Of parties, workshops and tennis

I could say that this weekend was an exhausting weekend, namely from spending most of Friday night awake at the KL Hilton suite (which I will talk about later) to having spent most of Saturday trying to stay awake at PJ Hilton (I just realised that I was in both Hiltons this weekend) and finally a rush through to Ascott KL on Sunday.

Wow, three different hotels. One must be wondering that I am a jet-set executive living the life but unfortunately that isn’t entirely true. So let me begin to unfold to you a rather exhausting but interesting weekend.

Friday night began with me rushing downtown towards KL Sentral to join a group of us celebrating my career counsellor’s stag night. What turned out to be a bunch of guys hanging out in a small room turned out to a bunch of guys hanging out in a grand suite. Apparently all of the suites they had were overbooked and the gave us a double upgrade. So when I said that the room was huge and luxurious, it was a double story room which was easily 2000+ sq feet.

The living room was grand with double story tall windows and remote controlled curtains. There were two large 46″ LCD tvs, one in the living room and one facing the bed. The bedroom took up the entire top floor which means it was the size of the living room, dining room and mini office combined. I really wonder if anyone could really afford to live in that suite.

Anyhow the party started out with most of the guys crunching down on chips and cheezels while the booze began to flow. Most interestingly, the groom to be showed us a new sort of drink which was a mixture of Sambuca and coffee beans. Firstly, pour the Sambuca into a shot glass. Make sure it is at the brim. Next drop in a couple of coffee beans into the drink. Finally, light up the drink and let the fire roast the cofffee bean. Caution, do make sure that before you gulp it down, the shot glass isn’t too hot as well. You will get an amazing taste with the mixture.

By the end of the party, some of us got in to our manager’s new sports car in which he gave us a whiz through the nearby highways and all I can say is that, “man, I got to get me one of those”. It was a Mazda RX8 automatic version producing about 190bhp. Considering that some of you may not think of it as much, there were 4 people in the car and yet he could accelerate with such speed that I could never dream my Vios can do. Anyhow, by the time I got home, I was pretty worn out.

I signed up for Eng Tong’s Masterclass Portraiture workshop about 2 months back and after 2 months, it finally arrived. Held at the PJ Hilton, the workshop boasted Urs Recher who gave us a detailed inside with lighting and how to use it in photography. A little information about Urs.

Urs Recher started his career in an advertising studio in Basel, Switzerland, before setting up his own studio in 1995. In 1998 Urs Recher joined Broncolor as head of the company’s internal studio and technical adviser. Mr. Recher is responsible for all of Bron’s internal advertising photography, product testing and development, as well as the company’s worldwide workshop and seminar program.

Urs was featured in the September/October 2006 edition of Digital Photo Pro magazine in an article entitled Perfect Light.

The workshop was different from most of the workshop I attended, it was technical in the sense of light setup and how to properly setup studio lighting to get the effect you want. It was a tedious process and most of the time, none of the participants got to shoot while me being extremely worn out from the night before, all I could do was chug down on coffee and tried my best to pay attention.

During the workshop I met with several pro photographers such as Teng from lunch and Andy during the workshop. Ok, to be honest, I can’t remember Teng’s actual name so I decided to call him Teng. Teng was a fashion photographer as well as a architecture photographer, he showed me some of his sample photos and were they excellent!

Andy was an extremely friendly guy who I actually met on my trip to Kuching, Sarawak. Well I didn’t really meet him but I recognize him as I saw him on my Air Asia flight and noticed that he was a wedding photographer. After chatting with him, his portfolio included more than just weddings but much more. Definitely an interesting dude and friendly!

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