Last year I was commissioned by Condé Nast Traveller (India) to photograph a feature about "sexy, stylish, sophisticated Singapore".

The assignment had me criss-crossing Singapore, shooting more than two dozen locations for the story, from the tiny independent boutiques lining Haji Lane to the mega Marina Bay Sands resort and casino towering over the city's skyline.

It was a fantastic opportunity for me to explore further my own city and experience many of Singapore's best and brightest bars, restaurants and hotels.  It also gave me an opportunity to meet and photograph some of our city's more interesting finance, society, hospitality and culinary personalities.  It was a fantastic assignment, and one that I thoroughly enjoyed shooting.

The feature, titled "Singapore Grows Up", appeared in the August/September 2011 issue of CN Traveller (India).

Then a few months ago SELF (China) -- another title in the Condé Nast family of magazines -- reprinted the feature in their magazine (December 2011).

And very excitingly, just this month another Condé Nast title -- this time Vogue (China) -- reprinted the feature in their magazine (May 2012).  This is the Vogue (China) layout.

As the feature's writer, Puja Disha Bharwani, writes in the article, "Singapore is now becoming a sexy, sophisticated destination."  Clearly the Chinese agree.

It is always a pleasure to receive positive feedback on the work that I create, but none more than a situation where the client reuses my photography repeatedly across a variety of their titles.  And what bigger compliment than to have my photography appear in the prestigious Vogue magazine?

See more of my lifestyle and travel photography on my website.

Sydney-based writer Anthony Dennis and I have been friends for years, often partnering on features for various luxury travel and lifestyle magazines.  'Penang's Time Capsule', published in the The Australian's May 2012 issue of WISH Magazine, is our latest collaboration.

As Anthony details, in 2008 George Town "was awarded UNESCO World Heritage listing, granting it membership to an elite South-East Asian club that includes once forgotten but now fashionable old town treasures such as Hoi An in Vietnam and Luang Prabang."  Thus, in the past few years, "George Town has been undergoing a renaissance."

Indeed, it is an exciting time to visit Penang, as this renaissance lends itself to a rapid and real-time "rise from obscurity, recognition, revival, restoration and then a kind of gentrification.  The latter is driven by the arrival of enterprising Westerners, and then locals, to establish tourism businesses."

It was this hunt for George Town's flourishing dining, retail café and art scene, as well as its "sensitively designed boutique accommodation in traditional shop-houses" -- and the enterprising individuals behind these initiatives -- that lured us to Penang for this story.

"Typically low-rise old towns...lend themselves well to small-scale, boutique-style hotel developments", and Penang is no exception.  The old town is filled with "extraordinary and distinctive colonial architecture, street after street replete with rows of dilapidated but intact shop-houses", some of which notable conservationist entrepreneurs like Christopher Ong and Narelle McMurtrie have lovingly and beautifully renovated and restored.

Over the course of three days this past January, I visited with Christopher and Narelle, documenting Christopher's Muntri Mews guesthouse, a former stable and carriageworks, and Narelle's Straits Collection and China House, an eclectic mixture of retail spaces, restaurants, galleries and guest residences.  I also photographed Clove Hall, an Edwardian Anglo-Malay bungalow converted into a beautiful boutique hotel, and the century-old Eastern & Oriental Hotel.  In my spare time, I wandered the narrow streets, capturing images of "Technicolor shop-houses with multiple shuttered-windows and weathered terracotta rooftops."

UNESCO declares that George Town is among “the most complete surviving historic city centres on the Straits of Malacca with a multicultural living heritage originating from the trade routes from Great Britain and Europe through

the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and the Malay archipelago to China...[constituting] a unique architectural and cultural townscape without parallel anywhere in east and southeast Asia."

But don't just take UNESCO's word for it.  Visit Penang and experience this glorious and colourful time capsule for yourself.

See more of my luxury lifestyle and travel photography on my website.

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 am often asked what I believe is my best photograph. Without hesitation, I always answer that it is my image of the Bhutanese novice monks joyously careening down a hill at their Thimphu monastic school.  I love the spontaneity, emotion and movement captured in this single frame: a true moment frozen in time, and my favourite picture I've ever taken.

What was originally created nearly four years ago -- as a promotional still image for Persistent Productions' documentary film, Shooting For Democracy -- has become the most popular and commercially successful photo reportage I've ever made.

This image has been printed in the pages of the iconic National Geographic Magazine (USA), as part of a feature profile in National Geographic Magazine (China), and on the cover of GEOspecial Magazine (Germany).  It also appears on Adobe’s Photoshop.com website and was one of three photos from my "Thunder Dragon" collection that was selected by Luerzer’s Archive when I was honoured as one of the “200 Best Advertising Photographers Worldwide” a couple of years ago.

This month, my favourite young monks grace the cover of British Airways' inflight magazine High Life for a cover story on the enigmatic Kingdom of Bhutan.

Visiting Bhutan had long been a dream of mine.  And when that dream finally came true, exploring and documenting the ruggedly beautiful country exceeded even my highest hopes.  Truly, my time spent in Bhutan was the most amazing travel and photography experience of my entire life.  And I find it exciting and rewarding that imagery I created during that remarkable experience also -- and still -- resonates with others.

A fun post script to this photograph: one of the very next frames I snapped after this image was of friend and filmmaker, Mike Rogers, surrounded by the gaggle of young monks who had just run down the hill, as they raptly watched themselves come to life on the screen of Mike's video camera.  This picture actually appeared in The New York Times.  Indeed, the photography gods were smiling down upon us that afternoon.

This past December I was commissioned by The Daily Telegraph to photograph 'Homage to the New Cambodia' , a glimpse at Indochina's newest rising star, for the Spring 2012 edition of Ultratravel magazine.

I joined Johnny Morris, Ultratravel's creative director, at the beautiful Villa Romonea in the seaside town of Kep.  As Johnny describes, "[d]esigned by Lu Ban Happ, a key figure in the Le Corbusier-inspired New Khmer Architecture movement, [Villa Romonea] is one of the few intact private mansions of Kep’s golden era in the 1960s.  Fully renovated by its current owners, it is a shining example of how to mix Sixties interior design and contemporary furnishing within a striking modernist mansion.  Its bold white zigzags and organically curved atrium help make it surprisingly optimistic architecture."

We enjoyed ice cold Kingdom Beers by the villa's saltwater infinity pool as the sun set over the Bay of Kampot and then we ventured into town, accompanied by an American couple also staying at the villa, for cocktails at The Sailing Club by Knai Bang Chatt, followed by fresh crab and green Kampot pepper at Kimly's, "a classic example of the 'keep it local, keep it simple' destination restaurant that we all crave on our travels."

The next day we traveled to Sihanoukville, the jumping-off point for Song Saa, a brand new private luxury island resort

nestled 15 miles off the coast in the Koh Rong Archipelago. Johnny and I lunched overlooking the Gulf of Thailand with the owner, Rory Hunter, and his senior team before being whisked away on a tour of the two beautiful islands and the exclusive all-villa resort.

The final stop on my adventure with Johnny was Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh, a few hours’ drive from Sihanoukville.  As Johnny poetically recounts in the article, "Phnom Penh is [a] full-on live show with plenty of swagger and edgy improvisation...[a] million stories and a stream of colour from tuk-tuk and scooter lights."

This December assignment with Johnny and Ultratravel was my third shoot in Cambodia in as many months.  And next week I'll be returning to Phnom Penh to shoot a feature for a German-based magazine, followed shortly thereafter by another assignment that will start in Siem Reap and take me more than 600km around Cambodia in the back of a tuk-tuk.  Indeed, it's a beautiful country whose future looks bright, and I am privileged to be able to witness and document so much of this growth and change.

Read the full 'Homage to the New Cambodia' article online, browse my earlier Ultratravel work, 'Singapore Swings' and see more of my lifestyle and travel 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.

I first visited Singapore in 1996, and have called the small island city my home for 14 of the past 15 years.  During this time I've witnessed the city-state grow and mature into a thriving hub of international flare and renown.  In particular, the past five years have seen dramatic changes in Singapore: giant integrated resorts and casinos, international sporting events, a burgeoning arts scene and an exploding financial services and housing market.

Sometimes I find Singapore barely recognizable from the place I first visited a decade and a half ago; apparently I am not the only one.  Recently Singapore has received a remarkable amount of press celebrating it's meteoric rise to become one of "Asia's dazzling metropolises".  This article, "Schlaflos in Singapur" (Sleepless in Singapore), published in the latest issue of American Express Selects magazine in Germany, is no exception.

Much like the other recent Singapore features I've photographed for international magazines -- "Singapore Swings" for The Telegraphs's Ultratravel and "Singapore Grows Up" for Conde Nast Traveller (India) -- this article focused on Singapore's latest and greatest shopping, dining and leisure destinations.  I photographed more than 20 locations for this feature, and enjoyed every moment of exploring and experiencing all the "new Singapore" has to offer visitors and residents alike.

The Winter 2011/12 edition of The Daily Telegraph's Ultratravel magazine was published in the UK this past week end, including "Singapore Swings", an article exposing the new-and-improved city-state and featuring a selection of my photography made at various landmarks around my adopted home of Singapore.

Writer Michael Simkins expounds in detail on all that Singapore has to offer the overseas visitor, from "architectural show-stoppers" Marina Bay Sands Hotel & Casino, the National Library and the Esplanade Theatres on the Bay, to the "larger-than-life" Singapore Flyer, to the predominance of luxury branded retail and Michelin star dining experiences, to the annual Formula 1 Grand Prix night race that speeds through our fair city streets every September.

If you can't experience "sultry, swanky Singapore" in person, then click here, turn to Page 46, and let Ultratravel transport you here.

And if this isn't enough Singapore for you, then click here to see "Singapore Grows Up", a feature I photographed for Conde Nast Traveller (India) a few months ago.

Back in January, I was commissioned by Condé Nast Traveller (India) to photograph a feature about "sexy, stylish, sophisticated Singapore" for an upcoming issue. Having never had the privilege of working with Condé Nast Traveller before, I was very excited for this opportunity. Being able to shoot this in my own backyard was a bonus.

The feature's writer, Puja Disha Bharwani, and I spoke on the phone a few times to coordinate everything and then set-out together on a seven-day adventure that took us to 27 different locations across the island.

From the tiny independent boutiques of Haji Lane to the larger-than-life Marina Bay Sands resort and casino, this assignment was an fantastic chance for Puja and me to experience many of Singapore's newest and chicest bars, restaurants and hotels, as well as meet and photograph some of the city's more interesting finance, society, hospitality and culinary personalities.

The fruits of our labour, "Singapore Grows Up", appears across 12 pages in the August/September 2011 issue of Condé Nast Traveller (India), on newsstands now.  As Puja writes in the feature, "Singapore is now becoming a sexy, sophisticated destination."  I couldn't agree more.

See more of my lifestyle and travel photography on my website.

Shooting fashion photography, for me, occurred organically -- almost accidentally -- over many years.  I never set-out to be a fashion photographer; making candid, reportage-inspired pictures of people was what I was interested in, and how I truly got my start in photography.

However, when I began receiving my first travel magazine assignments years ago, it was required that I shoot a lot of architecture and interior photography: designer homes, boutique hotels, trendy bars and stylish restaurants. Inspired by the glossy pages of renowned luxury lifestyle and travel publications like Conde Nast Traveller and Travel + Leisure, I worked hard to create my own personal style of interior photography.

Merging these two photographic subjects together -- people and places -- and creating narrative-inspired, location-based fashion imagery seemed to me like a logical next step in my photographic career.  And I was fortunate that, more than five years ago, a couple of magazine editors I had been working with on travel and portrait work believed in me and my work enough to offer me opportunities to shoot small editorial fashion features for their respective publications.

Borrowing a little from my individual techniques for photographing both people and places, I learned a lot on those first few editorial fashion commissions.  And over the years I have continued to grow and to be inspired, and I have laboured to fine-tune a personal style for my location-based fashion photography.

No matter how many assignments or commissions I am awarded, it is always gratifying when a client hires me to create photography for them.  So I was extremely excited when, in April, I was asked to shoot a fashion feature for Ei8ht magazine the Dusit Thani Hotels and Resorts' custom lifestyle publication.

Alongside a fantastic creative team, I traveled to Thailand where we spent two days shooting at the Dusit Thani's boutique dusitD2 Baraquda property in Pattaya.  A modern design hotel, the dusitD2 was an extremely stylish location that provided us with constant photographic inspiration. The results of this shoot appear on the cover and across 10 pages of the recently-published Issue #2 of Ei8ht magazine.

See more imagery from the Ei8ht magazine fashion shoot, including unpublished photographs and iPhone outtakes. And see more from my fashion photography portfolio on my website.

Credits

Art Direction: Peter Stephens

Styling: Furqan Saini

Hair: Khanawut Ruangrot

Make-up: Wansuk Bunprasert

Photographer's Assistant: Zam

Model: Julianne Steege / Wilhelmina Models

Retouching: Agnes Teo

Regular readers might recall a post I wrote a couple of months ago following the time I spent on assignment with the Elephant Flying Squad at Lubuk Kembang Bunga Village on the outskirts of Sumatra's Tesso Nilo National Park.  The feature I was there photographing is the cover story of the May edition of Silkwinds, SilkAir's inflight magazine, in airline seat back pockets now.

Excerpted from editor Rod Mackenzie's Silkwinds article "Sumatra's High Flyers": Deep inside the Indonesian rainforest of central Sumatra lives the Tesso Nilo Elephant Flying Squad.  This group of seven domesticated elephants and their 11 specially trained mahouts are operated "by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in collaboration with Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry... [The squad's] mission is to provide a secure haven for Riau Province’s largest remaining wild elephant population... Elephant numbers have declined in Riau Province from more than 1,600 in 1985 to as few as 350 today, about 150 of which live in Tesso Nilo National Park..."

According to the WWF, "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."

As Rod continues in his Silkwinds feature, "By patrolling the fringes of the national park, [the squad] helps prevent wild elephants invading farms and villages, where they can cause immense damage and also run the risk of being killed or injured" by carefully driving them back into the jungle.  The Elephant Flying Squad is in "constant battle to bring harmony to the local environment" by mitigating human-elephant conflict.  And, "so far, they appear to be winning."

The Silkwinds article contains only a handful of photographs I made during this amazing experience with the Elephant Flying Squad.  To see a much broader collection of my pictures from the time I spent patrolling the jungles of Sumatra with this supersize security patrol, please visit my website.

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.

Photographing weddings is not something that I will typically agree to do.  Indeed, I've shot a handful of weddings over the years, but every time I finished, I promised myself it would be the last time (this doesn't really count).  However, when The New York Times calls, photographing a wedding is something that I will agree to do.  Funny that.

This was the case a few weeks ago, when the photo editor of The New York Times' Style section contacted me about shooting the nuptials of Lauren Widel and Henry Rohlich for the Vows column of the newspaper.  The photo editor wanted "reportage-style images of the wedding and reception" which was taking place here in Singapore; nothing posed or contrived.  Did I want the assignment? Yes.

What makes this love story and wedding special, I learned, is that Lauren suffers from epilepsy.  As writer Francesca Segre explains in last Sunday's New York Times article, "if [Lauren] stopped taking her medications, she’d likely have a seizure within days.  [And] about once a month, Ms. Widel, who had her first seizure at age 3, experiences severe auras brought on by fear that she’ll have a seizure. She hasn’t had a seizure in three years, but her fear of suffering one is akin to an intense panic attack.  'You have nervousness in your stomach,' she said.  'You lose your spatial ability, your left and your right.'  To get through

these episodes, she sits still with her legs crossed in a lotus position or holds her knees to her chest in a fetal position and waits, sometimes for hours.  She also calms down by 'singing' along to songs in American Sign Language.  Being around her, Mr. Rohlich said, involves a lot of highs and lows.  'It’s hard to be with her because I want to help so bad, but there’s nothing I can do,' he said.  But rather than run away, he ran toward her."

So, on April 7, Francesca and I attended Lauren and Henry's wedding ceremony here in Singapore.  "Ms. Widel, wearing a sparkling red and gold Indian wedding sari, walked into the plain waiting room of the...Registry of Marriages with her fiancé and her parents.  Ms. Widel kept adjusting her sari, which, she joked, 'weighed about 100 pounds.'  Mr. Rohlich, now accustomed to Singaporean administrative efficiency, keyed in his passport number at the self-serve kiosk and their wedding appointment was confirmed.  When the bell indicated it was their turn to wed, the couple, trailed by her parents, walked into a smaller room where an assistant registrar of marriages, Ang Toon Moh, sat behind a desk with a computer.  In his clipped Singaporean English accent, Mr. Ang then led them through their legally prescribed vows.  Afterward he said to the couple, 'Now you know what to do.'

"They kissed, and Sunanda Widel, the bride’s mother, cheered, 'Yes!'”

What makes my job most interesting is that I am fortunate enough to have a range of diversity in my photographic briefs and subjects.  I find the contrasts between working on personal projects, shooting editorial assignments and photographing advertising campaigns to be perfect for me.

Literally, one day I can be alone with just my camera, searching for a perfect moment to capture; and the next day I can be on a set with lighting equipment, assistants, models, clients, creatives, stylists and producers trying to manufacture a perfect moment to capture.  This variety in my life and in my work helps keep me challenged and inspired.

So, when I was recently approached to shoot a style feature for the Park Hotel Group's in-house fashion, lifestyle and travel magazine, I happily agreed.

My brief was to photograph an indoor/outdoor, location-based fashion spread that mimicked the look and feel of natural light.

So, in late-February, the art director, my assistant and myself -- along with the beautiful model and accompanied by a fantastic group of stylists -- descended on the Park Hotel Clarke Quay for a day of fashion photography.

The results of the shoot are here, and appear on the cover and across six pages inside the Summer 2011 edition of the Park Hotel Group's Sparkle magazine.

The photographs look great, and I am very thankful to the talented team of people who provided their expertise and worked very hard alongside me to achieve this result.

Credits

Art Direction: Shirley Saphir

Styling: Vernon Sim

Hair: Eileen Koh

Make-up: TG Goh

Photographer's Assistant: Zam

Model: Paula A. / Carrie Models

Retouching: Agnes Teo

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

As mentioned in a previous post, in January I was commissioned by SilkAir's inflight magazine Silkwinds to create a series of behind-the-scenes reportage at Resorts World Sentosa's (RWS) Voyage de la Vie theatrical circus in Singapore.

Accompanied by writer Lisa-Ann Lee, my assistant and I spent a few hours backstage with the actors, dancers, acrobats, singers, stylists, directors, technicians and stage managers in the show's custom-built theatre at RWS.  It was a fascinating glimpse into the last-minute rehearsals and frantic preparations that take place before the curtain goes up every night.

As Lisa writes, Voyage de la Vie "is just one example of how Singapore’s first ever theatrical circus is pushing the entertainment envelope.  Almost three years in the making, Voyage de la Vie has performed in front of more than 200,000 people since it premiered in July last year... The show is charting new boundaries by weaving theatre, dance, music, acrobatic feats and magic together" to tell a unique coming-of-age story.

Here are a few of my favourite images from backstage that evening; see more of my photography from backstage in the March/April 2010 Silkwinds magazine.  And visit here to browse more of my photo reportage.