SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES ........

Lighting has struck (literally) and the "Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show" materialized for a short while at the Cheong Fatt Tze Manison in Penang, during the weekend .... we were greeted with loads of wide eyed locals and tourists as I entered as Mr. Dark, and trying my best to look dark and sinister, I welcomed people to ride my carousel ...... in fact for a day, I really felt like Mr. Dark ... so here is a short snippet of our results on our PS (Post Pre Wedding Photo Shoot) ......

"Mr. Dark - beckoning you to come on board my carousel"
Photo by Mr. John W. Ishii taken on a Nikon D3X
**Picture downsized and is RAW (no touch up)

My wife and I really enjoyed ourselves shooting at the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion with Mr. John W. Ishii & his wife, Diana, Mr. Tommy Yap & his wife, Sherry with our niece Micol Chan, and our MUA, Ms. Ally Choong. Surprisingly, we felt no pressure at all, we weren't even tired despite holding one pose for about half and hour each!! We were really pleased with the poses as we wanted the old vintage feel ..... in fact I am of the opinion that many of our pictures, you won't be able to tell that we shot at Cheong Fatt Tze mansion .....

I would like to say a BIG THANK YOU TO JOHN, DIANA, TOMMY, SHERRY, MICOL & ALLY for all their support, time, skill and patience!!! We started at 6.00 am right till 11.00 pm!!! John used his Nikon D3X, Diana used her Nikon D90, Tommy using his FujiFinePix, Micol on the Canon and Ally using her Sony Point and Shoot ...OoOooo ALLY!! You are using point and shoot like me!! More importantly, Sherry is now the Life Long President of Wives Against Holding Hubby's CLS Lighting System!!! Ha ha ha ha .. nah, just kidding ...... (Tommy dun get angry ar....)

So stay tuned for some of our pictures ... Oh, you should see my wife's pic's with Pretty In White's gowns which was designed by Elaine Kong ... but thats a latter story, you will have to see the pics to understand what I mean .... when we receive them ... hee hee hee ..... I CANNOT WAIT!!! For now, Mr. Dark beckons you to ride .................

* update : behind the scene's shoots from our MUA, Ms. Ally Choong, here.

PLEASE HELP ME UNDERSTAND

There are a lot of things I understand. There are also a lot of things I don't understand. So I hope someone can help me understand the nature of things in this world. Let me list down one thing that I don't understand;

You know, to organize this event with all our partners giving it all; Pretty In White sponsoring gowns, Mr. John W. Ishii giving his time to teach amidst his busy schedule, FotoKrazy.com helping us with all logistics for the Penang and Ipoh Trip, Malaysia Brides.com for supporting us with official forum space, Tommy and I putting everything together in the background, I still cannot understand. Normally an event like this, one would, and should, charge at least a few hundred ringgit, but NO, we do it for RM25.00. We put in our own money, time and energy. We spell out our terms and conditions CLEARLY. And yet, and YET, AND YET, why do some people treat us like we are just, oh, "another RM25.00 function, it's nothing lar". Like Scrooge said in - A Christmas Carol; "Bah! Humbug!". Well then, I would like to see anyone get into a photographic workshop with one of the "Renowned Malaysian Photographers" and see if you can enroll yourself for a RM25.00 Workshop. Bah! Humbug! Again, people are so discourteous. I still cannot understand. No call, no sms, no email .... NO NOTHING AGAIN!!! AARRGGHH!!!

The Return Of The Laughing Man ..... Again!
Why are people so discourteous?

Please someone explain to me why we should bother continuing with our prewedding community project when we give it our all and yet some people treat us like this .... *sigh*......

THE LAST POST .... AND I AM STILL AWAKE

Its 12.16 am already ... and I am still awake at home continuing with work on our Community Project for "The Road Trip Up North!". Tommy is up too ..... all so busy, busy, busy. Some people have the inclination that its very easy to organize events but with little hands, we find ourselves most of the time, running into overtime. But what's there to complain? Today, I met Stephanie and Dennis at PIW to collect the gowns. In actual fact, PIW is very busy with gown orders as it is the peak season and yet they continue to be ultra supportive of our projects .... 6 gowns this time! Oh dear ... oh no ...... I kinda feel bad but also happy that my partners are really like minded and would go to great lengths to fulfil and help others. Kudos. To PIW, you have my utmost respect and I just cant thank you guys enough!

From the first event I showed you guys and gals out there my humble office .... and now I will show you my other office ... the cramped like crazy office I work from at home many a time .... don't get scared ar!!!

Messy. Messy, Cram, Cram

My beautiful angels and rat watching over me .... hee hee

Ar .... I also normally introduce the PG's before the event as today (its Friday ok?) the whole gang from KL would be going up NORTH! The real JOURNEY Begins! Couples, may I introduce to you, your Photographers .... now its up to them to take GOOD PICS! (Have to pressure them a bit .... oh I missed one or two PG's cause its so hard to get self portrait pics from them .... Our first event the same, this one also the same ..... *sigh*). Can someone please ask PG's in Malaysia to learn to take their own self portraits for future use???

Goodnight to all .. (yeah as if! Still have more to do!) and SEE YOU IN PENANG & IPOH!

CALLING CALLING!!!!

Hello? Anyone there? Its been sometime since I updated this blog, but as you can see, I have been so busy with changing servers and fiddling with CSS, HTML, XML, JS, FLASH, etc ... and I am no web page designer.... Ha ha ha ... ar well, I learnt something along the way, which I doubt would be of any use to me as a Hotelier .... ha ha ha.... anyway, we have redirected our blog to http://blog.prewedding.info and 70% of the site is done (Graphically that is). Now comes the hard part about META, SITE-MAPS, ROBOTS and other nitty gritty .... Also my feeds are giving me issues as well ... *sigh* ... more reading for me to do ..... ha ha ha .... That's what you get when you change Name Servers ... I should have just pointed the A Records .... (found that out a little too late!). I also would love to work with an integrated suite of software as opposed to my current standalone...... but I still need to understand how tables and frames work! If you have a comment on the new website, please do drop me a comment!

Ok. This is not about my web page ramblings ... this is now officially to announce;

WE ARE NOW OPEN FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS REGISTRATION!!
THE ROAD TRIP UP NORTH BEGINS, OFFICIALLY!!!

The Heritage Station Hotel Kuala Lumpur with it's Partners, Organisers and Sponsors, has selected 6'real' couples for this community based event .... now we are on the hunt for 15 + 15 'hobbyist' photographers to complete the circle! Read on for more information!

Our couples have been selected .... Are you going to be a part of
the next group of photographers?

" This is a semi-structured workshop where our speaker will share some tips and techniques on photography with actual 'hands on' on-site location shoots of our selected couples. The sites will be (weather permitting) Penang (on 29th November 2008) and Ipoh (on 30th November 2008). Mr. John W. Ishii will also be on hand to give advice on how to shoot at the specified locations, giving you the opportunity to interact with him "

Terms & Conditions;

1. Space is limited to 15 photographers per City (Penang - 15 Photographers & Ipoh - 15 Photographers)
2. Date of event - Penang (29 November 2008, Saturday) & Ipoh (30 November 2008, Sunday).
   
3. There will be a different set of challenges (Penang event starts from 2.00 pm / Ipoh event starts from 8.00 am) as please be prepared for anything! We REALLY MEAN IT!
4. All registrants must be ‘hobbyist’ photographers. This event is not open for 'professional' photographers.
5. Minimum requirement – must own your own DSLR (any make and model).
6. All entries will be vetted by our board of moderators and we will confirm your seating by 15 November 2008.
7. A minimum subscription of RM25.00 Nett per person is applicable for food and drinks that will help cover everyone. Payment must be made on the day of the event. As this is a community based project, once your seating is confirmed, if, for whatever reason you cannot attend, please contact us immediately.
   
8. Please do not make any attempt to contact our organizers and partners regarding your registration as we will only confirm seating by 15 November 2008.
9. By registering, you will give rights to The Heritage Station Hotel KL and its partners of this event to utilize your photos for Non Commercial Purposes only. Please note that The Heritage Station Hotel KL and its partners of this event will not own the copyright nor the IP of the photos taken. By registering, you will also agree to abide by all rules and regulations set forth by The Heritage Station Hotel KL and its partners of this event.
10. The Heritage Station Hotel Kuala Lumpur and its partners, collectively, reserve the rights to make any amendments and/or cancellations without prior notice. Any decisions made will be final.

Kindly send all entries via email with the following particulars listed below;

• Name : (No nicknames or screen names please!)
• NRIC :
• Mobile Number :
• Email Address :
• Gender : Male/Female
• Indicate : Penang or Ipoh (Please do not indicate both cities.)
  
• Tell us a little bit about yourself and why you like photography.
  

Please send all entries to : photographers@prewedding.info

A BIG ROUND OF THANK YOU'S TO :

Our Speaker :

Mr. John W. Ishii - http://johnwishii.blogspot.com

Bridal Gowns Proudly Sponsored by :

Pretty In White - http://www.prettyinwhite.com.my

Our Official Wedding Portal & Official Wedding Forum:

Malaysia Brides - http://www.malaysiabrides.com

Our Official Northern Network Partners:

FotoKrazy - http://www.fotokrazy.com

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR MORE UPDATES!

DOUBLE DOUBLE

Erm ... quite apt that is, Double Double which can also be tied in to the Chinese character "Double Happiness". For the inundated, here is an excerpt from Wiki (I love Wiki! Maybe because it's free?)

Double Happiness (simplified Chinese: 双喜; traditional Chinese: 雙喜; pinyin: Shuang xi; sometimes translated as Double Joy or Double Happy) is a Chinese ornamental design commonly used as a decoration.

It is a ligature "囍" composed of two Chinese characters 喜 (xi, 'joy'), compressed to assume the square shape of a standard Chinese character (much like a "real" character may consist of two parts), and often modified in various ways. - excerpt from Wikipedia. Full article here.

Despite my title reading Double Double and it being tied to 'Happiness', it is by no means a happy time for me. Why, you may ask. Well, firstly, after sitting down with our 'Couple Selection Board' to select the couples for our community project, I feel for all the couples that were unsuccessful because this time around, we had to stick more closely to the rules and regulations, unlike our first community event. It was a learning point for us from the first event and we even threw in some 'exceptions' for our Road Trip Up North, but alas, it was still a very, very close call. In fact, we were torn in between so many applications and deliberated for more than 3 hours! Goodness.

I, on behalf of our partners and @THSH, would now like to Congratulate our 3 + 3 selected couples, (Wait, isn't that considered a Double Double?), on your success and they are;

MAX ONG & NIEL YOW

TONY HO & CONNIE YEOH
LENNARD LIM & JOCELYN YONG
VANESSA CHIA & CHEAH SIN DEE
WONG YUNN LOOI & LAU WENG HUNG
CHEAH KEI YUEN & POO MING LEE

I hope that you will enjoy the Community Event as much as our earlier participants."Is that all you wanted to say? Are you lamenting on your emotions?" - you may ask ..... well .... not quite.

In the spirit of our DOUBLE DOUBLE, since we have the couples, @THSH and our partners are keen to welcome our latest partner, our "Northern Network Partners" - Fotokrazy.com. Fotokrazy is a photographic forum catering predominantly for photographers in the Northern Region and they have agreed to come on board! Please note that it's always been @THSH's policy to work with any interested parties in the the areas of promoting our National Heritage, be it Buildings to Natural Resources.

Guys and Gals, please give a big welcome to;

All in all, I would believe that this announcement will help us garner more interest in our Community Events and more people/organizations would come in to help us! And now our real work begins, as we start our engines and check our compasses, err ... GPS units as we head North! Look out as we will be revving to your city soon!

FRUSTRATIONS & EXCITEMENT!

You know, ever since I opened my doors @THSH for pre wedding, wedding and model photography for free just asking for a copy of the photos and rights to post it on this blog with credit given back to the couple/model and the photographer, I have been getting a lot of response. Thank you to all.

When I meet the photographers, they actually are very nice and agree to almost anything I ask, all for free, but I am getting frustrated. WHY? Well, its very simple. I have to chase and chase and chase them for the photos, and you might even add, some are from reputable places and names. VERY, VERY, DISAPPOINTED. I think I have shown enough kindness and respect to all of them who have come here. Ar well ... maybe I should just CLOSE my doors to ALL then ... then I would not have such disappointments .... hurm, food for thought.

Where the h*ll are my photos that were promised to me???

Now on to the EXCITING NEWS!!! The Team from the original Pre Wedding Community project is now PLANNING A FULL SCALE ROAD TRIP!

We will be heading to the northern region at 2 Places ..... PENANG & IPOH to launch our community projects .... so now we are on the Hunt for 3 + 3 = 6 Couples, who are interested to participate in our event. If all goes well, we will be looking for 15 + 15 = 30 Hobbyist photographers, for PENANG AND IPOH!

We will give preference, to couples from the Northern Region for this project because we are going north!!! How are we going to pull it off? Ha ha ha ... you'll have to wait and see .... so please send us all your interest soon!!!

Pre-requisites for our upcoming event can be found here : [link]

From our first event :

• Photographers : [link]
• Couples : [link]
• Event Completion Pics : [link]
• Other Pics : [link1], [link2]

I will be away for a business trip from 18 -24 August 2008, so please excuse me if I do not reply your mails .... Please help us make this a successful event too!!!