exciting food products distributed by Kuala Lumpur-based food service company Dolce Food Services Sdn Bhd.
The simple launching ceremony was done at a vibrant Italian restaurant Delucca, located at One Residence, behind Hotel Istana in Kuala Lumpur, and Zenith was appointed to “capture the moments” during the launch.
Click on the “Read More” button below to see more photos from the event.
And if you want to know more about Dolce Food Services Sdn Bhd and what it offers, check out its website or see what's new in the company's blog.
Cheers! - Frank

Monday, September 27, 2010

Zenith PhotoCourse

Part 3: Mode Dial
Frank explains the Mode Dial on your DSLR in this third part of our Zenith PhotoCourse

Welcome back to Zenith PhotoCourse. We do apologise first and foremost for the “long pause” of our course, as Mark and I have been busy with our assignments over the past few weeks. But let’s not get into that, shall we?
Right… let’s get on with our course then...

THE MODE DIAL
A typical Mode Dial on a DSLR.
First-time DSLR users will naturally shoot using ‘Auto’ mode on the mode dial (for those who don’t know what a mode dial is, it’s the large circular dial at the top left or top right of a DSLR, depending on the model or make of course).

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

We're back from our loooooooooooooooong holiday!!!

... well more like a working trip. See, we're on a project (more on that much later... once everything is finalised and settled) which requires us to move around... a lot!
As part of that project, we went touring to Melaka and Cameron Highlands and some parts of Kuala Lumpur. But even before all that travelling, our schedule has been pretty tight. Lots of shooting to do and all that.
Now that we're back, we're gonna be updating y'all with what we're doing and all. Also we'll continue with our Zenith PhotoCourse at the end of the week.
Here's a teaser of what we've been shooting. It'll probably help you figure out what we're up to and what project were currently doing. We'll upload the shots in our Zenith Snaps section, of course, but that'll happen in a couple more days. In the meantime, enjoy the little teaser image below. :) - Mark

Some shots taken during our "whirlwind tour" of some parts of Peninsular Malaysia.


Monday, August 9, 2010

Gotta love food!

I love photographing food, simply because food comes in many shapes and sizes and can be very colourful (although sometimes food can look awful if they're not presented nicely on a plate).
That aside, I went to Pullman Kuching late evening today to shoot some food photos to accompany an editorial on the particular food.
This time around I felt joy, joy, nothing but joy... reason being that we're surrounded with white walls!!! Even if the lighting was warm, it didn't matter because the dishes were placed on a table right at the corner of the private dining room at the hotel's all day dining restaurant, Puzzle.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Zenith PhotoCourse

Part 2: Hold your DSLR the right way

Zenith photographer Frank tells you how to hold your camera correctly in Part 2 of our Zenith PhotoCourse.

I bet you can't wait to start shooting with your brand spanking new DSLR. But before you do that, what'ya say we learn a thing or two about how to properly hold your camera, eh?
You see, how you hold your camera affects your shooting because if you're comfortable holding it, shooting becomes a breeze, and vice versa. Holding your camera the right way also helps you avoid blurriness in your pictures (camera shake) as a result of unsteady hands, and makes shooting quicker and more accurate as well.
I'm sure many of you start to get into photography after buying yourself a handy dandy digital compact camera and using it for a couple of years, before deciding to go for a DSLR. So naturally, some of you would hold your brand new DSLR the way you held your digital compact.
Because the shape, size and weight of a DSLR differ greatly from a compact camera, you will need to hold it in certain ways to make sure you're comfortable with the DSLR and that your hands are stable enough to hold your much heavier new toy.
Allow me to show you how...

YOUR RIGHT HAND
The correct way to hold your camera
When handling your DSLR, make sure that your thumb is on the back of your camera. This provides better support and a firmer hold. Besides a better grip, you can also use your right thumb to navigate through the buttons and dials located conveniently within reach of the thumb, on the back of the camera (e.g. shutter dial or the D-Pad).

Monday, July 26, 2010

Wine tasting with Roderick Wong

It was a rather interesting session the other evening as I joined a group of wine connoisseurs as well as members of the media at a wine tasting at Hilton Kuching’s Senso bar/lounge.
Teaching some of us “freshies” how to do wine tasting was Hilton Kuala Lumpur’s Master Sommelier and president of the Sommelier Association of Malaysia, Roderick Wong.
I was there to take some photos for an editorial featuring Roderick.
At the end of the talk, I had him standing in front of a large glass window in Senso, with a nice view in the background.
I used a single flash to light him up, because otherwise you won’t be able to see his face, because the outside light was too bright.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Zenith PhotoCourse Week 1

Part 1: Getting up-close and personal with your DSLR

Zenith photographer Frank helps you get “intimate” with your DSLR in this rather short Part 1 of our PhotoCourse. So take out your DSLRs and let Frank show you which button to push or which dial to turn. :)


GO TO ZenithPhotoCourse PAGE...

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Check out Zenith Snaps!



Wanna see where we've been and what we're up to lately? Check out our Zenith Snaps page and explore our photos... We do hope you enjoy the photographs as much as we enjoy photographing them. Cheers! - Mark & Frank

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Online basic photography crash course for beginners



That's right! For all you budding photographers out there, we're gonna be bringing you our crash course that will teach you the basics of photography, from how to hold your camera to how to achieve that perfect exposure every time, and so much more!!!
No registration needed, no nonsense, no problem! All you need to do is have your digital SLR's right beside you when you read through our easy-to-follow guides, and you're good to go!
So if you've just taken your digital SLR fresh out of the box but not sure what to do with it, log on to our blog and we will teach you the basics of photography and you will start shooting in no time at all!
Watch out for our helpful, no-nonsense Zenith PhotoCourse, coming to you soon, only at zenithphotoworks.blogspot.com

p/s: If you're reading this, we'd appreciate if you could help us to spread the word out. Cheers! - Mark & Frank

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Of black & whites and portraits

I have a thing about black & white photos. In fact, black & white photography is one of my favourites!
Over the years I've taken countless numbers of black & white photos, most of which are portraits.
Here, you can see three of my favourite shots that I took when I went to San Francisco, USA a couple of years back, when I did my piercing course.
I took these at night when I was taking a stroll around Union Square in San Francisco. These street musicians caught my ears... and eyes... so I decided to take some shots of them. The surrounding and the whole atmosphere that time made for a perfect “setting” for these shots.
Looking back, I was just a freshie that time. I just started taking interest in photography for three months then.
I didn't have a speed light because my priority then was a 17-55mm F2.8 Nikkor lens. Also, I had to keep things on a minimum because I needed to save up or otherwise I would never have been able to survive in the States.
When I messaged one of my friends and told her about my blog ideas, she asked if I could post some tips about portraitures and landscapes. I decided to go with portraits first. :)

Thursday, June 10, 2010

EDITORIAL: Crab QQ Noodles promo

This guy here is the man behind the unique array of dishes served at Grand Margherita Hotel Kuching's Meisan restaurant, in its Crab QQ Noodles promotion.
This photo was taken for a newspaper feature article published in the New Sarawak Tribune, during a food tasting session with the media and a lady who's in charge of SEDC's in-house news
.
For this shoot, I used natural light, except for this particular chef's profile photo, which I shot using a Nikon 50mm lens and a Nikon SB-900 flash unit with a Gary Fong light sphere attached to it. The flash unit is mounted on its stand, screwed tight on a sturdy Velbon tripod for directional soft light.
Check out some of the photos below, taken during the food tasting session for this "crabby" food promotion at Grand Margherita Hotel Kuching.
Click on the photos to view their larger versions.
Cheers! - Mark

Monday, June 7, 2010

Chinese wedding: Mei Hoong & Jerry

Recently I was invited to photograph Chinese couple Mei Hoong and Jerry on their wedding day in KL. The couple had their wedding held according to traditional Chinese customs, with prayers and offerings to the ancestors involved, and the most important thing of all in a typical Chinese wedding, the tea ceremony. Given the fact that the wedding took place at the groom's parents' house and that it wasn't a lavish one, shooting it was definitely a challenge. But it's okay... challenge is good.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

More before & after

Here's another before & after photo. This one is of a pair of wedding rings (with a piece of diamond embedded into each ring), which originally had scratches on em. Doesn't look that appealing in a picture, with all those scratches "adorning" the surface of the white gold (?) rings.
Anyway, the same sort of technique was applied in retouching this photo. A lot harder to do compared to the previously posted photo on here? I wouldn’t say that… but yes, it was definitely a challenge in a way, especially because the scratches were rather close together and different areas of the rings had different colour patterns.
So aaaaanyway… after spending over an hour on it, the photo turned out to be as seen on the left here.

* Note that I didn’t change much of what’s in the background. I didn’t even crop the photo. I think it looks nice just as it is. Frank’s got good eyes for this sort of shot… or any other sort of shot for that matter. - Mark

Monday, May 31, 2010

A little bit of magic helps

Retouching is a challenge, especially for those in the business of wedding photography, and more so for those in the fashion photography business.
Now, I'm not trying to imply anything here. It's just that I find some people choose the easy way over the "painstaking" way of retouching someone's face. I see a lot of this happening in the wedding photography industry.
The easy way I'm referring to is by using a layer mask that blurs the skin of the person photographed just enough so that his or her skin looks spotless. Some use the "clarity" slider to make the lines and bumps on the skin appear less visible.
Some even go the extra mile, moving the slider a little too much that everything in the picture appears to be glowing.
While these methods can be used to make picture more fancy, they often destroy the skin texture and all...
Take a look at this here photo. It was taken by Frankie on the morning of the lady's wedding day just before she headed home for a traditional tea ceremony, which is an important aspect in a Chinese wedding.
She was getting her make-up applied (in this case, lipstick) by a make-up artist in her hotel room in Kuala Lumpur, and Frankie was busy snapping away at her, to record the goings-on prior to the wedding.
Notice how in the before photo, the bride's face is covered in pimples and blemishes.
I did the retouching on this photo, using non-destructive retouching techniques, which mostly involved burning and dodging as well as cloning. Colour correction was done earlier in Lightroom 2 while retouching was done in nothing more than the simple, yet powerful, Adobe Photoshop CS3!
What's important for this photo, for me, was that I wanted the bride's face to be rather smoother than in the original photo, but not too smooth that she'd end up looking like she'd gone for a plastic surgery. :P
Using different brush sizes, hardness and opacity, I carefully "fixed" the areas that needed "fixing"... mostly the apparent bumps and blemishes that stare dead straight at me. I just wanted to get rid of those.
After doing so, I ended up with a smoother skin, but without destroying the texture and pixels on the bride's face.
I left some bumps on her face, but they're so much less apparent. I mean, c'mon, no one on earth has skin as smooth as porcelain! That's just a load of cr*p! There's gotta be some realism in the photo as well.
As you probably notice, I didn't do that much to this photo... just some retouching on the skin. I left the hair, lips and whatever else just as they originally were. Besides, this is, after all, the bride having her make-up done. You can't expect her to be 100% perfecto if she's still not in full make-up.

p/s: Took me over two hours to complete this one piece of photo! If I did some more adjustments to the other elements in this photo, the whole process would've taken three to four hours. So there, I've said it!
Oh, and stay tuned... we're gonna be posing some photos from this particular wedding soon. - Mark

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

EDITORIAL: Challenge of shooting an object behind a glass

This afternoon, I got an assignment from a local magazine Borneo Talk to do an advertorial spread for their Food section.
The restaurant was White Rajah Restaurant, a rather snazzy joint located within the Regency Rajah Court Kuching vicinity.
The task was to photograph some of the food for a write-up on the restaurant's breakfast and lunch buffet spread, which included both local and international cuisines.
While it wasn't all that difficult to photograph the food, the real test was when I needed to photograph the chefs at work.
The guy you see here is the chef in charge of the restaurant's Chinese Kitchen.
I was short of time, so I tried taking his photo through the glass that separated us. The result was awful, of course... Too many reflections on the glass.
So I decided to use multiple flash... Well now, that's me exaggerating a little there.
Actually, I just used two flash... a simple setting to achieve a simple effect as seen in the photo you see here.
I didn't want to light up the whole scene... I just wanted enough light to show the chef at work... the rest of the background wasn't that much of an importance to me... not in this setting.
I used an SB900 with a Gary Fong light sphere attached to it, and asked another chef to hold it steady for me on one side, behind the glass screen.
On my side, I just used my camera's pop up flash and covered it with a Lumiquest Mini Softbox.
Voila!!! The result of the shoot is as seen here in the photo on this page.
Oh, and I used a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 D AF lens for this one. - Mark

Monday, May 17, 2010

We'll be active soon...















Hang on to your seats for we are going into blogging mode soon...