Here’s the certificate from AIPP NSW followed by the winning print

I did submit other photos for the wedding category but unfortunately I didn’t pick up any awards there. Most of the prints scored in the upper 70′s but you need an 80 or above for silver. Slightly disappointing at first but I did learn a lot having sat through the judging session. This being my first AIPP submission, I now have a better feel of what the judges are after so I’ll definitely be back!

I started photography by shooting landscapes many years ago so this is a nice reminder of my photography roots Perhaps I should reconsider my career as a wedding photographer and go back to shooting landscapes! By the way, if you came to this link via Twitter or Facebook, Happy April Fools!

Winning a WPPI award has been a major goal for me since I got into the wedding photography business. As a newcomer to the industry and only a year (almost exactly) since I officially launched my services, I am absolutely ecstatic to say the least!

For those not familiar with WPPI and its competitions, it is often referred to as the Oscars or Grammys of wedding photography! WPPI’s print competitions are perhaps the most highly coveted photography competitions and certainly so in the wedding industry.

I have to admit I was both very nervous and excited before the results were sent out. It was a mad rush job as I decided to give it a go less than a week before the due date. There wasn’t enough time to further touch up the selected photos as I had to send them off to the lab to print and also the matting workmanship was sub par. I was very worried about this and thought going ahead with the submission might have been a mistake… so much so I actually had a bad dream this morning that I didn’t win anything! Apparently judging took longer than expected this time around with over 1900 prints submitted from around the world – which obviously didn’t help with the nerves

On to the image which won me the Accolade of Excellence (Honorable Mention) award:)

Title: Band of Brothers

Category: Wedding Photojournalism

It really must be a day for Firsts as this shot was actually taken at the first wedding I shot!  Thank you Grace & Keiichi for trusting me to photograph your very special day, especially when I had no prior experience whatsoever then!  Thank you for the opportunity and ongoing support. Who knows what I’d be doing now if I didn’t have that opportunity to shoot your wedding?

Also, I have to thank all my friends, both old and new ones! Thanks for all the support, encouragement, inspiration and more importantly, your friendship. You guys know who you are Not to forget, I have to thank Alex for being my loyal friend and assistant since I started this adventure.  It has been one hell of a ride man!

There are so many things on my mind now but I’ll just end this post before it gets too long with the most important one. Having just spent a week with my family when they flew in to Melbourne last week, I’m really missing them a lot after I returned to Sydney. Prior to this it has been over a year since I last I saw them and 1 1/2 years since I last went back to Malaysia. I owe everything to my family and they are the reason where I am today. This first win is dedicated to them! Love you guys!

It was both truly inspiring and an eye opener to hear the man talk, his experiences on the creative and production side of things, his recent Sandisk campaign in Queenstown, the brutal reality of photography when it comes to clients and using passion for photography as our driving force.

Halfway through the meet we got kicked out of the bar as they were closing. I thought the meet was gonna end but then Chase said, “Let’s crash the lobby!”

We continued on and that’s when the conversation got down and dirty with the true reality of earning a living out of photography, the perceived value of one’s work from one person to another, the subjectiveness of ‘art’, and taking on jobs not because of the money but for our passion for photography . Hearing Chase, Scott and Chris share their experiences put a lot of things into perspective for me.

On becoming a successful photographer, Chase’s answer was STAMINA – to keep on shooting, continuously developing your style and perfecting your art which differentiates yourself from the rest.

Speaking of stamina, this guy is a marathon runner. Extremely sleep deprived working on the campaign, riding in a helicopter for more shots just several hours before, then flying into Sydney later – we still got to hang with him for 5 hours until 2am! I don’t know how he does it but I was getting tired just standing!

This goes out to Chase and his crew, thanks so much guys for taking the time to connect with us, for sharing your wealth of knowledge and experiences and for a really great time last night! I’m sure all of us would love to have you back again so give us a yell next time you’re down under!

If you like what I posted here, I highly suggest you visit his website at http://www.chasejarvis.com and his blog to checkout the recent behind the scenes video from his latest ad campaign – super interesting stuff! Go look him on Facebook and Twitter too!

If you’re not convinced, checkout this video of Chase and the crew working behind the scenes. Awesome stuff!

Also, I almost forgot to mention this – Chase said to me that he liked my barcode t-shirt! Not once but twice too! Good times!

Here’s the link: http://www.tapping.com/

I didn’t really bother with the commentary or the part about negative energy. I simply used the tapping techniques on certain parts of my face. I’m not 100% sure as to how it relieved the blocked pressure I had but I guess the idea is to sort of loosen or move it around. I was very skeptical about it at first but when I started tapping around rather vigorously, I could literally feel the pressure leaving as I was also able to hear little ‘pops’ in my ear, like when you’re taking off on an aeroplane.

I also had my wisdom tooth extracted this morning! It was supposed to be just a consult as it was causing a lot of pain but after the x-ray, the dentist asked if I wanted to remove it today. Never have I been happier to hear that from a dentist! It was a quick and easy extraction as I was in and out in less than 30 mins

I know a post is not complete without a picture but No, I did not take a picture of my wisdom tooth as I don’t want to lose all my readers on here too! Not to worry, I’ll be posting up more pics from the family shoot in a minute

Some of you may remember the famous 1984 portrait of Sharbat Gula, the “Afghan girl” for the National Geographic magazine. Yes, it was shot on Kodachrome

On June 22, 2009 Kodak made the announcement of retiring this film, concluding a 74 year run as a major photography icon. The lab in Kansas will continue processing Kodachrome film till December 2010 and that will be the end of it.

Its closest replacement, the Ektachrome E100VS is easily available and can be processed at most professional labs. Coincidentally I have some on the way along with some Velvia 50 film too. While I love the colors in Velvia and shoot almost exclusively with for my landscape work, the color shift is somewhat undesirable in certain circumstances. The Kodak E100VS would make a perfect sidekick.

For those interested, here is a slideshow of some Kodachrome Moments and a collection of images on Flickr tagged under Kodachrome.

I’ve neglected the blog a little over the the past few days but i’ll post again later today. I’ll post up yesterday’s pics from the BBQ at Bicentennial Park with friends and many new ones! Good thing Alex brought his camera along!

Anyway, here are the frames!

The precious contents, wrapped in heaps of bubble wrap. Thanks Beca!

Mmm, I love this shade of grey/black on the wood grain

A healthy selection of browns!

The whole selection… now to come up with names for all of them!Thanks again to Beca from the CFL Framing Studio. Awesome service with cheap and quick delivery. I’ll be sending in some work to be done next year and I just can’t wait to see the whole final product!

I picked this up from Tom Saade’s Camera House located in Westfield Paramatta. Awesome price and great customer service. I got to test the lens on a demo 50D in store and I was very impressed with the speed of the Auto Focus. Granted I tested the AF with a 50D, focus locked on immediately on almost everything even in the darker areas! The LCD on the 50D looks awesome by the way

A quick chat at the store with Mark S also confirmed that Canon prices will be increasing on Monday. Existing stock may still be available at the old price but it really depends if the store are willing to sell it at that price.

I was eager to test it on Alex’s 5D so we proceeded out of Westfield for a coffee while we were at it. The lens was quickly removed from the box and straight on the 5D. Here’s a shot taken with the 16-35 and Alex’s 17-40 in the background. Aaron also got a new Lowepro bag, still wrapped in the bigger Camera House paper bag!

Here’s a quick test shot to try out the wide angle + bokeh awesomeness! Coming from a 10-22 and cropped sensor combination, a wide angle shot with bokeh is very rare for me since I use it mostly for landscape shots with f/8 at a minimum. Still, the 16-35 opens up a whole new world of possibilities especially for weddings. I already have so many ideas in mind right now!

I apologise for the lack of a better subject – I just wanted to show a wide angle shot taken at f/2.8 I couldn’t wait to try out the lens so later in the night we headed to Martin Place to capture the Xmas tree there. Here’s the shot!

I love UWA angle lenses! Here are two other shots taken with the 40D.

Did I say that I love this lens? Here’s a shot taken with the 70-200 + 5D of the 16-35 + 40D.

Here’s the friendly security guard who helped watched our equipment and made sure our Xmas tree was safe for everyone to enjoy too According to him the Xmas tree lights turn off at 2am so get there before then if you’re after some shots!

There were a whole bunch of other people with DSLR’s yesterday night and there was also a private fashion shoot going on. Those guys had a whole crew working together and was quite interesting to watch. I had a brief chat with the photogapher as my Xpan caught his attention. Unfortunately I had just clicked the shutter and was counting my exposure time so I didn’t get his name. When I was done he had to get back to work If by any chance you’re the photographer and reading this, please contact me! I’d really love to see some of your work

Initial impressions of the 16-35 – a solid lens, smooth focus and zoom rings and quiet operation as with all other L lenses. Extremely fast AF lock, beautiful 2.8 glass that produces super sharp and contrasty shots out of the camera with no post processing. Less distortion compared to my 10-22 but still noticeable at the widest end. Definitely heavier than the 10-22 but the solid feel of its components and image quality makes up for more than that.

All in all I absolutely love it! Looking forward to test it more and also together with the 5D Mark II when it arrives.

I always prefer to shoot with natural lighting when possible so high ISO performance is very important to me. That alone would merit an upgrade for me but with the extra benefits of a 21.1mp full frame sensor and video recording capabilities, it was too hard to pass up.

Btw, Canon Australia will be increasing prices so it would be wise to make the purchase you’ve been planning for awhile NOW! If you can’t afford it just yet, put it on layby or go rob a bank guys!

Anyway, I paid $3599 for mine at JB Hifi, Macquarie Centre. Due to the high demand of this camera the current ETA for new stock is sometime between mid to late Jan 2009.

I will be selling my Canon 40D and Canon 10-22 lens soon, if anyone is interested feel free to email me

I was never really keen on the video feature so I never really looked into it… until recently. Here are a couple of my favourite ones. Please note that I did not make these videos.

Brown Shrike (pre-production 5D Mark II + 1400 mm) from Romy Ocon on Vimeo.

Philippine Woodpecker (pre-production 5D Mark II + 1600 mm) from Romy Ocon on Vimeo.

Also, we can’t forget Vincent Laforet’s Reverie, which was shot exclusively using the 5D Mk II.

This feature has opened up a whole new world of possibilities with the combination of Full HD recording with SLR camera lenses. Now anyone with a Mk II can start recording in Full HD! The amount of detail it captures is just astonishing, go see for yourself!

Enough about the video, the Mk II now has a 21.1 megapixel sensor and supports an ISO range of 50 to 25600! The high ISO capability will really come in handy especially in low light conditions and where flashes aren’t allowed. I’d buy it just for those 2 features alone, not to mention that it is also a full frame camera

Full list of specifications can be found on the Canon Australia website.

Anyone wanna buy me one (or two!) for Christmas?