While 99% of my work are wedding & portrait photography, I enjoy magazine assignments as well. So when The Peak came knocking on my door do to a cover shot and feature on Mr. Othman Wallat, the newly appointed Group Managing Director of Sawit Kinabalu, I couldn’t say no.

Magazine shoots are a different ball game. Yes, I am still photographing people but the preparation and objectives are vastly different from wedding or bridal shoots. At a wedding, I shoot non-stop throughout the day and I am mostly reactionary. While in editorial work, we usually enter the shoot with the styling and concept in place. There is a pretty clear idea of we want to achieve before the shoot starts. If you know me, there is always an some spontaneity in my shoots (yes, that’s the way I like it!). So for this shoot, we had a cocktail of preparedness and spontaneity.

Radiopoppers and three SB800s were deployed. Man, I love working with TTL flash. “That’s all you need?” asked Diana, the editor of The Peak. Not quite…I need the D3+70-200mm & D700+17-35mm combos as well. The small and unassuming TTL flash lights are non-threatening, portable and light. I cannot imaging hauling 30kg of battery packs and studio strobes into the oil palm estate. At the end, the result speaks for itself.

For the final shot, I jumped off the 4×4 looking for a spot with young palms and undulating terrain. Once we got to our spot, storm clouds gathered. We had less than 5 minutes for the shot and we nailed it. While the rain poured, we were already back to the 4×4 chimping happily because the shots were in the bag. Imagine if I was working with 30kg of studio strobes & battery packs…we would not have enough time to setup the shot.

I enjoyed this shoot. It felt almost like a wedding shoot inside oil palm estates…well, I had to put Othman at ease and make him look good, which is something I do every week working with different people Of course the thrill of seeing my name on the byline. It was back to my days in the press again. Absolutely lovely!

Without flash, the picture is flat. Cloudy day begrudged us of any contrast in the shot.

In the finished shot, I under expose it by one stop and fired a flash off-camera (with Radiopoppers) on the right created a much need punch.

Again, I underexposed the shot by a stop and fired a flash off-camera.