Exactly one year ago I joined my close friends Mike and Meghan in the United States for two glorious weeks of creative partnership and collaboration.  Together, with the support of Nikon Asia, we made a collection of photographs and created a short film with folk and roots musician Ben Taylor at his home on beautiful Martha's Vineyard.  It was a fantastic opportunity to work on an exciting project, as well as experience a picturesque corner of Atlantic America.

Following our shoot on Martha's Vineyard, we retired to Mike and Meghan's seaside home in Rockport, Massachusetts to edit our work.  A small town of just 7,000 people, Rockport is located about 40km northeast of Boston at the tip of the Cape Ann peninsula.  Surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean on three sides, Rockport is a quaint tourist destination filled with cafés, boutiques and art galleries; a wonderful place to spend a few days working and enjoying nature and the local flavours.

One of the highlights of my visit to Rockport was spending time with Meghan's brother, Matt Shea, who also called the small cottage home.  Every day we'd take a break for a walk or coffee with Matt; and every evening the four of us would have dinner and drinks together on the balcony overlooking the lobster boats at Bradley Wharf and the iconic red Motif Number 1, "a fishing shack well known to students

of art and art history as 'the most often-painted building in America.'"

Prior to this visit, I had met Matt only briefly -- when I was in America in 2008 -- but it was during this trip that I got to know him much better.  Matt was warm and welcoming. He loved comedy and had a dry sense of humour himself. He always had a baseball cap on his head and he wore shorts every day, despite the weather barely reaching above 10 degrees celsius.  I loved my time with him.

For more than a decade Matt battled cancer.  On April 17, 2013, at the age of 27, he lost this battle.

I made this photograph one evening while Mike, Meghan, Matt and I sat on the balcony and watched the sun set over the Atlantic Ocean.  It was a special photograph for me, and upon my return to Singapore I gave a print of this to Mike and Meghan to thank them for the friendship and warm hospitality they showed me in Rockport.

But now this photograph has different meaning for me. Now it will always remind me of Matt and the time we shared together.  I have wonderful memories of joyful moments with a special friend.  It is these times, and this photograph, that I will choose to reflect upon when I remember Matt and how he touched us all.

A couple of years ago, Canadian artist Billy Ma and I worked together on a personal photography project with our Brazilian model friend Paula.

Conceptually, our creative idea was to use Paula as a canvas for herself.  To achieve this, I photographed Paula in the nude in a variety of poses and Billy printed a selection of these images onto plastic transparencies.  Then, using a decades-old analog overhead projector, Billy projected these pictures of Paula back onto her bare skin while I photographed her again. Collectively, we wanted this series of images to show sensuality, yet vulnerability; we desired the photographs to be honest and uninhibited, like only someone very close to the subject could have made them. The result was a series we called "Raw".

Once our project was complete, my original photographs of Paula were archived and forgotten about.  At least until last year, when I stumbled upon this collection of nudes on a hard drive at work.  I perused the series of photographs and was struck by their simplicity and beauty.  I felt inspired to "do something" with these images, but at the time I didn't know exactly what that should be.

I then recalled having been introduced to British artist Nikki Farquharson's fantastic "Mixed Media Girls" series on The Cool Hunter a couple of years earlier.  I remembered how

beautiful and inspired I found Nikki's art, so I decided to visit her website and blog.

It was here that I read that she is "always interested in new work and collaborations, especially with photographers". This gave me the courage to send Nikki a message.

I wrote to her immediately, introducing myself and my photography.  I asked if she would be interested in a creative collaboration with me, merging some of my photographs of Paula together with her original ink pop art illustrations.

I was extremely excited to receive a reply from Nikki -- the very next day -- expressing her interest in working together on this project with me.  And so our online friendship and intercontinental partnership was born...

For the next couple of weeks, we got to know one another a little better via email, sharing our ideas and our individual visions for this endeavour.

Over the course of these conversations, the theme of Gaia (or Mother Earth) came to dominate our collective consciousness.  And from there, the concept of wrapping Paula in the classical Greek elements of earth, air, fire and water began to take shape.

One of the most interesting things about this creative collaboration with Nikki is that she and I have never once spoken on the telephone.  All of our communication, ideation and sharing has taken place using only modern technology and social media: email, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  This wasn't a conscious decision that we made together, but over the months it seems to have become an unspoken agreement between us.  When this project is complete, it will certainly be a partnership for a brave new world.

The photographs here show some of Nikki's work-in-progress on each of the pieces.  To me, this is a wonderful document of -- and glimpse inside -- her vision, dedication and commitment to her craft.

One of my great pleasures as a photographer is the privilege of being able to collaborate with other artists across diverse disciplines.  This project with Nikki has only further demonstrated to me how much joy and reward can be found in sharing your ideas and your work with others.  I can't wait to share our finished product with the world soon.

A little more than two years ago, my friend Peter invited me to join him for a road trip along Australia's southeast coast in his beautiful Aston Martin DB9.  With an offer like that, how could I possibly refuse?

All told, we drove about 2,500km from Sydney to Melbourne and then along the legendary Great Ocean Road, before returning to Sydney one week later.

It was an amazing experience, and a road trip that I won't ever forget.

Which is why I was so happy to stumble across this photograph I made at the Twelve Apostles in Port Cambpell, Victoria while tidying up some folders on my laptop recently.

This image reminded me of that wonderful week away and, in particular, the breathtaking natural beauty of Australia's Great Ocean Road.

Visit my website to see more of my landscape photography, and see more of my "From the Vault" series of imagery here.

As adults, time seems to race past us, every year feeling shorter than the last.  There never seems to be enough time in our days, and as grown-ups we unfortunately have a tendency to mark the passage of time with such trivial milestones as rent payments, work deadlines and annual visits to the dentist.

But as children it was different; school days passed in slow motion, Christmas Eve was the longest night of the entire year and summers seemed to last forever.

I will be 38 years old this year, and I can still remember the summer holidays of my childhood in brilliant detail: eight glorious weeks filled with such carefree joys as waterskiing on the lake, building tree forts in the forest, racing my bicycle along muddy trails, staying up late in the tent talking with my brother and then waking up early the next morning to go fishing with him as the sun rose.

I recently spent three magnificent weeks in Ontario, Canada with my family, including my three young nieces -- Carissa (5 years old), Brooke (6 years old) and Paige (8 years old) -- who were in the midst of their own joyful, carefree childhood summer.  It was magical for me to behold their boundless energy, marvel at their imagination, share in their wonder and indulge their curiousity.

Like last summer, on this visit I again abandoned my DSLR and instead carried my iPhone with me everywhere I went with the girls, making snapshots of the experiences we enjoyed together: running through the sprinkler, riding a ferris wheel, building a homemade camera, taking a sunset stroll, picking flowers, eating birthday cake, climbing on monkey bars, colouring pictures, leaping off swings...

This is a collection of those times we spent together, rendered how I chose to witness them -- inquisitively, spontaneously and lovingly -- through the tiny lens of my iPhone camera.

Carissa, Brooke and Paige are too young to understand how ephemeral these times are.  Ironically, it is their innocence that provides me the perspective and desire to document, capture and preserve a handful of the fleeting moments that make up the endless summers of their childhood.

See more of my iPhoneography elsewhere on this blog or on Flickr.

On my annual visit home to Fonthill, Ontario last summer my dad gave me a wonderful gift: my grandfather, Gordon Woodward's 1930s Kodak Six-16 folding camera.  My uncle had the camera sitting in a closet in Florida, and on a recent visit he passed it to my dad to give to me.  The camera was in mint condition and came in it's original leather case which still contained it's old tattered paper manuals.

Immediately I wanted to see if I could use the camera, but after doing a little research online I learned that Kodak stopped making 616 film in the mid-1980s.

Determined, I dug a little deeper and learned that 120 film, which Kodak still manufactures today, is only slightly narrower and, theoretically, can be used inside the camera.

However, since 120 film spools are shorter, I would need to use spacers on either end of the film in order for it to fit inside the camera.  Through more Internet research I found a gentleman in Italy named Claudio Bettio who manufactures CNC aluminum spacers designed specifically to do this.  I emailed him and purchased the spacers, which he posted to me in Singapore.

With Claudio's guidance, and using thin cardboard strips I cut from my business cards which I held in place with

sturdy black tape, I was able to slightly decrease the size of the film chamber inside the camera to prevent light leak.

Finally, with the assistance of my father-in-law, his power drill and a sanding disc, we were able to shave down the plastic tops of each roll of 120 film, slightly narrowing their circumference so the film could unwind/wind properly inside the camera.

Getting my grandfather's camera to work was a challenge, but it was also a labour of love.  And, in the end, it was a success.

I made a total of 18 photographs on three rolls of film this past summer, all of which exposed properly.

And my primary goal, which was to capture a family portrait of three generations of Woodwards -- all of my grandfather's children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren -- turned out beautifully.

Here are the results: the first is a picture of my father that I made on my iPhone as he helped me set-up the camera for the family photograph; the second is the actual family portrait that I made using my grandfather's 80 year-old Kodak Six-16 camera.  Two great memories of a wonderful summer day spent with family.

For years, I've talked of visiting Sri Lanka.  Although I'd heard only wonderful things from friends who had visited, it was just one of those places that I hadn't made it to. That is, until a few weeks ago, when I spent 10 magnificent days on the island often referred to as the "teardrop of India".

I was immediately smitten with Sri Lanka: it's friendly people, brilliant beaches, beautiful scenery and gorgeous climate.  I wondered why it took me so long to come here.

After spending a few glorious days at Apa Villa Illuketia, a remarkable 200-year-old plantation estate a short distance outside Galle, I headed to Apa Villa Thalpe, their sister property consisting of three villas on the beach overlooking the Indian Ocean, for another week of rest and relaxation.

I managed to pull myself away from the seaside a couple of times during the week, when I headed into the historic town of Galle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, "one of the best examples of a fortified city built by Europeans in south and southeast Asia...and the largest remaining fortress in Asia built by European occupiers".

I relished wandering the narrow streets and lanes inside the Galle Fort, admiring the interesting blend of colonial Dutch, English, Portuguese and local Sinhalese architecture.

Having enjoyed so much shooting only with my iPhone in Goa, India just a few weeks prior, I set out to create a small body of street iPhoneography from my Galle meanderings.  The result is this small series of street photographs captured and processed using only my iPhone 4S and some of my favourite apps such as Phototreats, PicTools, Luminance and Pixlr-o-matic; I added the white borders using Lightroom 3.

I posted this series of images to Instagram and, about one of the photographs, one of my followers asked me (only half kidding) whether I ever used my DSLR's to shoot anymore.  The truth is, the iPhone is so convenient, unimposing and powerful that I find myself more and more opting to take it on holiday, or out on personal photographic walks with me rather than carry my big, heavy Nikons.

Clearly, my DSLR's will never be replaced by my mobile phone for my editorial reportage and fashion or commercial and advertising work, but for someone who is passionate about making photographs, the ease of having a camera in your pocket and with you always is second to none.

See more of my iPhoneography elsewhere on this blog or on Flickr.

Earlier this month I spent nearly a week on Candolim Beach in Goa for a wedding celebration.  It was a fantastic few days on India's southwest coast, spending time with old friends and making new ones.

I arrived in India, packed to the gills with my Nikon DSLR cameras and lenses, with the goal of making a landscape or reportage photograph of Goa as a gift for the bride and groom.  I also had my brand new iPhone 4S in my pocket. No prizes for guessing which one went with me everywhere that week...

The result was not one photograph of Goa for the bride and groom, but rather a collage of 18 pictures that I made on my iPhone over the course of the week.

I presented this framed collage, created with the help of Adobe Lightroom 3, to the newlyweds last week.

My Nikons never actually left my villa, proving (once again) that the best camera really IS the one that's with you.

See more of my iPhoneography elsewhere on this blog or on Flickr.

Chinese opera is deeply ingrained in the Chinese culture, with roots back as far as the Third Century.  The large waves of Chinese immigrants who settled in Singapore over the past 150 years have transported this traditional form of musical dramatic theatre with them, performing it on makeshift bamboo and wooden stages in car parks and open fields across Singapore's heartlands, most notably during Chinese New Year and Hungry Ghost festival celebrations.

According to the Singapore Tourism Board, "[most] story plots in traditional Chinese opera performances are based on famous Chinese classics and myths.  Reflecting Chinese culture and philosophy, almost all opera performances highlight virtues such as loyalty, love and patriotism.  Other than a form of entertainment, Chinese opera also plays an active role in dispensing important messages, especially those concerning patriotic values."

I have always been drawn to the vibrant costumes and colourful face painting of the Chinese opera performers, and have often wished for an opportunity to photograph this fading traditional art.  However, the opportunity had never presented itself, until recently when I was speaking

with a fellow photographer and he invited me to join him for a performance by the Xin Xin Rong He Teochew street opera troupe (新新荣和潮剧) in the neighbourhood of Ghim Moh, not far from my home.

I arrived early and approached the small, rickety stage with my camera, uncertain how I would be received by the performers.  But almost immediately, I was invited up the short wooden ladder and backstage as the performers hurriedly dressed in their costumes and applied their make-up for the upcoming performance.

Backstage buzzed with energy as performers and crew raced back and forth through the cramped dressing room -- lit only by glowing, naked lightbulbs dangling from wires -- as drums pounded and cymbals crashed on the small stage just beyond the thin, transparent sheet that separated fantasy from reality.  It was an amazing evening, and I am grateful for the warmth and openness of the performers for welcoming me backstage with my camera.

These photographs are a small collection of the work I created when I spent that evening with the Xin Xin Rong He troupe; more of this series can be found on my website.

I recently returned home to Singapore after a wonderful three-week holiday with my family in Ontario and Alberta, Canada.  As anyone who has taken a flight literally half-way around the world will attest, Singapore to Toronto is a long way to go.  However, it is the special times I get to share in Canada with my family -- and in particular, with my three young nieces, Carissa (4), Brooke (5) and Paige (7) -- that makes the mind-numbing drudgery of the >24-hour flight worth it.

Every summer holiday I endeavour to strike a balance between spending quality time with the girls and simply enjoying our (fleeting) moments together, with wanting to indulge in my photography passion and document and preserve those special times forever (for me, as well as for their parents and grandparents).  It is often difficult for me to find this equilibrium, as throughout our time together I am constantly witnessing wonderful scenes and catching glimpses of beautiful light and longing to capture these moments with my camera.

However, this summer was a little different for me.

As always, I lugged my Nikon D3x and an assortment of lenses all the way back to Canada.  Only this time, not once did I take my DSLR out of it's bag.  Instead, I used my

iPhone, which was always in my pocket, to document at least one thing that we did together every day.

This collection of images is the result of my iPhoneography experiment with the girls: our time together playing on the swings, blowing bubbles in the backyard, sliding into the blow-up pool, going on twilight walks, visiting with Grandma & Grandpa, exploring the museum, wandering alongside the train tracks...

Like all little girls, Carissa, Brooke and Paige share similar interests: all things princesses, tirelessly singing and dancing and devouring story book after story book.  But, like all people, they have so many differences.  And it is their intense individuality that I think I love the most about them.

These little girls literally steal my heart for those few days I am in Canada every year.  And then it breaks a little whenever it's time for me to leave.

See more of my iPhoneography elsewhere on this blog or on Flickr.

In 2006, I met portrait photographer Tan Ngiap Heng at a week end photo workshop being conducted in Singapore. Ngiap Heng and I stayed in touch afterwards, and shortly following the workshop he asked whether I would sit for a portrait session at his studio one day.

When I agreed, Ngiap Heng asked me to bring a few JPEG's of my own photography to the shoot -- some of my favourite personal work -- and although I wasn't exactly sure why, I obliged.

I soon learned that Ngiap Heng was experimenting with using a digital projector to cast images against a backdrop, and then having his subjects pose within the projected image while he photographed his portrait.  I had never seen this before, and was intrigued when he projected one of my own photographs on me and then made my portrait.

It is five years later, and I still remember my portrait session with Ngiap Heng.  So, when model Paula asked me if I'd be interested in doing a personal test shoot with her, I was inspired to borrow from my projection experience with Ngiap Heng, but take it a little further...

I came up with the idea of shooting Paula once, and then projecting those images of her back onto her own skin while photographing her again; I wanted to use Paula as a canvas for herself.

I met with an artist friend and frequent collaborator of mine, fellow Canadian Billy Ma, and together we wrestled with exactly how to execute this idea, and what style and tone the photography should take.  We wanted the series of images to show sensuality, yet vulnerability; we wanted the photographs to be raw and honest, like only someone very close to the subject (a lover?) could have made them.

With Billy art directing, and wonderful hair and make-up artist Dewi Mahoney assisting us, I lit and photographed Paula in a variety of poses in my Chinatown studio.  Billy took these images away, printed them on plastic transparencies, and then we came back together again with Paula a week later for the second part of the project.

Billy owns a decades-old analog overhead projector, complete with dirt and scratches, that was perfect for the job.  Together with the help of another hair and make-up artist Winnie Chow, Billy projected images of Paula back

onto her body while I photographed this series; these are the results.

This was an exciting and rewarding project to undertake with my creative friends, and we are all proud of the results.  However, like many collaborations, this shoot was not without its frustrations -- we encountered technical and creative challenges along the way -- but we persevered, and in the end we got where we wanted to be, together.

I don't believe the creative process is supposed to be easy: for me , it's about push and pull, give and take, partnership and compromise.  I am glad that I have a group of friends and colleagues who believe this too.

See more of my fashion and portrait photography on my website.

As part of both my ongoing Diana Experiment and From the Vault series, here is a photograph (actually, two photographs, merged together) that I stumbled upon yesterday while combing through one of my studio hard drives in search of something else entirely.

I made these images on my trip to Sydney, Australia last August.  It was my last night in town, and I had a few hours to kill before meeting some friends for dinner, so I walked from my hotel down to Circular Quay with my hi-fi/lo-fi set up in tow (a Nikon D3x fitted with a Diana+ 55mm Wide Angle lens).

I wanted to make some long-exposure night photographs of the Sydney Harbour, but I didn't have a tripod with me. However, after some searching, I was able to find some ledges and railings to rest my camera on while shooting. These images are the result of my efforts that evening: two 5-second exposures of the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House fused together in Photoshop.

See more of my Diana Experiment imagery on Flickr.

From dusk 'till dawn, I've spent the past week traipsing around Singapore shooting dozens of locations and personalities for two separate editorial feature commissions.  My photographic briefs are pretty standard for luxury lifestyle and travel publications: shoot a collection of stylish and sophisticated hotels, eateries and bars as well as the people who run them.

It is always a pleasure for me to work on these types of assignments, but especially when they're in my own backyard.  I enjoy exploring and experiencing places in Singapore that I've never been before, and I love meeting the people behind them: chefs, sommeliers, managers, artists, designers and architects.

As always, my iPhone is in my pocket throughout all these shoots.  And I love to pull it out and shoot with it alongside my "real" 35mm DSLR cameras whenever I see anything interesting or inspiring.

My latest iPhoneographic obsession is Instagram, the popular iPhone app that allows users to add interesting retro-inspired filters to photographs and then share the pictures on Instagram's own social network, as well as on other social websites like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.

I like the way the square format of Instagram forces me to compose images differently than when using my Nikons and their standard 3:2 aspect ratios.  I love the variety of filters and how they can transform the mood of my photographs.  And I really enjoy the simplicity and ease of the Instagram photo feed and how I can see the images my friends around the world are making on their iPhones.

These 20 photographs were all made in Singapore this past week using Instagram.  See more of my iPhoneography elsewhere on my blog or on Flickr.

The past few weeks have been filled with commissioned editorial assignments and commercial advertising shoots, which is great for business, but has left me little time for personal creative photography.

Earlier this week, while on-set at the studio, there were a few moments of downtime as the crew and I waited for the stylist to finish prepping the model.  I was mindlessly fiddling with my iPhone and took a few shots of my illuminated laptop keyboard.

This gave me an (admittedly peculiar) idea, as well as posed a small challenge for me: could I construct the URL to my website www.scottawoodward.com entirely from iPhone photographs of random letters that I encountered in the course of my day?  Silly, I know.  But it was fun.

Well, it took me longer than one day; it took me three, actually (there are a lot of "W's" in there).  I didn't know what to do with it when I finished, so here is the fruit of my labour: my "iPhoneographic URL Ransom Letter".

For anyone who's interested, I tried to shoot each letter using a different iPhone app (although I lost track and don't think I actually succeeded).  Counted among the shots above are Hipstamatic, OldPhotoPRO, ClassicTOY, MoreLomo, Phototreats, BlendCam, Gorillacam, Polarize, Format126, LENSES, Vint B&W, Retro Camera, ShakeItPhoto and HDR Fusion.

I spent a week over New Year's in Chiang Mai, Thailand, a city of 160,000 residents about 700km north of the nation's capital, Bangkok.  Chiang Mai is a laid back city full of colourful temples, quaint cafés, fantastic restaurants, used bookshops and roadside markets.  It was my third visit to Chiang Mai in the past seven or eight years, and I enjoyed it tremendously.

Having visited Chiang Mai before, I didn't feel compelled to lug my heavy 35mm DSLR camera and lenses everywhere I went, opting just to carry my iPhone in my pocket instead. One of the highlights of the visit was meeting a family from The Hague, Netherlands who were staying at our hotel.  Their two sons, Maarten and Sebastian, accompanied us to the Thapae Boxing Stadium for an evening of Thailand's very own Singha beer and Muay Thai.

I spent a good part of the evening wandering the stadium and shooting the action with the Hipstamatic app for my iPhone; this is a collection of some of my favourite photography from the night. Perhaps I should call this my "ChiangMaiPhoneography" series.

See more of my iPhoneography elsewhere on my blog or on Flickr.

"I have a camera.  Sometimes, I use it to make phone calls." - Marty Yawnick, Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

There's something about shooting with my iPhone that has really captivated me of late.  Maybe it's the constantly growing collection of exciting and powerful photography apps available for download on iTunes.  Or perhaps it's the ever-increasing popularity of #iPhoneography that I see everyday on Twitter that keeps inspiring me to be more creative.  Either way, for someone who spends most of his time peering out from behind the lens of clunky DSLR or medium format cameras, the freedom and flexibility of making photographs my iPhone is a welcome change of pace for me.

From lights gleaming off the hood of an Audi prototype electric car to the rooftop of Marina Bay Sands casino, from a clients' statue of Mao Zedong to a portrait of a friends' sleeping infant, from a snapshot of Vampire Weekend performing live on stage to the view of the wall across the road from my favourite little coffee shop, this is how Singapore has looked through the 3 megapixel lens of my iPhone the past few weeks.

See more of my iPhoneography elsewhere on my blog or on Flickr.