Ming Thein | Photographer

On-assignment photoessay: From the workbench

February 18, 2019 by Ming Thein 9 Comments

I shot for one of my toughest clients recently: ourselves. Whilst there’s no pressure, we all have the desire to do better with every set – and there’s the friendly internal competition given that there are no fewer than five photographers amongst the founders’ group. I am of course talking about the watch business; this set was photographed at the facilities of our production partners Schwarz-Etienne in La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland, whilst a series of 19.01s and 19.02s underwent assembly, regulation and final quality control. I’ve shot this kind of thing before for many other brands, of course – but it feels very different when it’s your own name on the dial and movement… MT

Images were shot with an Olympus PEN F and Panasonic-Leica 12-60. Post processing with the Monochrome Masterclass workflow. Image of yours truly at the bench shot by my co-founder Dr. Magnus Bosse.

Shoot everything / diminishing returns

February 15, 2019 by Ming Thein 54 Comments

Is it possible to practice too much? To the point that it’s almost impossible to capture something exceptional because you’ve already seen 99.9% of the possible expressions of a given subject, and then captured and curated the best from there? Is there really a point at which additional repetition does not build muscle memory, speed of response, familiarity or spur creativity? Of late, I’m increasingly thinking the answer is actually yes: you can overshoot. But as usual, there are caveats, so hear me out before you break out the stakes, pitchforks and gasoline.

Photoessay: Cityscape Tokyo

February 12, 2019 by Ming Thein 36 Comments

The more you visit a city, the more your impressions change; that initial freshness and impact wears off into a sort of routine of the favourite places you like to visit while you’re there. Layered on top of this are the changes to the place itself, since no city is static – least of all somewhere like Tokyo. The latest instalment in the Cityscape series of retrospective curations has taken the longest to put together simply because I’ve got so many images from this place, from (at least) annual visits spanning the last 12 years. I realise that most of the early impressions no longer resonate with me as much as images shot in say the last four or five years, at most. This is the Tokyo I have in my mind now – one of density, activity, anonymity, details – but it won’t be the Tokyo I remember next year as I’m actually here at the moment with my family, and for the first time, our four year old – new memories are being made, new impressions formed, and it’s still too new to know what will stick. MT

Shot over a long, long period of time with a wide variety of equipment. Mostly processed with PS Workflow III.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: cityscape, japan, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photoessay, photography, thein, tokyo

Street-style wedding portraiture

February 9, 2019 by Robin Wong 18 Comments

When Sarah, an old friend, shared news of her engagement and related visit to Kuala Lumpur, I could not help but ask if she was interested in a pre-wedding shoot here. I told her this would not be a typical engagement shoot at the park or by the beach. I wanted to do something unusual and different for Sarah by bringing her and Gregor, her fiancé, to my usual street shooting grounds and do their portraits there. Outdoor street-style pre-wedding is not new to me, I have done a few rounds with other clients but this was the first one I did around the Petaling Street area.

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Filed Under: On Photography, Robin Wong Tagged With: mingthein.com, portrait, robin, Robin Wong, street, wedding, wong

Robin’s fisheye adventures

February 6, 2019 by Robin Wong 14 Comments

Firstly – a happy Lunar New Year to all our readers!

Fisheye lenses fall in the love-it-or-hate-it category – there is no middle ground. The excessive distortion is not widely accepted and frankly does not work for many scenarios. I was curious about how I would approach street shooting with such a lens as it would, no doubt, change my execution in street shooting by forcing me to look for different subjects and compose my scenes differently. I found that I needed to be more careful in my framing as the lens can fit in more than intended. Also, to find subjects and scenes that work well with fisheye is a huge challenge in itself. I used the Olympus M.Zuiko 8mm F1.8 Fisheye PRO lens for all images in this article.

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Filed Under: On Photography, Robin Wong Tagged With: com, fisheye, mingthein, photography, robin, Robin Wong, wong

Off-camera lighting 101: the ‘five things’

February 3, 2019 by Ming Thein 12 Comments

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I frequently get asked about lighting: specifically, how does one best approach the daunting challenge of knowing where to put what lights, how to set them up, use modifiers etc. I’ve written about some of this in the past but realise that I never tackled conceptually where to start. Fear not: in true Ming style, it’s now a list of Five Things 😉 Though the whole process of conceptualisation and setup becomes increasingly intuitive over time and practice, I still find that this list helps quite a lot when you’re either a) working with very complex setups where multiple lights can start creating interference with each other, or b) trying to simplify. Remember, a shadow does several things: it provides spatial context for three dimensional placement of subjects in a two dimensional presentation; it creates texture; and it provides separation and definition from the background. The more complex the lighting setup, the less well defined the shadows are going to be. Ultimately, the purpose of any controlled lighting setup is to place the shadows where you want them to go, and control the relative brightness of the subject elements, allowing you to precisely manipulate the structure of your image so that it is ‘read’ by your audience in a certain way.

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography, Teaching Tagged With: article, essay, flash, how to, lighting, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photography, thein

Robin in Bangkok, part II

January 31, 2019 by Robin Wong 10 Comments

Continued from Part 1

Since it was my first time in Bangkok, I decided to spend a full day at the Ayutthaya historical park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. I knew that the temples and general landscape have been photographed countless times before, so I challenged myself to shoot these tourist attractions in my own style and avoid making a a clone of the many images already out there.

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Filed Under: On Photography, Robin Wong Tagged With: bangkok, mingthein.com, robin, Robin Wong, street, wong

Robin in Bangkok, part I

January 28, 2019 by Robin Wong 12 Comments

I planned on visiting Bangkok some time at the end of last year, but with the South Africa trip in December, I decided to make Bangkok item #1 on my agenda for 2019. This was my first ever visit to Bangkok and was fully intended to be a personal holiday, but somehow turned into partial work when Olympus Thailand invited me to conduct a street photography talk. With half a day blocked for the talk and me visiting the usual tourist traps and temples of Bangkok, I was left with little time for street photography. I did manage two full morning sessions of shutter therapy around the Bangkok Hua Lamphong Railway station and surrounding areas leading to Chinatown, and I shall be sharing my images here.

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Filed Under: Robin Wong Tagged With: bangkok, mingthein.com, robin, Robin Wong, street, wong

On-assignment photoessay: Preparations

January 25, 2019 by Ming Thein 20 Comments

When on assignment, there are images you shoot to the brief, and the bonus ones you shoot for yourself: sometimes they aren’t really corporate safe or commercial-clean, but they have a something – texture, light, grit – that appeals to something personal. I always try to respond to these scenes in an instinctive way: just shoot, sort them out later, and package separately for your client in the hopes they might use them, or at least see and appreciate even if they don’t (because they don’t fit the look and palette you’ve already established). Still – I think all photographers need to feel moved in this kind of way; if you don’t, then the desire to experiment and create might not be as strong as it should be… MT

Images shot with a Nikon Z7/24-70 and D850/70-200/4, and post processed with The Monochrome Masterclass workflow.

Mountains and clouds

January 22, 2019 by Robin Wong 14 Comments

Recently I had a job that took me all the way up to Genting Highlands, which sit about 6000 feet above sea level. I was there over the weekend and most of my time was spent shooting for the job, leaving me no opportunity to roam around. Luckily, my hotel room overlooked the surrounding mountains. It was quite an experience staying in a place so high up that and close to the cloud cover. My view was constantly covered by thick mist but when there was a brief clearing, I quickly shot some images. Due to the mist and other atmospherics, I found that the colours were flat and dull resulting in me converting my images to monochrome and ensuring a more dramatic output.

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Filed Under: On Photography, Robin Wong Tagged With: genting, landscape, mountains and clouds, robin, Robin Wong, wong