Raymond Phang Photography » pre-wedding photography

Raymond Phang Photography – Conceptualised Pre-Wedding

Raymond Phang Photography — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 08:38:10 +0000

Hi guys!! Here’s some images from our conceptualised pre-wedding photoshoots to share (in case you’re not on our Facebook Page yet cos that’s where we usually update more frequently). Do add us on our Facebook Page for regular updates, and it’s kinda more interactive there, we get to receive feedbacks and comments on our works, and we get to know who are the people who enjoy our photography works!

http://www.facebook.com/raymondphangphotography

Leap of Faith – Our couple actually did a cross dressed thematic shoot for their pre-wedding. It was a known fact that the groom rarely had pictures of him taken.. he doesn’t like it somehow.. but I think it must be the power of love, he actually agreed to do a conceptualised pre-wedding shoot with us. Imagine a person dislike having pictures of him taken, yet agree to spend a full day accommodating to our requests for the photoshoot!!! We were so touched and honoured because the groom was really super co-operative! And he must have love the bride so much to agree. SALUTE for Private and Confidential!!

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SeaPits – Super love this shot. Some people might have think this is disgusting.. Well, if you enjoy this series as much as we do, and you’re looking to do a super crazy conceptualised pre-wedding shoot with us, drop us an email at contactme@raymondphang.com!

Love – One of the romantic series from Amy and Roy’s conceptualised pre-wedding shoot at the Museum. It’s kinda hard for us to do romantic cos we need to like… feel a triple dosage of love until we get soooo inspired to do a romantic one. But it turned out well, pretty classic. :)

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Celebration – Same couple as the “Love” piece, they had a shoot done on the Sundown marathon day itself. This was sort of a one shot one kill image, and we had to clean up the floor after that. Slippery floor will pose as a hazard for other runners coming in right after, especially when this is the finishing line where the runners will usually chiong their way in.
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Shiok Shiok Curry Pok – Conceptualised pre-wedding in New Zealand, South Island. Super love this farm… not a very big farm, but I love it for the beautiful friendship/relationship between the animals, how they were able to co-exist together in harmony. I’ve never seen pigs, horses and sheeps “playing” together, and I’ve never witnessed on live how piggy can sneak out for a little tour and came back through the same hole he sneaked out from! It’s like watching Animal farm or Babe the movie!

Goose Bumps – Conceptualised Pre-Wedding in PRAGUE, at the Prague castle! Woohoo! Prague is quite a romantic place, and we’d love to go back there if not for the crowd. I think it’ll be beautiful to go during the cold winter season, but be prepared to freeze like hell. We were already freezing when we went there for the shoot in April. Again, gained weight like hell cos we couldn’t resist the good food. All the joggings from the ups and downs to carry lights and equipments didn’t help at all. Grrr… This is from the romantic series, more crazy ones to come from the Prague shoot!!

I don’t give a fart – Conceptualised pre-wedding shoot at Sepang Circuit (KL). Subang was a damn awesome place with awesome good food!! We flew there on FireFly airline, the propellor plane was suuuuuuupeeeerrrrrrrr awesomeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! The G-force was so shiok, service was fantastic, crew was friendly and we’d love to fly with Firefly again!! The food there was yummy, black noodle was so yummy with the black sauce, the fried rice, the bak kut teh, the steamed beancurd buried below the rice, the planta prata, the bandung was super shiok and we gained weight from the trip. Can’t help it when our couple was such a good host!!

There’s many more to come from the conceptualised pre-wedding shoots! Recently we’ve been receiving quite a number of enquiries from couples to do conceptualised pre-wedding with us, and it’s on rare occurrence we get super loony couples who are riding on the same wave as us to do things crazy enough. We get a lot of crazy ideas in our brain, especially when we don’t get good sleep and we keep having dreams about weird stuffs. We would love to actualise them, and I believe more loony couples are somewhere out there hiding in the dark. Come to papa, hit us via email at contactme@raymondphang.com. We’ll see how we can work & gel together like the Buns and the meat patties in a burger. Muwahahahahaha!! Have a good weekend!
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Lots of ♥,
- Angeline

Conceptualised Pre-Wedding by Raymond Phang Photography

Raymond Phang Photography — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 07:23:57 +0000

Good day to everyone, Raymond Phang Photography is back from New Zealand and Prague!!

It has been an exciting month for us, and it’s even more exciting to see the piles of backlogs sitting there waiting for us when we return after a month of missing in action. It’s a good thing! We’re gonna be suuuuper busy from now onwards with new plans brewing, and we’ll definitely share once things are in place. Hehehe.

That aside, we would like to touch on our pre-wedding since pre-wedding shoot seems to become more popular lately. Because our pre-wedding style is different from the usual romance, abstract arty farty, or even the super aesthetically pleasing ones, we need a lot of lead time for preparation up till the completion of the digital imaging and printing before handover. Of course this is not to say the other school of photography with a different pre-wedding style do not need as much time, and who knows they might need even more time than us. But here’s just a basic rough idea on how we roll at Raymond Phang Photography.

Each pre-wedding shoot will take us at least 3-4 months of time from the initial conceptualising and consultation, exchange and suggestions of ideas, props preparation from the couple, actual shoot, editing, designing of the album, printing of the album, QC of the album we received and buffer time for reprint (if any, but very rare cases). If your actual day wedding happens to meet the peak wedding season, we’ll need an even longer time as we’d have to buffer in days for AD shoots and total batches of weddings for editing as well. A lot of people don’t get to see how hectic is the “backstage” life, and how many tonnes of midnight oil we have burnt just to churn out the final image, but really, it is extremely taxing and time consuming.

Not a lot of couples can accept our kind of conceptualised pre-wedding where we do crazy things (or make couples do crazy things). One thing for sure, most couples will find it challenging to get their folks to accept this. And strangely we’ve had couples enquiring to meet us for pre-wedding shoots after they’ve seen our pre-wedding images on our Facebook, but we realised that what the couples are looking for is actually the romantic style of pre-wedding where couples kiss and look pretty in gowns, and they find our creative concept a little extreme for their liking. *scratch head*

We hope that all couples understand our niche for pre-wedding is in creating wacky images (sometimes unglam). If you tell us you only want romantic shots on the actual pre-wedding shoot day, it can really give us heart attack.

Maybe what couples can do is to really sit down together and have a good talk, ask yourself if our style of pre-wedding photography is really, really what you want. Because personally I feel that some couples enjoy looking through our pre-wedding works, but when it comes to them being the subject of the shoot, only then they’ll understand it’s not easy. It’s best for both the bride and groom to say yes to this, but if either one party feels apprehensive about it, maybe you guys should reconsider, just in case incidents of unhappiness arises during the discussion/props preparation, and worse is on the shoot day itself when we need you guys to do a certain pose etc. No point paying for something which will only bring you bad memories ya?

I guess we’ll just have to wait patiently for the right couple, someone who is as crazy as us, someone who can totally click with us and gel with us, and share the same passion. Therefore we have decided to limit the number of pre-wedding shoots we accept per year. We’re still in the talks on the exact number, but one thing for sure, we are currently not accepting anymore engagement for pre-weddings for the month of June and July as our hands are full with the current batch of edits for couples getting married in October/November.

Our pre-wedding shoot is definitely different from our style of shooting on an actual day wedding. During the pre-wedding shoot, we usually have to do a few times of retake unlike actual day where most events cannot be repeated (and therefore no retakes). Sometimes it’s long, long hours of shoot, everyone of us is tired (including the couple themselves), and we’re really thankful to have cooperative couples! Despite them being tired and having to juggle with their stressful workload, they were all really nice to press on with us and showed us their best! To every single couple of ours who has their pre-wedding shot by us, we will always remember you guys and the sacrifices made to produce the awesome images together with us.

Naggy long winded words aside, here are some images from our recent pre-wedding to share. Enjoyyyyyyyyyy!!

Believe it or not, we actually have 3 people throwing the food for this shot!! Chopped carrots, Spaghetti, dried mushroom, green apple, chilli padi, corn, there were oranges or something as well but I guess it missed the frame. We had fun throwing the food, and some of it hit the ceiling, the whole place was super messy after that (felt really bad about it though), sometimes an apple will land on the couple’s head or thighs as well….. but they were really professional, and gave us awesome expression! Fearless, nonchalent, and not a blink of eye. NICE!

This was a hot and stuffy shot – it’s actually an “oven” to dry the paintwork of the car and we were actually waiting for the oven timer to go off before we went in to do the shoot cos they had a car inside for drying. I guess the spray of water was an enjoyment in this case. Everyone was hot and hungry and thirsty during this shoot, and they had to wait while Raymond set up his angle and lights, but look at their expression!

Naughty naughty!!

This is actually a real place where we managed to recce for the shoot. The planet Earth was fake though… kekeke. But I like it!

Last image to share from our latest pre-wedding shoot in New Zealand – The STAR TRAILS!!!! Here’s an excerpt from Raymond along with the image posted on Facebook;

Contrary to the belief that the lunatics at Raymond Phang Photography are dummies to Romance, we present you with our latest pre-wedding work from New Zealand – TADAH!

Kudos to Colin and Emily the awesome for braving the wind so strong it can almost carry us away, and the teeth gritting cold that instantaneously transformed us all with chicken skin!

Getting this shot of the couple – sitting in the SUV holding hot steamy coffee mug in their hands, with the tent and a mini campfire isn’t all just me. I am extremely proud of my team that made it all possible – Angeline for making sure everyone is comfortable, art directing (nit picking so that the final image comes out as envisioned), holding lights and getting her hands all extremely icky preparing the Vaseline for the campfire. Not to mention Susu our talented awesome Digital imaging artist, who helped picked the dry wood and got a splinter on her finger as a result, hold lights, run around chasing tents that flew away in the strong wind and working her ass off back in the studio to put the final image together.

Colin was our “guest assistant” helping us to set up the tent and mini campfire, holding our “secret weapon” together with Susu in the wind (extreme arm muscle training!) to shoot the car panel so that it looks just right, both risking their eyes being blinded by the flash gun that Angeline was holding in the process. Colin didn’t have to do anything originally, but for the sake of protecting his princess Emily from suffering in the cold, he sacrificed. *bite lips with a distant look – everyone please say awwwww*

Without this awesome team I would not have gotten away with this image. I am truly blessed. This single image alone took a total of 4.5 hours from the beginning (setting up the scene) to the end (packing up in the wilderness) and when the camera was in the midst of capturing the startrails, I could clearly see Angeline and Susu dozing off in the car and that really pains me. We worked hard and played hard, and we hope this image is well worth our efforts.

I can’t wait to share the rest of the images from the New Zealand and Prague shoot!! One of the bestest things that we did in Year 2011!!

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Pre-wedding images aside, here are a quick few shots from our New Zealand travel.

Moo Moo Cow.

We drove all the way from North Island down to South Island – it was free and easy, and we drove all the way up to the Sand Dunes when we were on our way to Cape Reinga. Love the sand dunes, cold nice fine sand!! So we had to take a group shot there. Hehehe.

Next we went to this mini waterfall, and I had to take a picture with grumpy Su. :p

And we went to Cafe Eutopia!! Quaint little place selling organic yummies, and I bought a really pretty pendant called the Tree of Life. AHHHH!!! So many things to share on my travel!! I wish I had the time to post the images we took and the places we went to and the things we experienced!!

Susu had the most yummy Bagel!!

And my organic Lemonade tasted ssssssssssolidddddddddddd…

We went to another Cafe, and Susu had a hot chocolate. Susu is forever having hot chocolate.

And we went to Hell’s gate…. NICEEEEEE….

And a group photo of the five of us – Raymond, Angeline, Susu, Terence, and Scooby Loon!! Hehehehe…

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Till the next when I have more time, I’ll share on how I dumped my boyfriend and how Raymond dumped his girlfriend in New Zealand. Muwahahahahahahahahaha!!! Cheers!

Lots of ♥,
- Angeline

WPPI 2011 Award of Excellence 16″ x 20″ Print competition

Raymond Phang Photography — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 10:40:41 +0000

WATAH!! Happy month of March to everyone! A while ago we were still busy eating the lovely CNY mini cupcakes given to us by one of our couple, and busy taking group photos of ourselves. Now, we are living in the month of March already!

Come another 24/5 more days Raymond Phang Photography will be away in New Zealand + Prague, and we will only return on 24 April 2011. Couples who would like to meet us before we fly on 27 March 2011 for discussion, view our works and albums, do feel free to send us an email at contactme@raymondphang.com, or give us a call at 81383397!

Just a quick update as well, we received an email from WPPI today with the news that out of the 10 prints Raymond Phang has submitted for the WPPI 2011 Award of Excellence 16″ x 20″ Print competition, 7 of the prints were awarded with the Accolade of Excellence, with a score of 80 points and above!

This is actually our virgin attempt and we had no prior experience with international Physical print competition where stringent requirement is placed not only on the photography work, idea/concept, technicality, but also on the physical print such as the print quality, colors accuracy and details, including the matt board and physical quality too. It was a lot of effort put in to source for the best matt board, print the images with the best certified fine art printer, work on the images and learn from fellow peers on the details to look out for in terms of the image processing. It’s really different from all other competition where you can just submit the digital softcopy for the competition.

Nonetheless we are happy that our hard work was paid off and we are really grateful to all who have helped us achieve what we have today. This competition has really opened our eyes, and from this experience, we are becoming even more of a demanding person than we already are, especially on the work we produce. I hope that’s a good thing though!

Art is really subjective, and to every single one of you who have always given us the constant encouragement and have always believed in our work, thank you very much! We put our love in the images that we capture and create, and we’re very happy to know that you like them as much as we do. A super big thank you to our couples and fellow peers who made this happen, we lurb you guys deep deep!

The following are the 10 images submitted for the Print competition. Enjoy!

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The scores for the individual images are actually posted on our Facebook Album, under the Milestones and Achievements. Do take a look if you’re curious to find out. Enjoy the Thursday! Cheers!

Lots of ♥,
- Angeline

Quick update – 1 Pre-wedding Image

Raymond Phang Photography — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 20:38:57 +0000

Hello everybody!!
All of us at Raymond Phang Photography have been super duper busy for the month of January and it will be the same for the coming months too! Pre-wedding shoots, actual day shoots, and most importantly clearing of backlogs from previous batches of weddings. You might not see us blogging as frequently, or maybe spot a few daddy long legs building cob webs at some corners of our blog. Despite that, we will be sharing some images every now and then, but the updates will usually appear on our Raymond Phang Photography Facebook first, so feel free to join our Page at http://www.facebook.com/raymondphangphotography for updates.

Nonetheless here’s an image from one of our January pre-wedding shoot to share. As how Jeanne has described Raymond Phang Photography, here’s one image for our exciting and adventurous couple Irvin & Carrie! We had to ask the train master for the train timing for this shot, and apparently the train timing given isn’t as accurate as the actual timing. But luckily all was smooth sailing during the shoot (except for the rain and rain and rain and rain), and we had Kenneth joining us for the shoot. He has been a super great help to us! Really! We’ll share more on that when we are done with the editing for the pre-wedding images. :)

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That aside, we will be sharing some images from Kok Keong and Charmaine’s actual day wedding in the late afternoon, so stay tuned ya! Ciao! ;)

Lots of ♥
- Angeline

Concluding Year 2009… or not?

Raymond Phang Photography — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 05:13:52 +0000

I was thinking of updating an entry to conclude Year 2009 for Raymond and I, but come to think of it, 365 days are all filled with work and more work. The only time we get to go dating is when we meet up with couples-turned-friends for dinner or movies!

Actually I feel really blessed to have known them, especially couples like Guan Lim & Jeslin, Jack & Grace, Michelle & Sam, Desmond & Jolene, Jonald & Yutong, Andrew & Clarice, Richard & Wendy, Eddie & Aileen, Max & Mui Hui, Kok Meng & Cassie, Edwin & Eunice and a whoooooooooooooooooooolesome lotssssssssssssssssss moreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!! In fact we love them all for inviting us to be part of the special team for their biggest day, and also very appreciative that they engaged us because they genuinely love our works and not because we’re “spares”. Much more than that, we’re really really happy that we get to take the relationship further from being just clients, to friends and very good friends! So looking forward to Year 2010, and hopefully meet more interesting characters!!

Year 2009 was pretty fruitful with the achievements Raymond bagged from the [AG]WPJA – Artistic Guild of the Wedding Photojournalist Association, the MPA – Masters Photographer Association, establishment of the Wedding Photographers Guild, collaboration with the preservation of monument board and CDL in producing the book – Resonance Songs of our Forefathers, addition of Susulini the DI artist to our family, and lots lots more! Learnt a lot of things, widened our horizons a bit with the travellings and attending the Schembri workshops in Sydney, plucking enough courage to drive overnight from Sydney to Gold Coast within a day etc!

Come to think of it, even though Year 2009 has been 365 days of work for us, it’s actually still pretty colourful!

Now for my Year 2010 resolution: Stop work at 12 midnight, start work at 7am, find one activity to do together with Raymond (we’re pretty lifeless cos of work!), spend more time with family & friends, eat more fruits! That’s all for now! Maybe i’ll get susulini and Raymond to share some day!

Okie now, here’s some images from my personal snap snaps collection. Hehe.

I actually fed the machine with 2 dollars and out came this love struck looking froggie… I got this because Raymond was mad at me for some reason which I cannot remember. So next morning I went over to his place, outlined the shape of my hands and fingers, cut and folded them in such a way that the middle finger is pointing out, stuck it to the body of the frog and pinned the whole thing to his mirror!

I find it funny cos the whole idea of it is funny to me, and at the same time it gets to express my anger and frustration too… Oh well, things I do to “spice up” our relationship. :p

Bought this during our furniture hunting at IKEA few months back. Raymond likes it a lot.

Sometimes he’s really sweet cos he actually bothers to take time off work and divert his attention to me by doing little things like sewing my buttons back for me when it dropped off.

Interesting things we spotted together..

Having late night supper… it’s actually lunch + dinner combined in the middle of the night after 12 midnight!

Sharing a biiiiig mug of hot chocolate..

Yesterday I spent half the day accompanying my friend Shahidah. I call her Shark He Duck, or Duck for short.

I know I have a lot of emails to reply, but Duck is having some personal problems and she needed someone to talk to…

Raymond and I puts relationship above everything else, so instead of sitting down replying emails while she talk and share her problems, I felt that someone who needs a listening ear deserves all the attention…

Tried to cheer her up so I suggested snapping pictures!

Glad it made her smile…

SUCH AN OBSCENE PICTURE!

Duck and I knew each other since 1997, and she’s like one of my best friend… such a coincidence we’re both wearing checkered top!

Then I suggested playing with faces!

A picture of the naked face…

A picture of the painted face!

Duck has a big eyering, floral murals, bird (which I cannot tell!), stitched up wound, sun, and a Mr Pringles look alike face.

I had two uneven eyebrows, some wrinkles on top, double eyelid, arrow love, whiskers, pink nose, mustache, moles and eyebags.

This image is damn cool! Looked like I had fake teeth!!

That’s duck’s frontal view!

And here’s two images to share from our piles of backlogs of wedding images!!

Taken on 3 November 2009 for Scott & Wee-Li for their outdoor pre-wedding. Susulini came with us on that day and assisted. Very happy that the images turned out to be pretty nice! Sweet and cheery, bright and pretty!!

Taken on 10 November 2009 for Qi Wei & Hsiao Hui’s outdoor pre-wedding. Susulini joined us too, and we had a yummy dinner of Botak Jones right after! Love this series as well, and we really think Hsiao Hui looks like Zhang Zi Yi from certain angles!

We have a whole lot of other backlogs to share, some of which are already completed long ago. Do keep a lookout for more updates ya? Back to emails! Merry Christmas to all!!

Lots of ♥,

- Angeline

AGWPJA Q1 2009 Contest Results

Raymond Phang Photography — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:21:53 +0000

We’re in the midst of clearing backlogs, and more upcoming shoots! This coming Saturday we’ll be seeing Ho Wei and Eileen for their actual day wedding. I’m pretty excited myself cos this means I’ll have new interesting images to look through, and I’ll get to see quite a few number of familiar faces on the pictures!

Anyway, here’s a piece of good news to share! Raymond took part in The Artistic Guild of the Wedding Photojournalist Association’s Q1 2009 contest, and he managed to get into the Top 20 Photographers!

Here’s the winning image which got into the 5th place for the Wedding Day or Engagement Portrait category.

We have a lot of thank yous to give away to the couple for helping us produce such a wonderful image. Of course the biggest one goes to the couple themselves – Chye Tuan and Siang Yin, for being so patient and understanding with us on that day! Chye Tuan actually jumped a few times, and Siang Yin’s fringe kept getting blown messy by the wind. Thank God for not raining, but the sun was really naughty that day. It refused to show us it’s big round orange tummy! So we couldn’t do a lot of shots which we wanted to try out, which was quite a pity. But it’s ok, cos we managed to grab other nice images without the sun too!

Raymond and I had a lot of fun shooting their pre-wedding, and we have quite a few images to share from that day’s shoot! Not forgetting a picture of my wrinkled mimosa face with a badly squashed weirdo bug on my finger. That darn Raymond had to take his handphone to snap a picture instead of helping me grab tissues for me to wipe off first, cos the process matters most, not the results. The bug was reeeeeeeeally disgusting, and it really freaked me out! =_=”

We’ll share on Chye Tuan and Siang Yin’s wedding images once it’s ready! Not forgetting Richard and Wendy’s! Raymond is almost done tidying up Janet and Herman’s wedding, so I’ll be sharing some snippets from their wedding tomorrow in the late night. Hehe.

Tata!

Lots of ♥,

- Angeline