The Voyager's next port of call is Hong Kong.

In this episode of The HISTORY Channel's Around The World With Voyager, I meet actor, singer, musician, model, writer and director Stephen Fung Tak-Lun (馮德倫), one of the territory's most versatile talents.

Stephen first rose to fame in the 1990s as one half of the music duo Dry, before moving into acting in and directing action movies Gen-X Cops, Enter the Phoenix and Jump! which cemented his popularity with the Hong Kong public.

Stephen is a multifaceted personality, and has continued to cross genres with his film work.

Stephen takes on the role of my tour guide, leading me to five different locations that represent significant milestones in his life in Hong Kong.  My mission is to photograph five definitive portraits of Stephen at these locations around the city, capturing and revealing his phenomenal rise through Hong Kong's competitive and acclaimed entertainment industry.

Revealing his unlikely beginnings as a star, Stephen brings me to Hong Kong's iconic Peak and the German Swiss

School he attended as a teenager.  Here we reminisce about his youth and growing-up in this bustling city.

Stephen loves heavy metal music -- bands like AC/DC, Guns 'N Roses, Metallica -- and as a youngster he dreamed of being a rock 'n roll star.  We visit the Tom Lee Music School where Stephen learned to play and we talk about his passion for music and how it influenced his life.  Stephen even rips a few chords for me on his electric guitar.

He then takes me on a tour of Happy Valley and to his first home.  Aiming to get access inside, he provides me some insight into the community and what his modest first apartment meant to him after many years of hard work.

To uncover the beginnings of Stephen's movie career, he brings me to the trendy On Lan Street in Central where he filmed the first scene of his directorial debut, Enter the Phoenix, in which he also co-starred alongside his close friend Daniel Wu.

And, for his final portrait, Stephen and I visit Diversion Pictures, the production company that he recently started with Wu.  Here we talk about their acclaimed inaugural film, Tai Chi Zero, and how this complex

project has been such a huge step for him, signaling yet another new and exciting phase in his life.

It was a pleasure to meet Stephen and have an opportunity to explore Hong Kong through his eyes.

To experience Stephen's journey through my lens, catch the second episode of Around The World With Voyager, which premieres on Monday 10 December at 11pm on HISTORY and HISTORY HD.

Click here to watch the promotional trailer for the first episode where I met and photographed Sean Anson Xu 徐安昇 in Taipei.

I am extremely fortunate to have a long-standing relationship with Travel + Leisure magazine, one of the world's preeminent luxury travel and lifestyle publications. I have worked with the Southeast Asian edition a number of times over the years, contributing travel and luxury lifestyle features; however, I have never had the privilege of photographing a cover fashion spread for them.  Until now.

Travel + Leisure SEA's Art Director contacted me, commending this fashion feature I recently shot for Dusit's Ei8ht magazine.  He mentioned that T+L SEA would soon be celebrating it's 5th anniversary, and he was interested in having me shoot a similarly-conceived cover and fashion feature at the brand new W Hotel in Singapore for the magazine's upcoming celebration issue.

In late-October, my team and I descended upon the beautiful W Hotel at Sentosa Cove for the all-day photography session.  Creatively, I love these types of assignments for the opportunity to integrate the property into my imagery, making the location a character alongside the model.  And there were so many remarkable locations to shoot around this contemporary luxury resort hotel -- avant-garde architecture, innovative furnishings and vibrant colours -- that we were spoiled for choice.

Our stylist kept the fashion and accessories luxe, chic, bold and bright: Michael Kors, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Miu Miu, Dolce & Gabbana and Christian Louboutin are among the labels showcased in our imagery.

The result is a collection of photography that graces the cover and eight pages in the December 2012 issue, the biggest T+L SEA issue ever published.

Happy 5th Anniversary, Travel + Leisure.

Browse more of my fashion photography here.

Credits

Client: Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia

Location: W Singapore - Sentosa Cove

Art Direction: James Unkong

Model: Tanja V.

Styling: Vernon Sim

Hair & Make-up: Andrea Claire

Photographer's Assistant: Zam

Digital Imaging: Agnes Teo

In the words of writer Rod Mackenzie, "Singapore is undergoing a creative revolution."

I wholeheartedly agree.

Rod asserts, "This isn’t a country normally associated with sudden spontaneity or letting rip.  Efficient, safe, clean, somewhat maiden-auntish and rule-bound -- these are the words people tend to use when describing this little diamond-shaped island."

However, in the three years Rod has lived here -- and most certainly in the 15+ years I have called it home -- Singapore has "undergone some significant changes.  Glitzy Vegas-style casinos, groundbreaking modern architecture, Formula One races, cutting-edge arts festivals, pleasure gardens filled with 50-metre-tall neon-lit 'Supertrees' -- it’s all getting louder, brighter and much more interesting."

Land Rover recently commissioned Rod, myself and my friend and frequent creative collaborator, Mike Rogers, to document Singapore's transformation for their multi-award-winning travel and lifestyle magazine, OneLife.

So, for four days this past August, we traversed our tiny island home in a beautiful, brand new Range Rover Sport,

meeting a handful of entrepreneurs who are "rewriting the rulebook and fueling the economic future" of Singapore.

We interviewed and photographed a total of five independent business people who have chosen not only to make Singapore their personal home, but also the place where they chase their professional dreams: Ryan Lee, CEO of X-mini capsule speakers for mobile phones, Mp3 players, tablets and laptops; Lisa Crosswhite, founder of Gnossem, an online retailed dedicated to independent Asian fashion designers; Lawrence Koh, founder of iFly Singapore, Asia's only indoor skydiving wind tunnel; Violet Lim, chief executive of Lunch Actually, a dating agency that connects busy professionals in over lunch; and Loh Lik Peng, the hotelier behind Singapore's boutique properties New Majestic Hotel, Hotel 1929 and Wanderlust.

It was a unique way to observe Singapore -- through the windscreen of a Land Rover.  It was also an interesting way to learn more about Singapore -- through the eyes of these successful, creative entrepreneurs.

Watch Mike's short film about "Singapore's Creative Revolutionaries" here.

Browse more of my travel and lifestyle photography here.

This past August, I received a phone call from The Moving Visuals Company, a television and film production house in Singapore.  They were contacting me on behalf of The HISTORY Channel, who was searching for a photographer to host a TV series, and they wanted to know if I was interested in such a role.

I can honestly say I hadn't awoken that morning thinking I wanted to be on television.  However, as my father always says, "you never know if you never go", so I agreed to a meeting to discuss the opportunity further.

One thing led to another and a few weeks later -- following a screen test with the show's Creative Director and countless phone calls with the series' Executive Producer -- I learned that I had been selected as the program's host. And so began a three-month (and counting) adventure filming the television series Around The World With Voyager.

Sponsored by John Walker & Sons, and inspired by the rare 1920s travel guide Around the World -- a journal that documented cities and countries across the globe nearly one hundred years ago -- the TV show follows me on the 187-foot custom designed luxury yacht, Voyager, as I sail across Asia, from Shanghai to Mumbai, recreating the epic

journeys of the early 20th Century traders.  The series will comprise of five episodes, one created in each of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines, India and Vietnam.

The show is one-half biography and one-half travelogue, as I disembark and meet with local icons -- a celebrity, an entrepreneur or an entertainer -- who define their cities as much as their cities have defined them.  Each personality acts as my tour guide, taking me to five different locations that represent significant milestones in his/her life and have helped shape his/her professional and personal successes.

As host and photographer, my role is to learn about the icons and their lives, while at the same time documenting their personal journeys by shooting a definitive portrait of them at each of their five milestone locations.

Historic yet contemporary, Around The World With Voyager strives to uniquely document the evolving history of modern Asia.

This is the promotional trailer for the premiere episode, where my first port of call is Taipei.  Here I meet Sean Anson Xu 徐安昇, one of Taiwan's most admired and ambitious entrepreneurs.

Candidly, stepping out from behind my lens to host a television series has been quite a journey in its own right for me personally.  It has been a challenging transition, but it has certainly been a rewarding opportunity.  And although making television is a completely different endeavour from my world of still photography, I have absolutely enjoyed the experience of bringing these two worlds together in Around The World With Voyager.

Around The World With Voyager premieres on Monday 26 November at 11pm on HISTORY and HISTORY HD.

There are many wonderful technological benefits to being a photographer in the Twenty-first Century, but none greater than the ability to easily connect and communicate with clients, both existing and potential, all around the world.  Developing these relationships, however, still requires personal effort, a little luck and some human kindness.

Last year I was contacted by the Photo Editor at Condé Nast Traveller (Russia) and we ended up working together to illustrate a Cambodia story, 'АнГкор, еще анГкор!' (translated as 'Angkor, More Angkor') for the February 2012 issue of her magazine.  Following this collaboration, and despite having never met in person or even spoken on the phone, we have developed a long-distance, electronic friendship.

So when she reached out again recently -- this time seeking photography for an upcoming CNT (Russia) feature about Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam -- I was only too happy to oblige.

I used to live in Saigon in the late 1990s and have returned to Vietnam's commercial capital numerous times over the past dozen years to witness and document the hyper-frenetic, ever-changing city.  I, therefore, have a deep reservoir of imagery from Vietnam to draw upon.

The result of my most recent collaboration with Condé Nast Traveller (Russia) is the feature 'НА СУП ФО к дядюшке Хо' (roughly translated as 'Go To Uncle Ho for Pho') which appears across a dozen pages in the November 2012 issue.

Recalling from our previous work together that I had a large library of stock imagery from Cambodia -- and in the spirit of both friendship and partnership -- my CNT (Russia) contact kindly introduced me to the Photo Editor at GQ (Russia) whom she knew to be searching for photographs to illustrate a story about Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh, for her magazine.

'БУДДА-БАР' (meaning 'Buddha Bar'), featuring a handful of my Phnom Penh photographs, appeared in the October 2012 edition of GQ (Russia).

Neither of these connections would ever have been made without modern technology.  But I am also acutely aware that neither of these relationships would ever have flourished without both a personal touch and a kind gesture.  And isn't that what partnership is all about?

See more of my work with Condé Nast's international magazines, VOGUE (China) and Condé Nast Traveller (India).

Back in May, my team and I photographed a regional advertising campaign for Pioneer Asia-Pacific's car audio and entertainment group.  Working closely with Nectar9, Pioneer's advertising agency in Singapore, my task was to create two images: "Driving" and "Dancing".

My brief was to tell a story in a single frame, capturing real-life moments of pure kinetic energy, blasts of dynamic light and explosions of bright colours.

Creatively, "Driving" was about the driver achieving nirvana -- a state of perfect happiness -- in unison with his car, the music and the city swirling by as it engulfed him and his vehicle in lights and energy.

On the other hand, "Dancing" was about taking a moment and making it better -- the women freeing themselves and embracing that experience.

Ultimately, the man in "Driving" had to demonstrate an awareness of his surroundings and control of the moment, while "Dancing" had to illustrate the women letting go, being free in their surroundings and allowing the moment to control them.

Like most of my work, I chose to approach this shoot from an editorial perspective, creating images in a true photo-reportage style and providing the viewer with a feeling of spontaneity, realism and authenticity. I wanted to produce images showing candid and emotional moments-in-time, captured in a true cinematic fashion.

We thought long and hard about how to photograph these scenes, eventually deciding it would be best to shoot them in a studio versus on the streets of Singapore.  My production team from Ugly Duckling Projects pulled everything together, including two beautiful automobiles for me to photograph: a mint condition 1969 Mercedes-Benz 200 and a brand new Maserati Granturismo.

Working in the studio, we had to rely entirely on artificial light for our shoot.  We opted to use a mixture of powerful strobe lights that "pop", film and television lights that "burn", small in-car lights and a collection of multi-coloured fluorescent tube lights.  We lit the scenes for both "Driving" and "Dancing" in a dramatic, high-contrast manner -- giving us the nighttime essence we wanted -- and then achieved the splashes of colour and streaking lights on the hood of the car separately in-camera.  Our

friends at Procolor in Singapore then helped bring everything together for us in post-production to create the desired speeding, streaking effects in both photographs.

The resulting images of this dynamic shoot rolled-out across the region last week. The entire team is very proud of the work. And fun was had by all, especially me...

Browse more of my advertising photography portfolio here.

Credits

Client: Pioneer Asia-Pacific

Agency: Nectar9

Creative Director: Robbie Bempasciuto

Art Director: Tom Kelly

Account Service: Andre Chen

Production: Ugly Duckling Projects

Executive Producer: Annette Fausboll

Styling: Arina Abu Bakar

Hair & Make-up: Andrea Claire

Photographer's Assistants: Zam, Halid & Jun Yang

Digital Imaging: Dave Phung / Procolor

I have been extremely privileged to meet and photograph a number of notable and high-profile personalities over the course of my career.  Photographing people like Oscar-winning film director Oliver Stone and PGA golfer Tiger Woods have been among my most memorable assignments.

And over the past year, while on assignment for various editorial clients, I have had the opportunity to make portraits of three interesting and engaging individuals: fiction author Alexander McCall Smith; scholar, columnist and television personality Niall Ferguson; and art historian Charles Saumarez Smith.

I spent a couple of hours with Alexander McCall Smith, author of the best-selling The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, at Singapore's iconic Raffles Hotel last year while shooting a profile about him for Reader's Digest.  Mr. McCall Smith was a patient and thoughtful subject and, as it was the first (and only) time I've been permitted to shoot inside Raffles Hotel, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of integrating the historical Victorian-era property and decor into my photographs.

Earlier this year I met Niall Ferguson very briefly when I was commissioned by the Financial Times to photograph him at

a finance conference at Singapore's Mandarin Oriental Hotel.  My assistant and I were set up and waiting for Mr. Ferguson, who was delayed, for more than ninety minutes. So when he arrived, we had just a few minutes to shoot his portrait, which gave me time to make only a handful of photographs.  But he was a fantastic subject -- he was extremely comfortable in front of my lens, required little direction and was full of expression -- so a few moments was all that we needed to get the shot.

Finally, I was hired by Billionaire to photograph portraits of Charles Saumarez Smith, former Director of the National Portrait Gallery (UK) and the National Gallery (UK), and the current Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts (UK).  Our shoot took place this past March at the historic Eden Hall, the private residence of the British High Commissioner to Singapore.  I had about one hour with Mr. Saumarez Smith, and although my idea of photographing him on the grounds outside was scuttled by an afternoon thunder shower, I feel I was still able to make some compelling pictures of him.  It was an honour to photograph a subject whose image, captured by the great Mario Testino, currently resides in his former place of employment, London's National Portrait Gallery.

See more of my portraiture on my website.

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.

Once again, with the assistance of my friends Licheng and Andy, late last week Issue #10 of my SCOTT eNewsletter rolled off our virtual press and landed in thousands of inboxes around the world.

Headlining this edition was photography I captured for Nikon Asia of American folk and roots musician, Ben Taylor (son of famous musicians James Taylor and Carly Simon), on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.  Together with my creative partners, Mike Rogers and Meghan Shea, we spent three remarkable days with Ben at his home, visiting his studio where he shared with us the sources of his creative inspiration and his songwriting process.  In addition to this imagery is a behind-the-scenes video that Mike made to compliment the Nikon campaign.

I also chose to share a daily photographic journal that Meghan and I created when we spent a week documenting our friend, Sam McGoun, as he swam, cycled and ran more than 670km across Cambodia to raise awareness of, and help to fight against, human trafficking.  As the documentary photograph- and film-making team tasked with chronicling Sam’s odyssey, we did our best to keep pace with him as he dove into snake-filled lakes, crossed muddy rivers, ran through small villages and pedaled

across the countryside of rural Cambodia on his way to raising more than USD$30,000 for charity.  Together with Mike, we also created a short making-of video of our Cambodian adventure.

Finally, I included a collection of personal iPhoneography I made while on holiday in Canada with my young nieces this past summer.  This work is both a visual diary of the times we shared and an observation on the ephemerality of childhood, rendered how I chose to witness our moments together  -- inquisitively, spontaneously and lovingly -- through the tiny lens of my iPhone camera.

If you (or someone you know) would like to receive future issues of my quarterly SCOTT eNewsletter directly to your inbox, then please take a moment to subscribe to my mailing list.

The previous nine issues of my SCOTT eNewsletter -- showcasing a variety of my travel, portrait, fashion, lifestyle and advertising photography over the past two years -- remain online and you can peruse them here.

"It’s the perennial, as it were, dilemma of urban landscape architects everywhere.  How to create a grand, public park, with immediate impact, when the essential star attractions, the tall trees, can take decades or even longer to mature," states Sydney-based writer and friend, Anthony Dennis, in our most recent collaboration, 'The Ultimate Tree Change' published in The Australian's July 2012 issue of WISH Magazine.

Anthony continues, "It was this problem that confronted an impatient city-state with ambitions to cement itself as the pre-eminent tourism and investment destination in southeast Asia -- not in the future, but now.  Singapore, which in recent years has embraced architecture and design as drivers of its national goals, devised a unique solution to the slow-growing tree problem for its new Gardens by the Bay development.  It has built 'Supertrees' that form a sculptural garden, an amalgam of the architectural and the organic."

I had the privilege of visiting Gardens by the Bay for an exclusive private tour and photoshoot this past May, a number of weeks prior to the park's grand opening in late-June.  In Singapore's typical fashion of 'Go Big or Go Home', it was simply awe-inspiring.  The 18 'Supertrees' towered between 25m and 50m overhead, and

their branches extended "like oversized spiderwebs", the primary focal point being a 128m-long aerial walkway, which connects the giant man-made structures in 'Supertree Grove'.

As Anthony goes on to explain, urban design "has evolved to fully embrace a multitude of disciplines, not just the horticultural but also architecture and landscape design and, in the Singapore example, structural and environmental engineering.  Gardens by the Bay -- and, indeed, Singapore's entire Marina Bay development, including Marina Bay Sands, the Esplanade, Singapore Flyer, ArtScience Museum and Marina Bay Financial Centre -- certainly exemplifies this forward-looking philosophy.

See Anthony and my other recent WISH Magazine collaboration, 'Penang's Time Capsule', published in the The Australian's May 2012 issue.  And browse more of my luxury lifestyle and travel photography on my website.

This past May I was asked by my friends at Nikon Asia to create a collection of images using the new Nikon 1 V1 mirrorless camera, F-mount adaptor and five different AF-S Nikkor lenses of my choosing.  They also requested that I make a short film about my personal experience working with the camera and lenses.

Although I didn't know exactly what I wanted to shoot for Nikon, I did know precisely whom to call for some creative assistance: my close friends and frequent collaborators, documentary filmmaking team Mike Rogers and Meghan Shea.

Coincidentally, Mike and Meghan were just about to depart Singapore for the United States to film a television pilot with folk and roots musician Ben Taylor at his home on Martha's Vineyard.  They suggested that I join them and use the Nikon 1 to document behind-the-scenes and the making-of the TV pilot.

I loved the idea, Nikon supported our proposal and -- most importantly -- Ben graciously agreed to star in our photographs and short film.  The next thing I knew, I was traveling around the world from Singapore to Massachusetts to join Mike and Meghan and the rest of the team working on the production.

Together we spent three remarkable days with Ben on Martha's Vineyard.  We visited his home-recording studio where he shared with us the sources of his creative inspiration and his songwriting process.

We enjoyed downtime with Ben, paddle boarding on Menemsha Pond at Chilmark and sitting on his balcony at Tisbury as he serenaded us with his acoustic guitar.

And the climax of the entire experience was a small, private concert Ben hosted at his home on our last evening.  He invited about 30 of his friends from the Vineyard to join him around the campfire while he and his bandmate, David Saw -- along with a handful of his musician friends -- sang late into the night.

Mike filmed me as I went about documenting each of the moments we experienced using the Nikon 1.  In this short film by Mike, go behind-the-scenes of our shoot and visit here to see a collection of the photography I captured during our three fantastic days on Martha's Vineyard with Ben Taylor.

One of Ben's songs, "Worlds Are Made of Paper" -- from his brand new album Listening -- is featured in our film. Download Listening from iTunes starting from August 14.

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.

This past March/April, Mike Rogers, Meghan Shea and I spent more than a week documenting our friend, Sam McGoun, as he swam, cycled and ran more than 670km across Cambodia to raise awareness of, and help to fight against, human trafficking.

Inspired by the challenges overcome by the students of Sala Bai Hotel & Restaurant School, Sam’s route across the Kingdom of Wonder followed the actual journey traveled by a former student named Khatna: from her floating village in Mechrey on Tonle Sap Lake, to Sala Bai where she studied in Siem Reap, to her graduation celebration on the sandy beachfront overlooking the Gulf of Thailand in Sihanoukville.

As the documentary photograph- and film-making team tasked with chronicling Sam’s odyssey, we did our best to keep pace with him as he dove into snake-filled lakes, crossed muddy rivers, ran through small villages and pedaled across the countryside of rural Cambodia on his way to raising more than USD$30,000 for Sala Bai.

We also tried to take the time to briefly turn the cameras on ourselves as we shared in Sam's epic journey, sleeping in active Buddhist monasteries, exploring abandoned 7th century pre-Ankorian temples and stumbling upon

beautiful, cinematic scenes of village women plunging fully-clothed to the bottom of a muddy river to catch trey phtok, a local freshwater fish.

Set to the recently released song "Anderson" by Wishes and Thieves, the result is a short two-and-a-half-minute video that Mike and I created to go behind-the-scenes and offer a brief glimpse into our personal experiences photographing and filming Sam's adventure.

Interested in more?  Click here to follow Sam's cross-Cambodia journey through our "Report from the Road" daily journal.  Or visit my website to see more of my lifestyle and travel photography portfolio.

As a professional photographer I depend on the flawless performance of my equipment.  From my camera bodies and lenses to my computers and software, each tool is critical to delivering quality photographs to my clients. This absolutely holds true for my memory cards as well, which is why I've used only SanDisk CF and SD cards in all of my cameras since I bought my first DSLR way back in 2004. Interestingly, I actually still have in my camera bag the SanDisk 1GB Extreme III CF card that I bought for a whopping USD$250 when I purchased my Nikon D70 nearly eight years ago.

Using only SanDisk cards has benefited me in a number of ways over the years.  For example, I've never lost even a single photograph due to a damaged or corrupted memory card.  And on a couple of (tense) occasions, I've even been able to successfully restore photographs that I mistakenly deleted from my camera.  Recently, however, my loyalty to SanDisk paid off the most when I was asked to join the SanDisk Extreme Team, "a group of professional photographers whose vision is as uncompromising as their equipment".

I feel extremely honoured to be part of this small club and I look forward to working closely with SanDisk and my fellow Extreme Team photographers to create the most exciting and compelling photography I can in the years ahead.

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.