I spent most of last week in Cambodia with my filmmaker friends and frequent creative partners, Mike Rogers and Meghan Shea of Persistent Productions.

The three of us were there to visit Sala Bai, a hospitality school for underprivileged youth in Siem Reap, as part of location scouting and pre-production meetings for an upcoming film and photographic collaboration.

In November, we will return to Siem Reap for 10 days to create photographic reportage and a short documentary film about Sala Bai and the positive work they are doing for Cambodia's disadvantaged youth.

For nearly a decade, Sala Bai has been training, free-of-charge, approximately 100 young people annually in the hospitality industry.  The school's goal is to provide the students with the skills and experience necessary to secure gainful employment in one of Siem Reap's numerous hotels, guesthouses or restaurants, helping them achieve economic independence and improving their quality of life, and those of their families.

Sala Bai offers students four specific training programs: restaurant service, cooking, front office and housekeeping. The 11-month curriculum includes theory classes,

practical training and internships at partner hotels in Siem Reap.  The students are supported by social workers who mentor them throughout their tenure at Sala Bai, as well as assist them in finding a full-time job after graduation. Remarkably, 100% of Sala Bai's students secure gainful employment in the Cambodian hospitality industry within three months of their graduation.

When we return to Cambodia for our shoot in November, we intend to focus on Khatna, a young woman who recently graduated from Sala Bai and now works on the front desk at the boutique Heritage Suites Hotel in Siem Reap.  We intend to tell the story of Khatna and her journey, in less than one year, from Mechrey Village -- a rural floating community located on Tonle Sap Lake, where she lived with her pig farming parents and four sisters -- to working the front desk of a luxury hotel in the city.

As part of our pre-shoot interviews and location scouting, we traveled with Khatna, by tuk-tuk and small motorboat, to Mechrey Village to meet her family and see their humble home.

I opted to leave my Nikon DSLR's at the hotel, instead brining only my iPhone to document this informal family visit.  This series of Hipstamatic images (which I tweaked a

little in post-production using Noir) are of Sovern Sorn, Khatna's father, who welcomed us warmly into his small wooden home, and then sat silently by the window throughout our hour-long visit, smoking cigarettes and gazing out at the passing boats.

At first Sovern was reluctant to let me photograph him, but after showing him a few of the processed images as they popped-up on the screen of my iPhone, he opened-up and permitted me to quietly snap away.

Our visit to Mechrey Village with Khatna was a highlight of our time in Cambodia, and Mike, Meghan and I are very excited to return to Siem Reap in November to get to know Khatna and her family better, as well as begin our creative project alongside the students and administrators at Sala Bai.

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

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.

Many years ago, when I first began taking photographs professionally, I shot a lot of family portraiture.  My style was to make candid, natural photography that showed the real-life relationships between mothers and fathers and their children.  I sought spontaneity and honesty in my imagery, never having the subjects look at my lens, but instead encouraging the family to simply be together while I documented their interactions.

It was a great little business for me, providing me with a steady revenue stream, a chance to meet loads of new people and a fantastic opportunity to practice my photography skills and experiment with different techniques on real, live (paying) subjects.  But most importantly, shooting this type of imagery helped me develop a personal style for photographing people, as well as a large portfolio of family photos.

This style and portfolio has served me well over the years, and has been instrumental in my being awarded a number of family- and baby-centric advertising jobs around Asia. From Johnson & Johnson to Unilever to my most recent work for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) here, I am grateful for all those early mornings I spent photographing families in the backyards, playgrounds and parks of Singapore.

For this GSK campaign, I worked together with the TBWA/Tequila advertising agency in Singapore to produce 40 photographs that, rather simply, illustrated "Love".  I sought to capture the intimate times shared between mother and child, trying to make photographs that were honest and inquisitive.

And even though I had to shoot this campaign in a studio using only artificial light -- and I collaborated with hair and make-up stylists, wardrobe stylists, art directors, account service personnel and clients -- I still approached the two day session in much the same manner as I would have if it were just me and the family alone: I tried to stay out of their way and be observational, letting the magical moments between mother and child unfold naturally.

These are a handful of the GSK advertisements that were recently released in markets across North and Southeast Asia.

See more of my advertising photography portfolio here.

A couple of months ago I had the pleasure of meeting and photographing mother and son, Ms. Francis Kay Burnhardt and Ashley Yeo, and mother and daughter, Ms. Ong Ooi Kwen and Chin Xiu Qi, while shooting for a Reader's Digest Asia feature called "Supermums".

As outlined in the "Supermums" article, "To celebrate the inspirational tales of ordinary women who are doing extraordinary things, we asked the Reader’s Digest community to share stories about their mums.  From the entries we received, it became crystal clear that there are so many women who are truly remarkable and who deserve to be loved, recognized and celebrated.  Countless stories moved us and we were genuinely amazed and touched by the sacrifices that these mothers have made."

From all the submissions Reader's Digest received, they selected six women whom they felt to be "the embodiment of a 'Supermum': strong, passionate and willing to make any sacrifice necessary for the sake of their family."

Ms. Burnhardt and Ms. Ong were two of those women.

As Ashley explains, life for his mother Francis "took an unexpected turn...when my father passed away suddenly, leaving [my mum] jobless and grieving with the

responsibility of raising five children."  However, his mother persevered; her "tenacity, spirit and love has rebuilt this family [and] kept it together."

Similarly, tragedy and hardship came to Ms. Ong and her children when she lost her husband to cancer and then struggled as a single parent to raise four children, including an autistic son.  As Xiu Qi articulates, "All this hardship could have broken a person, but [my mother] was strengthened by it.  Today, my mum has become someone so fearless -- I can’t tell if she would still be the same person if life had been easy."

These mothers and their children each spent less than an hour with me together in my studio, but in that short time it was evident how close they were.  I hope my portraits of them together are a small testament to that bond.

Ashley perfectly summarizes all the stories of the "Supermums": thanks to his mother, "this family portrait is still picture-perfect."

"Supermums" is in the May 2011 issue of Reader's Digest Asia, on newsstands now.

See more of my portrait photography on my website.

I recently had the pleasure of photographing European Tour golfer John Parry in Singapore.  My brief was to create a library of photographs of John, both on and off the course, for his website and other marketing/PR use.

John has had a dramatic start to his young professional golf career, earning his PGA card to join the European Tour in 2010 and then, impressively, winning the Vivendi Cup in France during his rookie season.

My shoot with John was at the Sentosa Golf Club in Singapore a few weeks ago.  He was en route to Kuala Lumpur to play in the Maybank Malaysian Open, so we only had a few short hours to work together before his flight.

We spent most of our time outside on the tees, fairways and greens shooting a collection of action photographs of John playing.  Then we retired indoors to create another series of portrait photographs in and around the clubhouse.  The images on the left are from this sequence.

John was extremely friendly and easy-going throughout our short time together, and I enjoyed very much meeting and working with him.  At the end of our shoot he even offered me his cap, which he graciously autographed; I will give this to my stepfather, an avid golfer and golf instructor at one of the local courses in my small Canadian hometown.

I first met Gerrie Lim in 2007 when we were both assigned by August Man magazine to collaborate on a feature about Geylang, Singapore's famous red-light district.

I had long been fascinated by the existence of Geylang.  The juxtaposition of this sanctioned red-light district in the heart of a city state well-known for its conservative views on sex and pornography intrigues me.  I presented the idea of shooting a photo-driven feature in Geylang to the Managing Editor at August Man, and he liked it.

He introduced me to Singaporean author Gerrie Lim, renowned for penning reportage about the porn industry and the sex trade, and together we set out to create the article for the magazine.

"Geylang Confidential" was published in the February 2008 issue of August Man and "The Forgotten Hours", a showcase of my Geylang photography, exhibited not long afterwards.  Gerrie and I have been friends ever since.

Gerrie is the author of numerous non-fiction paperbacks, and his most recent book --  titled Singapore Rebel: Searching for Annabel Chong -- was released with a launch and book reading at a Singapore bookstore this

past week end.  From the book's prologue: "Annabel Chong: her name rings a bell, even as it resonates like a bolt of lightning from the heavens.  Paul Theroux, the novelist and travel writer, describes her as 'an amazing woman, a demon goddess out of a Chinese folk tale -- the woman who dared to convert all her desires into reality -- a fantasy to most men, and a sort of heroine to a lot of women, though they would probably not dare to admit it.' And why would they not dare admit it?  Because Annabel Chong remains the only famous pornstar from Singapore, a young woman who had put her home country on the map back in 1995 when she allowed herself to be filmed having sexual intercourse with a large group of men, each one waiting his turn, all done in the space of ten hours and for the posterity of home video."

As Gerrie goes on to explain, Annabel Chong and "The World's Greatest Gangbang" (as it would be come to be known) hold a unique place in the Singapore psyche, occupying a space somewhere between legend and myth.

Anyway, what does all this have to do with photography?  I shot some portraits of Gerrie Lim a few years ago as part of a feature I was shooting for the UK edition of GQ magazine.  The photograph I made of Gerrie --

standing in the dining room of his Holland Village apartment, and surrounded by his vast collection of music, books and other fragments of popular culture -- appeared in the magazine a short time later. Gerrie loved the portrait, and asked me recently if he could use it as his bio picture on the inside cover of Singapore Rebel.

What are friends for?

See more of my portrait photography on my website.

Over the course of four days in February, while photographing an assignment for the April 2011 edition of Malaysian Airlines' Going Places inflight magazine, I visited eight restaurants at Singapore's Dempsey Hill.

Formerly the British army barracks and the old Central Manpower Base National Service Enlistment Centre, Dempsey Hill's 18 blocks of colonial conservation buildings have recently been restored and converted into more than 40 bars, restaurants, art galleries and retail outlets.  In just a few short years, Dempsey Hill has been transformed into one of Singapore's most popular drinking, dining and leisure destinations.

My brief for Going Places was to visit eight of Dempsey's dining establishments, each specializing in a different cuisine -- Mexican, Spanish, Thai, Swiss, Indian, Japanese, Australian and Singaporean -- and photograph the interiors, a handful of their most popular dishes and a few of their staff.

Of course, making portraits of the chefs, servers and bartenders at the restaurants was the most enjoyable part of the assignment for for me; meeting these people and having only a few moments to make each of them feel

comfortable, and then capturing in a single frame a little piece of their personalities, is a challenge I relished.

This is a collection of my favourite portraits that I made over those few days.  If you see any of these faces the next time you are around Dempsey Hill, please tell them I said hello.

See more of my portrait photography on my website.

Further to the post I wrote earlier this week, here is another series of outtakes that I came across today from my Sands Style magazine shoot with Vinnie Quek & Co. at Marina Sands' Ku De Ta restaurant and lounge.

As I mentioned previously, the fellas from Ku De Ta were a pleasure to work with; we had a lot of fun shooting that afternoon, and I believe the photographs attest to that.

See more of my portrait photography on my website.

Marina Bay Sands is less than one year old, but already it is a Singapore icon, dominating the skyline and offering some of the best views of the city from the Sands SkyPark 56 stories up in the air.  Perched atop the SkyPark is Ku De Ta restaurant and lounge, already one of Singapore's most popular dining and night spots.

I was recently commissioned by Marina Bay Sands' lifestyle magazine, Sands Style, to photograph a series of portraits of Dan Segall and Vinnie Quek, Ku De Ta's Executive Chef and Director of Entertainment.

Portraiture is among my favourite types of photography; creating imagery that captures a person's true personality is what I love most.  However, when shooting portraits for magazines, I am often given only a few moments with my subjects.  Thus, getting them to relax and feel comfortable in this limited amount of time is the most significant challenge I face as a photographer.  Suffice to say, Dan and Vinnie were not my typical subjects; nor was this a typical shoot.

The energy these two had on set was infectious.  They were not the least bit self-conscious in front of the camera.  And above all, they wanted to have fun.  This made my job as the photographer very easy.

These photographs of Dan and Vinnie were made on the outdoor terrace at Ku De Ta, overlooking Marina Bay Sands' famous 150 meter long infinity pool.

Although this series of images won't be appearing in the Spring 2011 edition of Sands Style (another portrait was selected for the magazine feature), these are among my favourite frames we made together that afternoon.

See more of my portrait photography on my website.

Friend, filmmaker and longtime collaborator Mike Rogers and I just returned from an amazing adventure assignment to Indonesia.  We spent two days with the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) Elephant Flying Squad, living in their camp at Lubuk Kembang Bunga Village on the outskirts of Sumatra's Tesso Nilo National Park while shooting an editorial print and digital video feature for SilkAir's inflight magazine, Silkwinds.

According to the WWF website, "In 2004, [the] WWF introduced the first Elephant Flying Squad to Riau Province in central Sumatra, to a village near the newly established Tesso Nilo National Park.  It was a way to bring short-term relief to the intense conflict between people and elephants there and to create support for elephant conservation among hard-hit communities.  Because the region around Tesso Nilo is being logged so rapidly and the forest converted into agricultural plantations, elephants with no place to go are forced to wander in search of food, making farms and commercial plantations an irresistible temptation for elephant-sized appetites."

The mission of the Elephant Flying Squad -- consisting of 11 mahouts and seven trained elephants (four adults, two youngsters and a one-month old baby) -- is to "drive wild elephants back into the forest whenever they threaten to

enter villages.  It has proven to be very effective in reducing losses suffered by local communities near Tesso Nilo" as well as successfully reduced the number of wild elephants killed by angry farmers or scared villagers.

Perched high on the backs of the giant pachyderms, and holding tight to a bare rope that wrapped around the elephants' bodies, Mike and I were fortunate enough to accompany the squad on a typical patrol through the Sumatran rainforest.  It was a magnificent experience to trudge through the jungle on the back of these majestic creatures and document how the Elephant Flying Squad helps preserve the wild elephant population in Riau.

At the end of the assignment -- after my cameras were put away and while Mike wrapped-up his video interviews -- I sat with the 11 mahouts and their leader outside their small cabin in Tesso Nilo.  As we joked and laughed I pulled out my iPhone (which, amazingly, nobody seemed to have ever seen before) and, using the LomoLomo app, started to shoot a few portraits of the Elephant Flying Squad members.  It was a hit, and before long everyone wanted their photos taken.  This is the series we made.

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

Last month I was commissioned by Silkwinds, SilkAir's inflight magazine, to shoot behind-the-scenes photography at Resorts World Sentosa's Voyage de la Vie theatrical circus.

It was a great brief and I thoroughly enjoyed going behind the curtain to visually document the cast and crew as they prepared for an evening performance.  I was able to tour the belly of the theatre at Resorts World Sentosa, which was custom-built for Voyage de la Vie, and get exclusive backstage peaks inside the hair and make-up studios and dressing rooms as the actors, dancers, singers, stylists and stage managers hustled to get ready for the show.

In full costume, and just moments before the performers were to appear on stage, I had a brief window of opportunity to make some portraits of a handful of the production's lead characters.  I found a small corner of a dressing room where a piece of black cloth hung and set-up a quick and dirty portrait studio, consisting of a single softbox main light (powered by my Hensel 1,200w porty kit) and a Nikon SB-800 speedlight (synched off-camera) for fill light.  These are the results.

A series of black & white photo reportage that I captured backstage during the show's preparations will appear in the March/April 2010 issue of Silkwinds.

See more of my portraiture and fashion photography here.

Way back in January of this year, Oliver Stone was in town to lecture at the Singapore campus of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, as well as screen Commandante -- his controversial documentary about Fidel Castro -- at the Next Reel International Film Festival.  During his few days in Singapore, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to meet this Hollywood legend and photograph him exclusively for The Rake magazine.

Christian Barker, editor-in-chief of The Rake, and I decided to photograph Mr. Stone at the beautiful Capella Hotel on Singapore's Sentosa Island, in one of their exclusive private villas and in their gorgeous Rolls-Royce Phantom limousine.  The backdrop was perfect.  Now all we needed was the man.

"Oliver arrived, a little late, and in person he was all you'd expect -- his air that of a heavy-hitting Hollywood auteur", writes Christian in The Rake article.  "I was rather in awe of the man I was about to interview," he continues, "and our photographer Scott was understandably nervy that he'd soon be tasked with 'directing' one of the world's top directors."

Indeed, I was intimidated photographing Oliver Stone.

But this feeling was more because of the pressure I put on myself.  In fact, the three-time Oscar winner and four-time Golden Globe winner was not an intimidating person at all.  I actually found him to be quite the opposite: he was an extremely willing subject, very patient and happy to take direction.  Oliver was generous with his time, and he repeatedly ensured that I had the perfect shot before moving on.

Even the next evening, when I saw Oliver at the film festival, his first question when he greeted me was how the photographs looked and whether I was pleased with them.

I am pleased with them.

And, to coincide with the release of Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, the article has been published in the latest issue of The Rake (Volume 5, 2010).  I am very excited to finally be able to share this work.

See more photographs I made of Oliver Stone here.

I recently spent two weeks' holiday with my family in Canada.  It is a long way to travel, literally half-way around the world, from Singapore to Toronto.

But there are two little girls there that make the 24-hour airplane journey worth every minute: my nieces, Brooke (4 years-old) and Paige (6 years-old).

I made this series of photographs -- in their front hallway with presents I bought them, playing fairy princess dress-up and swinging high, higher, highest on their backyard swing set -- while visiting with them at their home this past July, as well as on my trip to Canada last December.

Brooke and Paige are wonderful subjects to photograph. Like all little girls, they love the attention.  And like all young children, they aren't (yet) self-conscious.

I love Brooke and Paige for more reasons than I can count: their vivid imaginations, their boundless curiousity, their fervid individuality.

But I think I love them most because they love me back.

See more of my Diana Experiment imagery on Flickr.