Happy new year!

I am planning to blog more often this year, but for now the list of cities visited in 2009:

Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Penang + Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Barcelona, Spain

Prague, Czech Republic

Istanbul, Turkey

Fashion week has already moved on from London to Paris, but I recently just got back some shots backstage for the Ashley Isham show. I shot most of it on a Canon 5D, a brilliant camera in itself but I was not quite comfortable with it. Backstage is crazy frantic and people have told me it isn’t a place to use a film camera, much less a medium format one, but I’m glad I took these few shots. Very happy with them, as imperfect as they are.

If I ever get another chance at photographing models without a deadline of any sorts, I am definitely going to shoot with the Hasselblad again. Need to get an eyepiece though, the models were all looming over me on these waist level shots.

When I read a newspaper, listen to the radio or overhear what people are saying in the cafe, I often feel an aversion, even disgust at the same words written and spoken over and over - at the same expressions, phrases, and metaphors repeats. And the worst is, when I listen to myself I have to admit that I too endlessly repeat the same things. They’re so horribly frayed and threadbare, these words, worn out by constant overuse. Do they still have any meaning? Naturally, words have a function; people act on them, they laugh and cry, they go left and right, the waiter brings the coffee or tea. But that’s not what I want to ask. The question is: are they still an expression of thoughts? Or only effective sounds that drive people in one direction or the other?

- “Night Train to Lisbon”

(I am only at page 44 with hundreds of pages to go, and have the urge to underline passages (memorize phrases) if only it wasn’t a borrowed book.)

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

— Hermann Hesse

This conversation has taken me this long to write because I didn’t think I’d be able to fully articulate its importance to me. But I have waited long enough:

It was during that time when I was going through a storm. Confused and lost. I had many whys that will never be answered, and a soul that was restless.

He listened to it all. (even those days when we seem to be having the same conversations over and over) And I remember asking in despair, the very same name of this blog, how do I build a life? More sobs as I realized I didn’t have a clue how to recover from this. I just wanted things to be the way they were before.

And he laughed at my tears. (listen carefully) Said he wouldn’t dare imagine knowing what makes a life, let alone be able to see which pieces to pick up. That in your fallancy of “knowing”, if you keep picking up the same pieces, you are moulding the outcomes to eventually always turn out the same. I rattled out things I thought were the building blocks - family, friends, job - to which he pointed out these change throughout ones’ life.

He asked, “Does this life need to be the same as it was before?”

That question has been staying with me for weeks, answered as I go along. And now I know, probably not.

(yogyakarta, 2009)

Even from a first glance, anyone would be able to tell this is bad photography:

1. The hand partly covered the lens hence the dark blur on the right corner.
2. It is lopsided.
3. There is someone else in the frame on the left hand side.

Yet, it is possibly my favorite photo from the trip. The mistakes are brilliant, and reminds me of a time when no one knew how to take photos, when there were no rules, and you took a photo for the mere sake of a memory of a holiday.

This is one of the nicest apartments I have had the good chance of visiting. The photos hardly does this place justice; I was much too awestruck the first hour I was there to think about taking photos.

The places that get to me, are the ones that actually show the personality of the people living in them.  And the posters and paintings and books and bits and bobs in this apartment look collected through time, not on a weekend shopping spree to furnish the house.  (They all look like they had their own stories to tell)

It was during one of those initial sleepless nights from jetlag, that got me thinking about how the elephant seems to be revered everywhere in Thailand: as statues, altars and as a tourist attraction.

I decided it would be fun to photograph the royal animal in various encounters during the holiday. And as they tell you, what you focus your mind on, you end up noticing more of. Those photos eventually evolved into the current animal set, which features both real and fictional animals around Bangkok.

It was a first time for me to consciously shoot following a theme, and the idea and execution is a little rough, but I am happy how things turned out. (And it sure beats a typical holiday photo album). Follow the rest of the photos of this set here

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where-” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“As long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.

— Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland