I am sorry to tell you that there will be an increase of my rate for engagement (pre-wedding photo) session on 1st May, 2011 The new rate card will be released on May 1st , 2011.  If you plan to hire me as your pre-wedding photographer, the old rate will be honored if you confirm the booking (with deposit arranged) before 1st May, 2011.

All bookings will be charged at the new rate afterward.

Last two months ‘re really busy (both business and personal). I have stopped shooting for two months since the birth of my 2nd daughter in February, yet the two little girls and all the photo post processing works kept me busy. Since entering April, the schedule was getting more and more crazy, packed with 3 to 4 weddings and pre-wedding sessions every week. The break in Feb / Mar just pushed everything into April … …

A few updates … …

My name is Shuyan (書恩)

Sorry to let you know late that my 2nd daughter was named Shuyan. A very lovely baby, but she doesn’t like to be alone, whenever she ’s awake and finds nobody next to her, she will start to cry. Once I sit next to her and start talking to her, she will stop crying and begins to smile. So lovely !!!!

photos of Shuyan and her Kung Fu sister.

shulin and her friends

How about shulin? she is no longer a little baby any more. She is a BIG girl now. Can’t imagine she can grow up so fast. Started to speak a lot in last two months, learned to count from 1 to 10, don’t like us to feed her any more, instead, she like to hold the spoon and eat by herself (of course, half portion of the meal is on the ground finally … …)

shulin and her friends .. … ah pooh, amanda and rabbit

something big happened last week … … we bought a new bed for shulin  — a bed without fence. now she can climb up and get off the bed all by herself

Simon.the.Studio

Another big thing happened this month. I opened my own studio!!!! Everything happened very fast — it took less than one week from the day having an idea of my own studio, finding a property agent, looking for space to confirming the apartment.

I always thought it was a miracle that, without a studio, I could be able to shoot hundreds of wedding in last five years. Bring a 17″ laptop and meeting clients in coffee shop and cafe was not a easy task and not a very pleasant experience for all my clients as those places are getting more and more crowded and noisy. Really have to say big thank you to all the clients that trusted me and booked me in last few years.

I do think all my clients should  have a better place for meeting me and seeing my works, the new studio is in SoHo, Central — a very pleasant location, especially at night, and very convenient for my clients (it is only 15 min walk from one IFC, along the mid level escalator) . With a fixed location, now I can show you more albums, more photos, and with a much bigger screen (there is a 110″ projector screen installed in the studio !!!!)

finally, let me update more wedding and prewedding photos in next few days !!!

the location of the studio at night

studio on google map

All bookings will be charged at the new rate afterward.

(updated: 20 May) new rate card uploaded to the "about me / rate card" page

Don’t miss to go through the wpja.com and agwpja.com to see all the winning photos, there are so many good photos, and definitely get inspired.

click here to see the complete photographer ranking. And congrats to Dino from Philippines, he is the only Asian wedding photographer that get into the top 5 !!!!

photo from wedding of irene and alexis. ranked 12th in the “ceremony” category

photo from wedding of iris and sunny. ranked 18th in the “Full Frame Black & White” category

photo from the wedding of julie and rob. ranked 19th in the “get ready” category

the weather was not very good recently – very wet and foggy most of the time, that made all the clients of the pre-wedding session very nervous before the photo shooting day. However, it turned out that we had beautiful weather in last 3 sessions – we got beautiful sunset at Sam Mun Tsai (三門仔) for ada and joe, wonderful sunlight at Shek O (and a very very clear sky at the peak) for calise and michael, and today, another beautiful sunset at the Stanley Military Cemetery for gigi and victor.

We ‘re lucky, aren’t we ???

the beautiful view at the stanley military cemetery today !!!!

Stay tuned … … will try to update the photos of all these sessions very soon. Had to sleep now for the early wedding tmr

Hi everyone,

thanks for all your support. Without your help, I can never capture so many beautiful pictures in last 12 months.

Let’s rock the year 2009 again!!!!!!

love,

Simon

you can click the pic below to see who is who. and Canly, thanks for your help arranging this dinner

Hi everyone, do yo like to work with Simon in weddings? I am now hiring a contracted assistant working from Sept – Dec, 2008

if you have the following characters and abilities, you ‘re the one I am looking for

    * Cheerful & out going
    * Prepare to carry heavy equipments for me
    * Can work under pressure — I always shout at my assistant
    * very flexible on the working day (please expect to work on all Sat / Sun)

The assistant ‘ll helps me in the following areas

    * taking care of Simon in a wedding
    * taking care of all equipments
    * setting up lighting equipments
    * helping simon communicate with the clients
    * shooting in some occasions

The assistant are expected to work around 15-20 days each month, If you are interested, please send me an email you information, working experience, recent photo, and expected salary to wedding (at) simonthephoto.com

有無興趣跟 simon 在婚禮中一起工作？ 我現正招請為期四個月(9月至12月)的攝影助手

如你覺得自已

• 性格開朗
• 能夠應付笨重的攝影器材
• 不怕婚禮攝影工作的壓力
• 有星期六，日也要工作的心理準備

我相信你絕對可以應付道份工作。

至於攝影助手的工作範圍包括：

• 照顧simon及simon的攝影器材
• 預備燈光器材
• 跟客人溝通
• 間中亦要拿起相機影相

每個月大約須要工作15-20天。

立即行動！！把你的個人簡歷，近照，要求工資電郵至 wedding (at) simonthephoto.com

simon.the.photo

(this is a sticky post – stayed at the top of the blog for a while) We just finished the busy season from Jan – Mar and I am going to take a long, long vacation from April – June (more on this vacation later). This vacation is planned for a long time and I stopped taking any wedding job between april and june since 9 months ago. There will be only a few shootings which were confirmed long time ago. And I will try to clear all the backlogs in next few weeks.

Outlook of 2008 is very very strong, with over 90 shootings booked !!!! And most of the Chinese "good days" are engaged. If you are looking for wedding photography in Oct, Nov and Dec 2008 , please be informed that all weekends (except Oct 4,  Oct 12.  Nov 23, Dec 13 & 14) are already booked.

(updated: 29 April) I am sorry that I ‘ll stop meeting new client during my vacation in May (except those that had confirmed before), you can still contact and book me via email and telephone.

(updated: 15 May) thanks for all your support, booking for Nov 2008 is completely full, and I am sorry that I can’t take any new order for wedding and engagement shooing in Nov 2008.

(updated: 4 June) booking for Oct and Dec is 95% full now, if you have booked me an engagement session and plan to have the shooting later this year, I highly suggest you to confirm the shooting date as soon as possible.

(updated: 10 June) client meeting resumes after mid June, here is my meeting schedule

your friendly wedding photographer — simon.the.photo

(Left to Right) Vicky, Simon, Xandra, Esther, Siu B, Ken, Rainbow  & Chi MIn (under the table)

If you have not finalized on the design, layout & photos of your album, I highly recommend you to make it finalized before end of October. By meeting this deadline, we can have the albums ready before Christmas (and you can show it in your Christmas party).

yours,

simon.the.photo

Another excitement for me is the no. of visitors of this blog exceeded the 100,000 th mark this month. I never expect I can get 100,000 visitors for a blog with just wedding photos alone. When I set up this blog, I already thought, as a photographer, I should let the photos to speak for myself. With this in mind, I don’t write too much of my daily life as I think most of the people aren’t  interested in what movie I enjoy or which restaurant I like to go …. ….

I am also excited that I just completed the 1st video of myself – simon.the.video . One year ago, I had the idea of creating a video to show the way & style  I work in a wedding, but it never happened  — I was just too busy with all the weddings early this year. However, I got a surprising invitation from the wedding magazine "All about wedding" two months ago!!! They ‘d like to feature several Hong Kong wedding photographers in a DVD distributed with their magazine and I was asked to contribute a video to them. I thought I should use this opportunity to make my dream come true. I discussed the idea with Ken and contacted several clients if I could tape a "making of" video of their wedding. It took around one month from the moment I had the idea to the finish of the editing. The magazine will be published by the end of September, and I ‘d like to show this video to my blog readers first.

I ‘d like to thank the people who make this happens —

Florence & John, Rita & Michael, thanks for your generosity to allow me to tape the video of your wedding

Ken – sorry for the very short notice of this video, your editing is awesome !!! However, please don’t take so many close up shots of me next time.

Xandra – without your help, I can’t get such beautiful background songs for this video

Esther – thanks for your dedication as my assistant and help me to capture so many beautiful pics in weddings

Since I returned from Bali, I was very busy doing all the retouch work. I supposed to finish retouch of 4 weddings before I went to Bali, but I couldn’t make it, so I need to make sure I can complete them in last two weeks. That’s why I didn’t update the blog at all in last two weeks.

I need to write this blog today as my current price list has already been expired on May 31, and I am revising it. Hopefully, a new price list will be released next week. There will be a 20% increase of my rate in the new price list. If any of you had received my quotation in last two weeks, and you planned to hire me as your wedding photographer, I can still honor the old price until next Wednesday (4 July). After that, all booking will be charged at the new rate.

The photo was taken at the Wedding of Karen & Allen. This is my second time winning in WPJA contest, and I am very excited as the competition is very keen with excellent wedding photos submitted from all over the world.

You can view the comment of the judges and other awarded photos here.  I ‘d also like to say thank you to Esther, Ken, Rainbow & Mr. Bean for helping in this wedding.

To understand more about WPJA contest, please click here

Since the Chinese New Year, I felt really bad.

First, on the first day, my car was out of order (again !!)

On the second day, one of my Synology CS-406 Network storage didn’t work, it holds around 1.2 TB (yes, over 1000 GB) of photos. Don’t worry, all photos didn’t lose and I have regular backup. Finally, I found out the network interface broke down, & I need to send it back to the distributor for repair.

Then, on the third day, the real bad thing happened. My server (web & mail server) crashed. It took me almost 1 week to recover it.

I supposed to finish 3 sets of photo retouch during the holiday and it turned out that I could only finish 1 set. I felt very bad about that.

For all my clients, I am very sorry that there may be delay of the delivery of the photos.

PS. if you had sent mail to me during the server crash, the mail might be lost and please resend to me. 

You can still call me (leave a message to me if I can’t pick up the call) or type a SMS to me.

(28 Dec 4:00 pm updated: the mail server is back !!)

Wedpix is an on line Magazine of Wedding Photography published by WPJA and it is all about wedding photojournalism.

The content is very useful and much much better than those "bullshits" in the local wedding magazine , don’t miss it if you like the style of wedding photojournalism and ‘d like to understand more.

The recent article "Is Wedding Photojournalism a Fad?" is very interesting. It talks about the difference between trendy wedding photos & "real" wedding photojournalism.

Click here to go to my RSS feed of Wedpix magazine

I am happy to say that ESDLife just added the interview on the web today! I still can’t believe they picked me as their featured wedding photographer, I feel undeserving as there are so many other talented photographers out there in HK, and I still have a lot to learn. Click here to read the interview on Wedding ESDLife

Click below thumbnail for archive on my server

When clients love my work and the pictures recall their memories, this is the kind of job satisfaction that I couldn’t get in my previous job. I believe I made the right decision to become a photographer in the middle of my life. It is not just money, it is about helping people to crystallize their good memories.

I am already looking forward to James ‘ barmitzvah in March 2008 !!!

Robert ’s giving his speech and Fiona started to cry that night.

There is so much love … …

Steven holding Fiona ’s hands

Fiona prepared a "dessert room" for all the guests, it ’s full of chocolate !!!

Fiona said her whole family is addicted to Chocolate. You can tell from this picture, can’t you?

Let’s dance, everyone !!

I love this picture a lot. It is full of motion .. …

James and Robert

Everyone is having fun !!!

Fiona and Steven

I visited my blog this morning and I am suprised to find that there are already 29 visitors since last night !!!

You can see the counter near the bottom of the menu.