Late last month, I received an email from the Associate Editor at Travel+Leisure India & South Asia; she was looking for a series of photographs to illustrate the final page of her July 2013 edition, in a section called "Last Look".

The issue was to be focused on South East Asia and, thus, she was interested in a collection of imagery that was "quintessentially Singapore".  I scoured my archives and sent her a collection of 8-10 landscape photographs that showcased some of Singapore's more iconic landscapes and architecture.

In the end, the team from T+L settled on three images: the imposing 'Super Trees' at Gardens by the Bay; the twisting Helix Bridge at Marina Bay Sands; and the technicolour panorama of a nighttime Clarke Quay.

Browse more of my landscape photography on my website.

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 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.

Not long ago, I received an email from the editor of Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia; he was looking for a photograph to appear on the final page of his March 2012 edition, in a section called "Last Look".

The editor had seen a collection of pictures that I made at Bambu Indah, a small boutique hotel in central Bali, and he was interested in one of them as he felt the imagery would fit the March issue's "style and design" theme.

I subsequently learned that part of "Last Look" includes an interview with the photographer.  My recollection of that morning, which appears underneath my photograph, reads as follows:

I took this photograph at Bambu Indah (which means “beautiful bamboo” in Balinese) in Ubud.  The resort consists of four 150-year-old teak houses -- each, apparently, the former residence of a Javanese nobleman -- relocated to the site on the Sayan Ridge, surrounded by rice paddies that line the edge of the Ayung River.  I shot it just before 8 a.m. as the bright Balinese sun crested the horizon and burst through the palm trees behind Minangkabau (the Minang House), a common area for yoga, dining and celebration, constructed from black bamboo from the forests of Java.  The angle of the sun significantly affects

the warmth, contrast and texture in a photograph, so I am always looking to shoot in the warm ‘golden hours’ of early morning and late afternoon when the sun is low in the sky. In this case, I was waiting for the sun to rise and filter through the swaying palm trees, straight into my camera.  I like the effect of shooting directly into the sun and allowing the light to flare in my lens.

As I mentioned in a post a couple of years ago, I am drawn to the ethereal effect that is created by pointing my lens straight into the sun; it's a technique I employ often, integrating this photographic style into much of my travel and fashion editorial work.

Browse more of my luxury lifestyle photography on my website.

I have been fortunate enough to visit Cambodia on many occasions in recent years -- three times in the past three months alone -- and I have accumulated a large collection of stock photography while shooting these various assignments.

So, when the photo editor of Condé Nast Traveller (Russia) recently contacted me while searching for imagery to illustrate an upcoming article on the "Kingdom of Wonder", I had a large reserve of photography to share with her.

'АнГкор, еще анГкор!' -- which, literally translated, means 'Angkor, More Angkor!', but I have been told is a play on words in Russian, since it rhymes with the title of a popular film -- is published in the February 2012 issue of CNT (Russia).  Interestingly (and excitingly), this feature contains my landscape and travel photography that I captured on five separate visits to Cambodia.

To see more of my recent CNT work, browse 'Singapore Grows Up', an assignment I photographed for the August/September 2011 issue of Condé Nast Traveller (India).

See more of my lifestyle and travel 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.

To supplement an editorial commission that I'll be photographing next week, I spent the better part of this afternoon trolling my archives for relevant, recent Singapore stock imagery.

For me, this process of combing through my hard drives of old images involves looking beyond just the photographs that I selected or "flagged" during my initial edit.  Instead, I take the time to look holistically at the entire shoot and all my raw captures, regardless of how mundane they might be.  It might seem like a waste of time to some people, but I enjoy it because it allows me an opportunity to see my work with fresh eyes, showing me how my own photographic style has changed over time.  I also love it for the one or two images that I always seem to stumble upon that make me wonder why I didn't do anything with them the first time around.

I consider myself more of a "people photographer" than a "landscape photographer".  But this panorama -- made a couple of years ago from high in a Housing Development Board (HBD) flat looking out across a sea of apartments in Singapore's Ang Mo Kio neighbourhood whilst shooting a feature for the UK edition of GQ Magazine -- is one of those photographs that I "found" today.

I am struck by how small everything appears below, but even more by the homogeneity in the picture; it makes me feel like I am looking out across a Singapore Legoland.