Featuring my latest fashion photography for Thailand's Dusit Hotel & Resorts' Ei8ht magazine, reportage I made of the World Wildlife Fund's Elephant Flying Squad in the Sumatran rainforest and a regional advertising campaign I shot for GlaxoSmithKline, Issue #5 of my SCOTT eNewsletter was launched a couple of weeks ago.

This issue was a particularly enjoyable one to compile and distribute, as it provided me an opportunity to share a very broad selection of my work by showcasing my different creative photography styles.

"Back issues" of my eNewsletter remain online and can be viewed here: Issue #1, Issue #2, Issue #3, Issue #4.

And if you (or someone you know) would like to be added to my database and have future issues of my quarterly(ish) SCOTT eNewsletter sent directly to your inbox, then please take a moment to subscribe to my mailing list.

My iPhone is never far from my reach.  I love taking photographs with it, and inspired by the countless amazing photography apps and the addictive photography social network, Instagram, I am becoming even more obsessed with iPhoneography.

Lately, what I've really enjoyed is taking a few moments to capture the same scene with my iPhone that I am shooting with my 'real' 35mm or medium format cameras while photographing editorial assignments and ad campaigns.

This collection of iPhone pictures were shot using the Hipstamatic photography app and Instagram filters during breaks in shooting my recent Ei8ht magazine fashion feature at dusitD2 Barraquda in Pattaya, Thailand.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!'”

Designed by the very talented Licheng, Issue #4 of my SCOTT eNewsletter rolled off the proverbial press this week and landed in email inboxes around the world.

This edition of my eNewsletter features links to a handful my most recent photographic work, including backstage images from Voyage de la Vie theatrical circus, a Q&A and slideshow from Invisible Photographer Asia, a fashion feature for Park Hotel Group and a portrait series of chefs, servers and personalities captured at many of Singapore's most popular bars and restaurants.

"Back issues" of my eNewsletter are still online and can be viewed here: Issue #1, Issue #2, Issue #3.

And if you would like to be added to our database and receive my eNewsletter directly in your inbox in the future, then please subscribe to my mailing list.

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.

Last week I posted the cover and fashion feature that I photographed for the Summer 2011 edition of Sparkle, Park Hotel Group's fashion, lifestyle and travel magazine.

This past week end, as I was backing-up the retouched files and then clearing the shoot off my laptop, I quickly skimmed through the shortlisted photographs that didn't make the final cut for publication in the magazine.

I was particularly struck by the final series we shot that day, in the Club Lounge at Park Hotel's Clarke Quay property.  As I clicked through these captures, I kept seeing photographs I liked that weren't featured in the magazine, as we only had space for a single frame from each location/outfit.  In the end, more than a dozen photographs of the lovely Paula in the green dress by Etro caught my eye; here are seven of my favourite outtakes.

These photographs have not been retouched, but they have been processed using a free application called Poladroid which gives the images the vintage 1970's, instamatic feel.

See more of my fashion and 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.

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.