its 12:45 am. i am sitting next to my bed, a smaller bed that is just next to the main one. i have just ordered from ebay a BessaR3M and a Nikon F3ma, both are film cameras. film? what?
four years ago before i started photography, life is just standard operating procedure. married with a kid, financially sufficient, runs a company with shares in two more companies. life is good one would say.
Day in, day out, visit my office, chat with the staffs, partners, dividends, sales, technical issues.
Life is good one would say. i am a prodigy in computer development, wrote my first game on commercial game on floppy disk when i as 14, on the apple ][. my best friend who inspires me in programming went to silicon valley and never came back. literally. He died of heart attack last year.
my circle of friend for the last 15 years, guys that grew up with me in the church, Phoenix that i met from the church and some collegues from 2 companies i joined before i started my own. I believe in God, all programmers should, seeing how stupid it is to cook up codes by chance, everything is by design.
Fast forward to 2012. Participated in a paid portrait event. Portraiture hits the key. I have never found interest in anything except people when it comes to photography. Humans are the ultimate design and whose image are so divinely created, i could find no joy in taking photos of dead objects nor animals. At that time i was 38. I pursued this field by learning from the best, ming thien, dragon chow or whomever that i felt i could learn from.
Like a born-again superhero, i added some noble intention to my newly acquired skills. Helping young models to create albums that they can use in kickstarting their freelance jobs and offering advices on standing out but keeping it safe. It was all too enjoyable. Why wouldn’t it be, meeting beautiful aspiring models every week, fanning friendships and seeing some purpose in life. Any guy would have enjoyed doing it. You shouldn’t be reading this part in a sober mood though, hahaha. Truth be told, after having done thru over 86 models and albums, one tends to go over the initial excitement and focus more on perfecting the art.
As my page in facebook : http://www.facebook.com/marcuslowphoto became more popular, write ins poured in. Paid jobs came in which i happily took, not because of the money, but because its just something you had to do when people wanted to pay you to do the thing that u love to do. I had to turn away most of the invites for events and group photos regardless the pay.
Apart from models, female friends continue to ask me to shoot. Some guys ask me why. Its pretty simple. The flower fades and the grass withers but your photos last thru generations. Female beauty are at the peak in the range of 16-27, after which the ageing effect inevitably sets in visually. If the photos are not captured during this stage, it has missed the train, so to speak.
Capturing light has brought plenty of experience and episodes in these four years. I fell in love with not the mere output of the art, but the whole process. Leica being an outdated camera with minimalistic knobs just works. I wager that film shooting this time round would allow me to focus even more. Looking back, there are episodes where i fell in love more than just on the gears, but that is life, in its full vulnerable state and journey. This craft have changed my life, open doors and reached out in many ways, there is no regret in photography.
My next plan is just to shoot and pass to labs to develop, no plans to open up lightroom nor photoshop at all. Lets keep it organic and real. Lets do this for some albums.
* images here are taken recently at myespresso cafe, one of the best cafe in kuala lumpur, subang jaya. model is a long time friend Angela Lieche that has her own story to tell about her freelance life in malaysia.
M changing lives with images. 