Aughost

The Hungry Ghost month generally means business is on the slow. My clients tell me it’s not just the wedding photography, but with bank servicing and investment. because nobody really wants to part with huge sums at this time of the year. Same with the property market.
I was a little surprised, as a reporter I didn’t know these things.
This time of the year is usually the busiest , most bustling period for newspapers – our appraisal’s coming up and of course, you gotta fight for your page one. Plus, there’s generally a lot of news (more bad than good) to report on from mid August through to September.
This is my first “Hungry Ghost” since coming on full-time as a photographer, so I’m finding out and adjusting to some new things.
Nevertheless, it’s an important time to review work.
I’ve looked through and dug up a lot of old pictures, some of them I cringe to look at today. I’ve also become a lot more critical when it comes to composing pictures, how they should be cropped – at the stage of taking the photo, not in photoshop.
Strange though, most of the old pictures taken in film, way back in 2003, capture a lot more the essence of time, than a frame haphazardly shot with a digital camera.

I’m also trying out new ways to light up subjects, and experimented at Shoegaze, organised by my former Theatre classmates. See what you think.

It’s made me realise that as a photographer who’s set out to do pure journalistic documentary, my preference has really shifted to one that’s more stylistic and controlled.
Even in weddings the claim of being ‘photojournalistic’ doesn’t stand alone without strings attach – capture beautiful moments, make people in the pictures look good. In real photojournalism, come on admit it, which photographer doesn’t want to make his photo more dramatic if he could? It could be the distance of his wide-angled lens to the subject, or the way the lens confronts the subject. In that sense, pure photojournalism could simply equate to an unthinking eye with a point-and-shoot.

There’s MTV VJ Utt footing his bill. Sorry, no concessions for tv personalities

Photographer, Ming, hides his face