Instant Photography, Live Event Photography by LiveStudios

Martell recognises personalities who have risen to be the best in their industries. I am one of the lucky 10 who have been presented this award by Martell for 2008. More information profiles and videos can be seen from http://martell.com.sg. Click to ‘Rise Above’ and ‘More Information’.

Martell held the event at Old School and totally transformed the hall into a posh area befitting of the Martell label.

2 of our photographers were assigned to cover the event with David my business partner trying his hands on the camera as well – some decent results, considering he was fairly new behind the camera. Here’s a photo he took of me and Filmmaker & Photographer Nicholas Chee.

The awardees posed for a group photo with the head honcho of Martell. There are 10 awardees but Tim Nga, the actor couldn’t make it due to an overseas assignment.

Guests posed by a photowall as they were ushered in to the event area.

After the trailer video introducing each of us played on the screen, a spotlight behind the screen turned on casting a silhouette of the awardees as the screen is raised.

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Chopard invited their to valued clients to a treat at the Cannes Film Festival and I had the task of helping to document this memorable trip. Our 3-days trip ended up with about 1500 photos of which the bulk of them were of the guests but I won’t post them on the blog to respect their privacy.

Renowned makeup artist Clarence Lee & hair stylist David Gan were among the entourage to make the guests look their best.

Mattias, high-end jewelry designer team head, was our hospitable host and made sure we were well taken care of.

We were treated with sumptuous spreads of food every meal.

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LG launched what I think is a really clever marketing campaign. They hired movie director David Nutter to produce a TV series and challenged the whole world to discover the secret of the elusive Scarlet. Take a look at http://www.scarletseries.tv/

The event was held at the Singapore Flyer and the setup looks very glamorous and posh.

Many familiar faces turned up keen to find out who Scarlet really is.

LG’s business partners had a great time catching up with each other and mingling with the personalities.

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Daniel & Jaime were hosting the Style Weddings Glamour Bash at the Raffles Ballroom for the whole day before they had their own wedding in the evening.

The wedding gown is by Ted Wu (http://www.ted-wu.com) and it converts into 3 different looks as the night goes on.

They decided to be emcees for their own wedding too.. as they said, the best emcees in town were all guests at the dinner and they wanted to let them enjoy the evening.

Many familiar faces turned up including deejays, singers, actors/actresses and fashion choreographer, Daniel Boey, who was also doing the runway choreography for the Style Weddings bridal fashion show just hours ago.

Photos were projected onto the screen live and we incorporated our new LiveSMS mechanism for the first time. Guests could send in their well-wishes via SMS and the messages will appear on a scrolling bar at the bottom of the screen.

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, we realise too that the text was too small to see at the back of the ballroom.

Guests were pleased with a lot of their candid as well as posed shots in photocards which were handed to them personally by our staff.

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I flew from Los Angeles to Las Vegas was joined by my LiveStudios team to cover the massive convention for AIA Hong Kong. This was held at the famous Venetian Las Vegas.

The Palazzo is the Venetian’s brand new sister property and together with 700+ rooms, they are the largest hotel in room capacity. It’s situated right on the main strip (it’s the 2 buildings in the background, left yellow-lighted one is the Palazzo and the one on the right of it is the Venetian)

The rooms are all suites and are fabulous

Our day trip was to the Grand Canyon and on they way, we passed by Hoover Dam, where a lot of movies have been filmed, including X-Men & Transformers.

Some took the helicopter rides for a breathtaking aerial view of the canyon.

While the bus ride there took about 3 hrs, the ride there was well worth it. The view is spectacular and most took out their cameras happily clicking away while others took some quiet time for some inspirations.

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We had the pleasure of being the photographer for the incentive trips for the top performers for AIA Hong Kong. About 200 star performers stayed at the Hyatt Century Plaza hotel in LA and had to tour around some of the highlights of the city.

We took a visit to the Hollywood Walk of the Stars where everyone took photos with the stars on the floors and the costume characters on the street.

We then visited Universal Studios where the main highlight was the tour where we were shown how some of the hollywood special effects were done.

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STB hosted the annual awards ceremony at the Esplanade concert hall.

Guests started arriving and the stars mingled in with the crowds. Here’s K.F Seetoh of the Makansutra fame.

A crowd of enthusiastic people awaiting the ceremony gathered at the foyer area before the doors opened for seating.

The presentation revolved around a theme of visiting the galactic system and the performances were accompanied with wonderful costumes and stage lighting.

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Hosted by Cortina Watch, the launch was held at the JetQuay Terminal at Changi for the CIP (Commercially Important People). Those who want more information can go to the Porsche Design official website. It was a great setup as usual arranged by Mercury MC and Magdalene See from Fly Entertainment was the bubbly emcee for the evening.

Myself and David took a chance to take a shot with the Porsche Cayman S before the crowd came in.

Guests mingled and chatted in the lounge area first.

When they revealed new range, some of the lucky guests had a chance to examine the $200k+ watch up close.

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It’s great to join the WORLDHOTELS family again for their annual conference. Last year we were with them in Hamburg and this year, it’s the charming city of Madrid. A few hundred hoteliers from the member hotels of WORLDHOTELS attended and it was like a huge reunion seeing many familiar faces and catching up with old friends.

Michael Ball started the conference off followed by a host of speakers

Some of them signed our digital guestbook

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We were interviewed on an article about Wifi, Technology & Facebook by the National Chinese Newspapers. It appeared on the Front page and page 5 of ZB Now.

Here’s a condensed scan to put them together. Click on it to see the full article.

The article describes how Live Photography was conceived in 2003 when had to lug around a notebook in a haversack to physically wire my camera to transfer the image. (I was in a suit and the notebook heating up in the haversack makes it hot & tiring). It also talks about out digital guestbook which featured the photo in Opening of B-One at The Singapore Marriott.

Here’s a translated portion:

WiFi, modern technology used to broaden base in Facebook
An article by Wu Qing Kang

Wireless network present unlimited business opportunities

Besides the popular Facebook, WiFi is gaining ground rapidly in the past two years, bringing along enormous commercial opportunities. Creator and Photographer Willy Foo taps on his IT background and hence started LiveStudios.

Also a Facebook-er, Willy is the perpetual photographer for many local social events. His unique selling point is using WiFi to showcase the newly taken photos onto the big screen live on stage. WiFi also allows immediate print-outs of these images into customized wallet-sized photocards for guests as memory keepsakes.

A Computer Science graduate from National University of Singapore, Willy has been exploring the opportunities of wireless network. His technical expertise may have made him the very first high-tech photographer in local social scenes.

Recalling the start-up process, he commented, “I began research on wireless connection in 2003. Besides my camera, I had to lug around a notebook in a haversack to physically wire my camera to transfer the image. It’s really cumbersome. However with the advancement of wireless technology, I can now use WiFi to do it all efficiently, with negligible delay.”

Besides customizing the photocards with company logos, Willy also combines Facebook and Web 2.0 to create a “Live Album” as a online digital album. Event guests also get to sign off and doodle on their selection of album photos (”Digital Guestboook”, as shown in photo in article), and even download these images to their phones and other devices. These value-added services give Willy an advantaged edge over competitors and are separately charged.

 An online version of the article can be found at http://it.zaobao.com/pages9/commerce071228.shtml

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