This blog could be one of the most difficult blog I ever wrote. You know nowadays blog becomes the perception door for others to know what we are doing for living. That makes it so difficult for me to share my thought.

But I really want to make this blog to be my reflection of my proud time. So this following blog could be one of the hardest blog I’ve ever written.

Last year was a successful year for me because I achieved pretty much what I planned to do. It’s worth to look what I have achieved in this blog.
One of important decisions I made in 2011 was to reduce number of commitments in wedding assignments. Initially the plan was just to direct my works to what I wish to do because I could commit in every project that I was assigned to. I am not only happy with the result but also I could have my spare time to explore my other options.

One of the options I love to do was to inspire and educate. I was fortunate to be able to travel in South East Asia to shoot weddings while meeting a bunch of coolest Asian photographers in this past 2 years. It made me realise that we all had the same problems and hope for the same dreams. That is to have a better place for creative people to be treated respectfully in Asia.

Of course one of the common problem is how easily people call themselves a professional wedding photographer just by having a nice Digital SLR and after being an uncle bob in one of the weddings they attend.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am encouraging people to turn into a professional wedding photographer/cinematographer. It is simply one of the best jobs in the world. No kidding. I thank God for the opportunity and I wish others can feel the same. I am definitely happy with the competition.

Who am I to judge who is ready to be professional or not / good or bad? After all, they are also making couples happy right (super affordable package)? I know exactly how it felt like them, after all I am also one those stories because of the affordable digital SLR era.

That’s why back in the late of 2010 I created a project named Wiki School Pedia (WSP), a school or place for wedding artists to share, inspire and educate peers to be a better professional. I see this place where I am not the only one but also for other professionals to contribute for this vision.

I knew from the start this project would require a lot of commitment especially for me who’s still a full wedding photographer/cinematographer/businessman.

I was committed to do it with slowly better than nothing. Until late 2011, we thought it’s time to look at this project on a more serious note. It’s not everyday we are given some opportunity. It’s never about success or fail when comes with the opportunity. The question is that whether we have a heart to embrace it.

If 2011 is the year of achievement. We called 2012 was the year of investment. We say 2012 is the time we need to go out from our comfort zone, the time we need to have a faith on ourselves.
The first move will happen in 1-2 weeks time from now when we send our kids to settle in Jakarta, Indonesia where a lot of helpers from family can help us out.

It’s one of the most difficult step to make for this commitment. It’s easy to think growing a family in Sydney, Australia is way better than Jakarta, Indonesia.
But that’s the step we must take because Jamie + Ryan deserve to have full attention of their education and welfare while we are super busy with wedding assignment back and forth in Sydney and South East Asia particularly in Indonesia, networking and looking for quality teaching contents for Wiki School Pedia and of course managing our growing team in Foto Expression, Foto Xpress and the BIG films.

We printed this precious family photo print (1metre). Photo taken by Ken Kawitana of Foto Expression

The meaning of investment in my dictionary is gamble + education.
In order to realize our dreams in Wiki School Pedia and other dreams, we must gamble a lot of things that we knew that I was happy for it. We must gamble a lot of different things where the chance of failure is bigger because you don’t have any business model to look up to.
But it’s not a pure gamble because we have done our homework before making this decision. It’s an investment that we know that we are prepared for a loss rather than a gain.
Thus, we prepare to see that 2012 will be one of the exciting years for me because this could be the second times I made big decision in my career that I could be so proud of (after leaving my full time office job to be a wedding photographer).

Wish us luck! Keep supporting me and the team in Foto Expression especially in Sydney, Australia and Jakarta, Indonesia.
We have nothing but to be super excited for the future ahead of us.

Note:

Yes, I am still available in 2012 wedding assignment either in Sydney, Australia or in Jakarta, Indonesia or anywhere. There are a few dates to book if you are interested.
And Yes, Foto Expression and the BIG films are still my babies. We have so much plan to explore creatively in this year. At least we have just added 5 new members to our photography and cinematography team in Sydney.
Check out here some behind the scenes photos taken from last Sunday’s training

Ilona turned into a pretend make up artist on the training.

I pretended to be the groom.

No wedding dress, we used a tie as the laces in wedding gown

Adiv showed how to use the steadycam using 70-200mm lens

Lastly, Ilona and I pretended to walk down the aisle again, but this time I turned into the father of the bride

Merry Xmas everyone! We are so excited to host our Xmas party at Foto Expression head quarter this Sunday. We’ll share what we did.
In the mean time, while winding down with editing weddings images, I realised that I’ve never really seen what I took during the mission trip with my church, GRII Sydney, back in last October 2011 to Ternate and Halmahera, Indonesia. The place was stil a developing area. We even went to the place of where there was no electricity yet.

I remember the day of when my priest came to me “Wiki, do you want to come to the trip?”, I answered “Yes” without hesitation. It’s because it might be once-in-the-lifetime opportunity for me to serve the purpose and the timing couldn’t be perfect as the trip was finished just a day before the wedding of Yusran + Chrissie in Jakarta, Indonesia. It’s been ages that I haven’t served my church like I used to be. You know, I love photography starting from my church as I found out there was nobody at my church taking pictures. So I encouraged myself to try. The rest is history

Anyway, the trip was 4 days (actually 5 days, but I went back by myself a day before as I didn’t want to miss the wedding ). It’s a surreal of how big difference between our life in this big city and their life in the village. It’s something that you have to be there to witness with your own eyes.
They were so excited with little things we have done. They were easy to please.

Well, enough said. I am a photographer, let my photo speaks itself. All photo here were taken with canon 5dmk2 + 16-35mm f2.8 + 70-200mm f2.8 and Lumix GF-2

It’s been a fantastic year for me this 2011. Thank you for all the blessing. This is one of important highlight of what I have done in 2011. I am so looking forward seeing the future in 2012 as Ilona and I plan something radical in our life. Please support us as I need you

photo courtesy of Ilona Lee from Foto Expression

If you are into wedding cinematography but you haven’t heard Mayad studios, you must be out of this world. They were one of the best 25 cinematographers based on Event DV in 2011. I was fortunate to attend their first overseas academy  in Singapore while I was on my work trip in South East Asia last July.

I have to admit I wasn’t a big fan of their works prior to the workshop, but I am now. But as an educator myself, if I could go home from a workshop and able to shorten one or two steps in my workflow, I would reckon the workshop was worth to go to. Obviously, I didn’t expect to change my style completely from the workshop. But I think it did. I learned a great deal about teamwork and many other things that helped to shape my new style of shooting.

I had a big and long thought from the workshop to digest what I saw and heard. My style of motion pictures had been similar to my still pictures philosophy, It’s more about real moment and storytelling. But from the workshop, I learned for the first time the word “Entertaining” in the wedding film-making. I never thought about it before, I only focused to create a story to remember for the couple. I felt it’s OK to hand-held the camera as long as I could get the feeling from the movie. But from this workshop, I learned the use of glidecam and many other tools could also create a story with the feeling, not only just to create something looking so cool. Thanks to them for opening my eyes in the workshop.

It could be it’s my real first time to use glidecam ever at the workshop. I had no clue of how to use it, but I remember just to try during the practical challenge. Yeah, it’s still no good. I could conclude that before the workshop I had no idea of being the real cinematographer. Pardon me, I am from photography world that inspires to be a cinematographer.

Not only that, I also learn teamwork is the key to succeed in wedding cinematography. Coming from the background of photography that always relies on myself all the time, I watched how their team’s work together, it was a mind blowing experience. I could imagine if I have three Wiki Lee on the team, it’ll be a super awesome. That’s how I realise I should stop thinking it’s always about me to perform when shooting. It’s always about the team to make the difference. That’s how I decided that there is no more Wiki Lee motion pictures anymore, we created a new revolution team under the BIG films.

the BIG films has been running fully since Mid August 2011. The reception we received from the same day edit presentation was phenomenal. Some of them dubbed our works to be the best wedding video ever. I wouldn’t dare to accept that. But we are definitely trying to be one someday. That’s our BIG dream to start with. But I think for sure, what I learn from the workshop and formulate into the team, it definitely worked for us. Even for us it’s difficult to believe that we’re able to produce something like that. I am turning to a big fan of our own team’s works. Fun, creative, entertaining and yet storytelling, it’s something that we aim for in every wedding.

On top of that, I met huge number of new friends internationally during the workshop. It’s definitely a big plus. I also got the chance to hang out with cool dudes from Wedding Cinematographers Guild. Not only just meeting up with fellow cinematographers, but I also got the chance to hear from someone like Oly Ruiz of Metro Photo learning about the other side of marketing

So thank you my friends from Mayad studio. I am sure you never expect that you change someone’s life but you have. Well done, I hope the best endeavor for the Mayad Academy to have more blessed people like me.

Here is our debut work. You are more than welcome to visit our official website to see all of our recent works as we will blog each individual separately. Join the facebook page if you like what you see

Taken in early this month during my church mission trip to Tobelo, Halmahera Island, Indonesia using my cool Lumix GF-2 14mm f4.

Here is some bonus picture of me hanging out with the local kids

Come back again next week, I’ll show you the fusion video of this mission trip.

About 3-4 months ago, I received a call from a high school principal. I seriously thought it was another tele-marketing call. That’s something what I hate to receive every time I work from home. But this time it was from a Christian high school. I was confused at the start why there was a school interested to make a call to our office contact no. The principle mentioned that there was a student of his who admired with our works and wondered whether it’s possible to have a work experience with Foto Expression. I had no hesitation to accept the invitation even though I wondered what kind of works that I could gave to her during her stay with me for a week.

Since I didn’t think I had enough materials for her to work on as most of daily operation had been taken care by my team, I gave her a private mentoring session instead for 5 days.

Her name is Olivia Erin. You can see her experience of learning from me a week over here.

She is one talented girl. You can have every talent and skill you need to have a good photographer, but if you don’t have the right attitude, passion and commitment, it’ll be useless. But Olivia definitely has what it takes to be a good photographer, I can’t wait to see how much she will grow in the near future.

On the first day, I spent time of helping her to discover what she’s passionate about and what’s her strength. For me, it was very important to consider at early stage of the career. Thus, she had a vision of what kind of photographer she wanted to be.

2nd Day, one of our past students came by to our studio. I told Olivia that the best learning was not to listen what I mentored them, but to observe what and how the real Pro live their lives. Because workshop and mentoring session can always talk the good things, but listening the real experience, she would learn what kind of lives the photographers had.

3rd day, I helped her to give some technical tips and how to use and to understand camera and equipments better. This was for the purpose of preparing herself for the 4th day practical session.

4th day, it was fun day. I was fortunate to have a friend whom I met in one of the weddings I shot, Stephanie. Note, this was my first try to have a fashion spree (or whatever you want to call it) compared to my usual natural and candid style. Check the photo below.

5th day, we started the day by looking at each other’s results from the day before session. I was in awe to see how much Olivia’s eye was definitely different than mine, but it was still good. Then she spent her time to run a bit of reflection of what she learnt from me. So it’s more questions and answers day.

In overall, I had a great time sharing. I didn’t receive any cent from this. I shared my experience and knowledge to strangers. It was a nice feeling that I can finally do something good deed. Well, it might be my selfish act of wanting to see her to be successful one day

Olivia is in action

If you want to see more, please view it in my facebook page.