Ming Thein | Photographer

Photoessay: Tropical

January 10, 2019 by Ming Thein

Think of today’s post as a mid-winter pick-me-up for those of you living in the northern hemisphere, a celebration of summer for those in the southern, and a reminder of why we live in the tropics for those of us on the equator. I know I’m remembering the time I shot these fondly, and wishing very much I could go back there sooner rather than later… MT

Images shot with a Nikon Z7 and 24-70, and post processed with Photoshop Workflow III. There are also a couple of camera JPEGs thrown in there to keep you guessing…

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: beach, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photoessay, photography, thein, tropical

Robin’s event photography tips

January 7, 2019 by Robin Wong

A large portion of my work as a commercial photographer is event coverage. I have covered events ranging from a private birthday party to a large corporate event with almost a thousand attendees. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to event photography but I have learned so much from my experience and I would like to share some of these tips today. A lot of these discussions revolve more around your attitude and approach as a photographer than the actual technical execution. I shall focus on how to minimize mistakes and be as prepared as you possibly can for any unexpected developments.

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Filed Under: On Photography, Robin Wong Tagged With: event photography, events, how to, photography, robin, Robin Wong, tips, wong

Photoessay: Forest in the city

January 4, 2019 by Ming Thein

Recently reopened, Taman Tugu is a surprisingly large park in the centre of Kuala Lumpur. It’s unique for being a rehabilitated secondary rainforest: for decades it had been used as a fly tipping site; literally hundreds of tons of rubbish and debris were removed from the hilly area by hand, and native species brought in to accelerate the repopulation of the forest and close up the canopy. Despite being effectively a manmade park, it has the feel of being completely natural other than a couple of prepared trails and benches; this is completely different from any of the other parks or reserves in Kuala Lumpur, and made to feel even more surreal due to the location – you’re barely two or three kilometres from the city centre, but once inside the park you hear nothing but birds and insects. It’s an amazingly tranquil feeling and I think something quite unusual for an urban area. The only other analog ambience-wise that comes to mind is the Nezumuseum garden in Tokyo; but that’s obviously a completely manmade garden, though the style is less formal than your traditional Japanese construction. Both however have the same sort of underlying feeling of structured chaos – an organic natural-ness overlaid on top of something more organised. To have something this close to home is very special indeed, and I highly recommend a visit if you’re in Kuala Lumpur (but bring mosquito repellent). In this series I’ve tried to capture vignettes of that feeling, though this turned out to be more difficult than imagined…

This set was shot with a Nikon Z7, 24-70 S and processed with Photoshop Workflow III and the Monochrome Masterclass.

New year’s resolutions, 2019 edition

January 1, 2019 by Ming Thein

Perhaps a more accurate title for today’s post isn’t so much ‘resolutions’ as ‘expectations’. I like to think that after a while in the same industry*, one acquires the maturity to know what you want to do, what you can do, and what you realistically might be able to expect. Here’s my plan for 2019, both photographic and otherwise. Some stuff I’ll have already said to various individuals or gotten lost in various comments, but as yet things have not been unified. So, to hopefully stem the tide of ‘are you going to x’ emails, here goes…

*Shooting since 2001, for clients part time since 2005, and full time since 2012 – that’s a good 18, 14 or 7 years, depending on how you want to measure it. Even 7 years in the digital era is an age given how fast things change.

Photoessay: Window seat II

December 30, 2018 by Ming Thein

One day, I promise I’ll do a post of images shot through dirty windows, but it’s just not as interesting most of the time – and it’s difficult to not make it come across more like a hipster filter. I don’t know if I’m the only person to spend most of the flight anxiously gazing out of the window in case I miss something interesting (and annoying the passengers around me who are trying to sleep by having the only open shade in the cabin) – but at least the scrolling scenery makes the flight go a bit faster. As we’ve discussed in the past, picking the right side of the aircraft is crucial – you don’t want to be shooting into the sun simply because all of the crap that’s going to reflect off the micro scratches in the windows, robbing contrast and leaving all sorts of strange artefacts. I’m also increasingly finding myself torn between a larger format for better color (not dynamic range in this case; the windows lower contrast to the point it doesn’t really matter much) or a smaller format for higher shutter speeds (f2.8 on M4/3 is sufficient to keep everything in focus at infinity, and lenses are usually very sharp cross-frame by this point too) as the light falls. I’ve had good and bad results from both options in pretty much equal measure. The one thing I haven’t been able to do consistently yet – because of the aircraft motion – is get a decent image in very low twilight or at night; there’s both simply no way to get enough shutter speed or block out light from the cabin. As with all things, more practice is required…MT

Shot over far too many flights with a wide variety of hardware, and post processed with Photoshop Workflow III – you can’t do SOOC JPEG for these because there just isn’t enough contrast thanks to all that glass and perspex.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: aerial, airplane, flight, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photoessay, photography, thein, window seat

Keeping photowalks fresh

December 27, 2018 by Robin Wong

I have led hundreds of photowalks within Kuala Lumpur and a few outside of the city and I have yet to tire of them. There have been official outings and workshops for local photography clubs or consumer events for camera manufacturers as well as private and solo outings over the years. I believe that a photowalk is essential for any photographer. If you are a professional photographer, commercial shoots may bring food to the table but personal photowalks are an opportunity fore creative experimentation and growth. For this article, I shall define photowalks as not strictly street photography per se, but a wider involvement of multiple disciplines in photography that may include city architecture, urban decay, street portraits, and any other genres with subject contents widely available at photowalk locations.

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Filed Under: Robin Wong Tagged With: avoiding boredom, creativity, mingthein.com, photowalks, robin, Robin Wong, wong

Merry Christmas!

December 25, 2018 by Ming Thein

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Merry Christmas and happy holidays to our readers celebrating from the mingthein.com team – MT, Robin and Praneeth (behind the scenes). May you have a great day and a full area under the tree… 🙂

Filed Under: Off topic

The most important things in photography

December 24, 2018 by Ming Thein

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In the better part of 17 years’ worth of shooting – there are just a few critical things I find are inescapable when taking the shot. I perhaps have the benefit of having gone full circle a couple of times around the effort and equipment wheel, and shifting priorities force me to work both faster and smarter. Please note that the descriptions following have some subtlety and may at first seem contradictory, but bear with me…

Working with overcast light

December 21, 2018 by Robin Wong

When the weather is overcast and light is not great, street photographers (myself included) usually lose motivation to continue shooting. After all, light plays a vital role in producing results. With less than ideal lighting, there is no opportunity for the widely practiced deep shadow and highlight play, silhouette shots or even dramatic high contrast shots, both in color or black and white. I do envy photographers in regions further away from the tropics (Japan, Australia, Northern European countries), where directional beautiful light is more common and present for an extended period of the day. In Malaysia where I reside, if there isn’t tropical afternoon showers, then we have to contend with haze or harsh light for most of the day. Directional and interesting light is confined to mornings and just before sunset.

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Filed Under: On Photography, Robin Wong Tagged With: article, mingthein.com, overcast, photography, robin, Robin Wong, wong

MT’s scrapbook: Duo

December 18, 2018 by Ming Thein

I happened to be staying at the hotel in this rather interesting property a couple of months back; whilst I don’t think I’d want to live here (there are apartments in one of the other towers) because it feels a bit cold and impersonal – the architects did a good job breaking up the potentially overbearingly massive geometric forms with cladding and ground landscaping, so you never feel that dominance at ground level. There’s no question some very clever structural engineering was involved to make the masses balance (and to install that curtain wall). The interior spaces are strange though – despite the size of the building, they never feel very large inside; I don’t know if this is due to the internal space division or the very non-square geometry. Still, it made for a pleasant half an hour or so’s worth of diversion wandering around and hunting for images. MT

The Scrapbook series is shot on an Olympus PEN F, with unedited JPEGs straight from camera bar resizing (and of course some choice settings). One or two were reprocessed to match the rest of the set using The Monochrome Masterclass workflow, for visual consistency and correction of verticals.