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

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. :)

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

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.

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