The sun rose as it would and I was late as i always would be. Azmi, Ernie, my elder sister and my parents were with me that morning to send me off to my holiday resort. The night before was filled with time spent with friends and much reluctance to leave. After a long coffee session with, namely, Azmi, Joyce, Ernie, Sarah, Lewis, Nadiah, Odi, Firdaus and Richard, I spent the last part of the night/morning chatting with Odi in her car at my carpark. That was real fun. Too bad I forgot to take photos that night. Damn.
Tekong turned out not much different than NCC in the past where vulgarities and corporal punishment flourished. Vulgarities seems like a mother tongue here. Turning boys into men.
The sights here however makes me go with awe. 5BX at 5.45am greets me with the starry dark skies with my knees held up and my back on the hard cold ground in crunches position. The most disgusting view would be during combat physical training when you see all the hairy wet armpit hair filled with little stubs of debris from the ground. During the march to dinner, flocks of birds would be flying as one in the skies from one rooftop to another. An awesome sight where u’ll see me straining my neck to the skies instead of watching the road.
My company is made up mostly Chinese which is basically awesome! Only a handful are malays, indians and other nationalities. The cookhouse is the place where all of the rest of the companies congregate. There you’d see the companies made up of diff ‘characters’. Being in the enhanced leadership batch, the people around me are mostly fit and well educated. Thus certain behaviour by certain people in the cookhouse is quite disturbing. Its understandable why the army wants you to be fit. There is a certain company that is made up of ‘fats’. I don’t mean to be condesending but you would literally see a group of ‘fats’ walking. It really is true when they say you’d see people from all walks of life here. Thankfully they group us as best as possible based on fitness and education.
As a student, I have always wondered how creatives create stunning works. Their works flawless, masterclass! In school, no lecturer would ever be direct on how anything is achieved technically. Present at the moment are thousands of tutorials crawling all over the web just waiting to be read. Most of them adequate in their own sense. I’ve been reading them all my life.
I have always believed in sharing. It makes me re-evaluate my techniques and such. There is no sense in teaching how to use softwares only. Everything keeps updating lightning fast. There would always be a new way to do something. All roads lead to Rome.
What will always stay strong however will be concepts and ideas. Without them, you would just be dwindling on whatever programmes you are on. I am not saying that nothing will outcome of it but yes, conceptually something stronger would be conceived. Before I start on any work, I would usually have an image of it in my mind or paper(however rare it is) even if it is a frail one.
Never start with a concept so concrete that you have no space for maneuverability. It allows your idea to evolve or be pushed. This however does not mean you should allow the roots of your idea to be compromised. The flowers of your ideas should be derived from the root idea. Once you have decided with the roots of idea, stick it into the ground and don’t change it.
Now before I start with the really cool stuff, I’ll just show you two works of mine.
Project Railway
Project Earthquake
I will discuss more in detailed in further postings.
feedfarhan. as you would have noticed has recieved a facelift. Actually, its the first face it has recieved. The former was simply a coming soon page. The new site however promises to deliver a more comprehensive coverage on the works.
The print screen of the site below shows three features on the site that i’m particularly excited about.
The image pop-up allows me to display certain selected images in a larger scale to magnify details. This would be awesome for some of my larger works which can’t really be seen on a regular 400px image.
The video pop-up does wonders with capturing the essence of the shoot. It shows a minimally edited footage of behind the scenes.
The timeline links arranges all the images in chronological order which allows you and me to compare works of the past and the present as it comes along.
At the moment, not all of the series has a footage of behind the scenes. It was only when I started to create the site that i discovered how cool it was. Thus from here on now, every series coming up will have one, no matter how short it is.
Tell me if you like the site or hate it. If you feel I can improve it in anyway to serve you better, please do drop me a mail or call. I’d be more than happy to hear em’.
Title: Paint Me Black Client: Personal Work Year: 2008
Ever since I saw this photograph of a nude lady being splashed with paint, I’ve had the urge to do something similar. I can’t say that I have a concrete concept for this piece. It was probably more of a study on how light reflects on paint. The ‘make up’ was done by Sarah and the shoot was assisted by our favourite Azmi and Mr Lewis. The model is Ferrisher. I’ve never worked with her before but it turned out to be quite fun.
I’ve never believed in making decisions as a committee. It takes up too much time. Trying to get approval from each member, trying to please everyone. At the end of it, no one is ever completely satisfied. Everyone would vote according to their own selfish interest. The end result would be a conflicted agreement which would serve in no one’s best interest.
Its always best to make a decision by yourself. It is hard if you are an indecisive person but hey, not everyone can have wings. Adding numbers to this decision process can only serve to slow you down. It is the same with life. The pressure of adult bonding. When you have to consider a girlfriend or wife in every equation of your decision making process, you expose yourself to time wastage. What’s worse is that if you have a family. If one member decides to drag their weight, you have to resort to pulling it for them.
There are exceptions though. If you can find someone who is as capable as you and have somewhat the same mindset as you, it can propel you like a twin jet propulsion. This is however very rare.
When Napolean Bonaparte, the emperor of the France, was at war with a coalition of a few european nations he made military decisions on his own. His enemies was slow to react as they had to consult each other before they could make a decision. This led to their inevitable defeat.
At points of leadership, never should you rely on a committee. Get them to do your dirty work by all mean, but never the main decision making. One of the reasons why Napolean’s armies was feared was because they could react so swiftly. Napolean allowed his commanders to make their own decisions for their men under them to a certain extent. This meant that his men could move faster than any committee could decide.
My shoots of late have been becoming more elaborate and such. Ergo more people are involved. During these shoots, all those kind souls who helped, became mini photographers who would document part of the process. As such I think it would appropriate to showcase ‘the making’ of each shoot to a certain extent. Should be more interesting seeing how the crew put in their sweat to make all my shoots a success!
I’ve discovered that facebook allows me to do just that. I can post the process in different photoalbums, tag the people in the photos making them known that i’ve uploaded their photos and also include video clips. Awesome stuff! Check out my facebook for more updates soon.
Convocation simply means a group of people gathered together for a special purpose. It is what Lasalle calls their graduation ceremonies. I however neither felt excited nor that butterflies in the stomach feeling you’re supposed to get when you get something new.
Like one of the graduands said in his speech and I quote.
after all, this cert is just a welcome letter to the real world
I couldn’t have agreed more. What we did in Lasalle, the projects, late night rush, bickering with each other, politics and such were just child’s play. We were still severely inadequate. I thus didn’t see any reason to celebrate this ‘momentous occasion’ at their favourite spot, MOS.
My parents were so excited for the ceremony. I’m not really sure why I’m not. I’ve been stuck in a situation where students are made to believe that if you get good grades, you will succeed in life. That is byfar the best way they can judge you. Maybe the reason I wasn’t excited was that I’m not proud to recieve the cert. Its, like I’ve always said, just a paper credited by an organisation.
Welcome to the real world Farhan.
You can view more photos of the convocation on my Facebook.
Title: Fiona’s Expressions Client: Personal Work Year: 2007
This series was initiated to be purely experimental. It turned out to be quite the success. Fiona, was my secondary school Biology lab partner. It turns out, she’s quite the model too. In all, we shot close to 100 frames of a few different expressions. .
As of today, I’ve diagnosed myself with a syndrome that I’ve coined which is High Standards of Expectations (HSE) Syndrome. It refers to my inability to accept major flaws in people and expecting a lot from them. I get irritated very easily with incompetent and lazy unfocused people. I rarely am satisfied with any of my works. Always having this thorn at the back of my mind poking, telling me how I could improve or have done things better. Nothing is ever good enough. In short, I am a perfectionist. And as such, I prefer working and being with other perfectionists.
I am sure my closest friends and ex-girlfriends can be living testimonials to this. This although is an excellent factor to my working life, it is quite detrimental to my social life. I would criticize everything. At times I preach values which I really believe in such as ladies shouldn’t use profanities in their speech.
This could be attributed to how I was brought up. My parents were my first role models. They taught me that life is as good as you make it to be. They were hard on me on morals and ethics. Language too. Especially English. I was quite different from my peers in school. The teachers kept telling on me to my parents saying I’m prioritizing on the wrong things. Projects instead of academic subjects. The teachers who were teaching non-academic subjects spurred me on. Those ‘regular’ teachers usually talked condescendingly to me. Trying often to convince me that I will be a failure in life if I don’t succeed in subjects like Math and Science. My language teachers would say that I’ve lost my race because I don’t practice the activities that Malays do or speak the language much. I am lucky enough to have parents who support what ever I do. They gave me the freedom to choose my field of study instead of forcing one on me.
This made me have a different outlook in life. Always trying to be better than everyone else. Always trying to prove my worth. As such, anyone working with me must have the same outlook in life. I dislike working with people who gets easily satisfied. It’s as boring as math. 1+1=2. Nothing will change. I deal with human emotions and idiosyncrasies which will ever so often be subjected to a tremendous amount of change. Life is meant to be experience thoroughly. Feel the worst of pains and the happiest of moments. Carpe Diem.
I’ve spent years combating teachers, friends and family members about race and religion. Such preachers they are. You are born to a race as you are born to a religion. A race gives you a sense of belonging. A religion gives you a sense of belief. Humans need this. A race determines you way of life and your idiosyncrasies. I believe we are all born free. Free to choose how we want to live life. The society pressures us to sit and live it as they see fit. Elders and such.
I was born in Singapore where the society is made up of several major races and religions. We were brought up to live harmoniously among each other. However, we silently sneer at each others practices. Malays would be so proud of their Hari Raya celebrations because they wear traditional costumes marking their heritage whereas the Chinese would just be in casual wear during Chinese New Year.
It is very much difficult to write about my belief without infuriating at least a certain group of individuals. I am born a Malay. However I believe we have the freedom to choose how we want to lead our life. Everyone has their own preference. I do not not like watching the Malay channels or listening to the Malay radio. Frankly I get irritated when people speak to me in Malay. I do not like Malay weddings nor their loud ‘dangdut’ music they blast from the void deck of blocks. Having said this, I too dislike the Chinese practice of burning paper money and such during the seventh month. Nor do I like the Indian practice of… well we all know what we don’t like about them. But that’s the point, every race and practice has their good points and bad points. Its nothing personal. Its just preferences.
A race is just a race. Its a practice of things being done in the past set by the pioneers. It is to me like a sub-culture. It is like a cult. People would do anything to protect their way of living. People hate change. I do not believe in following. As long as you live your life morally, I don’t see why there’s any fault in it. You live by your choices, not by your elders’. Your life, your choice. As the saying goes, you are born alone, and you will die alone.
1. Not qualified in legal terms: a defendant who was incompetent to stand trial.
2. Inadequate for or unsuited to a particular purpose or application.
3. Devoid of those qualities requisite for effective conduct or action.
n.
An incompetent person.
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Working with incompetent people is like walking through a field filled with landmines blindfolded. Never assume trust in them. What’s worse would be proud incompetent people. They say, you need to learn how to work with people like that when you enter the working force. I assure you, these kind of people are the ones that will bring the whole company to disaster. Wrecking team dynamics and creating stupid errors everywhere. A smart boss would never let these idiots work for them.
The horror! If anyone under me were to be like that, I would fire them in a heartbeat. I have no patience for incompetence. The only thing you can trust them with would be to serve you coffee if you don’t mind getting food poisoning. More so than they are incompetent in work, they are also incompetent in character. They would drop the ball when the going gets tough.
When you identify these characters in your working relations, cut them off immediately. You’re better off without them.
Title: The SKII Series Client: Personal Work Year: 2007
When I shot the SKII Series, I had in mind the look of beauty shots you see in editorials. The setup was fairly simple. I realised that it didn’t take complicated setups to produce amazing photos. Usually simplicity works best. The models, Teng and Mark were kind enough to lend a hand in this shoot.
Sex Could Kill You
do you know what the human body go through when you have sex?
pupils dialate
arteries constricts
body temperature rises
heart races
blood pressure skyrockets
respiration becomes rapid and shallow
the brain fires electrical impulses from nowhere to nowhere
secretion shoots out from every gland
and the muscles tend to spasm
like you’re carrying three times your body weight
thats violent, its ugly and its messy
and if god hadn’t made it unbelievably fun, the human races would have died out eons ago
men are lucky they can only have one orgasm
you know that women can have an hour long orgasm.
Title: Animals Running Loose In The Subway Client: Personal Work Media: Ambient Year: 2008
This was a mock ad created for the Night Safari. It is situated in the subway for maximum effect where the mood could be created due to the dark tunnels. At rush hour, this station in particular, City Hall, would receive an enormous amount of commuters.
Copy: See things in a different light, only at the Night Safari.
an internationally known designer commented on branding on the March issue of Computer Arts this year. He states on his website that ‘branding is overrated, outdated crap.’ In the interview with CA, his response was,
“Most international branding agencies overrate their power and influence by a magnitude. As much as they would like to insist otherwise, in everyday life their work has small impact on the actual services or product their clients provide or manufacture. But by far the biggest impact on the perception of a brand is the quality of that service or product. There are a couple of exceptions, fields where the consumers can’t tell the difference between products, say vodka or water, but in general the consumer is smarter than they paint her.”.
I however am very much in disagreement with him. If I break branding down into the simplest form, it would be like choosing friends. Branding gives a product or service a face or image. Lets pick two products of a similar line. Lacoste & Hang Ten. They’re both clothing lines. Now lets assume Lacoste and Hang Ten are humans. Based on how they’ve been perceive to you through advertising, who would you rather be friends with? Who would you rather be seen wearing? One is an upper tier brand and one is a lower tier brand.
Now lets remember that who you choose to be your friends determines how people look at you too. If you mix around with William Hung as compared to if you mix around with Donald Trump, people will see you differently. It defines you. Would you rather wear Lacoste, or Hang Ten? If branding isn’t important, then lets all wear Hang Ten. I know I wouldn’t. Maybe you would. But that’s the point. We choose who we want to be through the image that has been laid down by branding.
Film was never my area. However it was a great experience that I went through. 8 days to create an 8minutes short film. That was what the competition was all about. The ruthless 8days of effort paid off when our lead actress, Yip Qiao Lin ‘Ernie’ clinched the award for Best Actress. Her crying scene was flawless. I’ll keep the rest of the comments to when I actually feature the reel here. Below are some snapshots from the morning’s award ceremony.
(and yes they should really make it in the evening! I attended the event in my ’stoned’ face! 10am!) .
Title: Project Railway Client: Personal Work Year: 2007
Project Railway was my first time collaborating with a make up artist, mavis. It was the first time I had two assistants on set too and for good reasons, azmi & richard. A driver too, shmeer. The models are Nargis and Jason. The shoot was done at the railway itself. It was on location in the afternoon under the scorching sun. It was a wonder that we even made it through. At every half an hour interval or so, a train would scream past. This made things seem even more real as the set was right on the tracks! It would always be at the back of all our minds that a train can pass by at any time. We had to play the timing right just so that we won’t be hit.
“Luxury life not in wealth but in the absence of vulgarity.”
Coco Chanel
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I doubt i need to make further elaborations on this statement by one of the world’s biggest fashion icon. This just strengthens my believe that using profanity in words or actions is just plain ugly. Nothing should warrant the use of it under any circumstance. Live life beautiful.
The Ladida6 was created as a freelance identity to represent myself to clients in the past. I handled mainly photographs and such. As part of the identity development, i created a typeface for myself. Now however, I am pursuing into the area of selling stuff. Some would call it advertising.
Below shows the developmental sketches to the final typeface.
LEFOREPLAY was an initiative set up to increase awareness on the ARTS Scene to the public. It aimed to expose local creatives to the world. The family portrait below formed their original members when they first started.
Title: Post It Series Print Ads Client: Personal Work Year: 2008
The Post It Series were the first ever print ads that I produced. It brought about much debate to whether the message was too simple and whether more should be included. The ad shows the primary function of the post it which is to communicate. The fact that it sticks to hot and cold surfaces(dad’s hot coffee and son’s cold milk)shows the effectiveness of the glue on the post it notes.
Title: Project Earthquake Client: Personal Work Year: 2007
Project Earthquake is probably one of my major breakthroughs in my course of study. It was created during my final year of study at Lasalle. I’ve seen myself improve dramatically through the 3year period there. I call it creative maturity.
The piece below, the final hour, was created during my foundation year.
It was created with a few different images composed into one.
Then, i thought this piece was one of my best works. When I look back now, I feel rather ashamed on how little it took me to feel proud.
Project Earthquake was shot with my newly then bought 600watts outdoor strobe at the ‘golf course’ of Lasalle. It was the first time I applied make up on anyone. The model(as you will notice is in most of my early works) is my good friend and one of my first assistants, Azmi. He was quite reluctant on the idea of make-up but finally succumb after abit of coaxing.
This was the initial shot. It was a fairly simple setup.
This was what I achieved after alot of experimentation and well mostly luck I would say.
Till now this image continues to astound me.
Though I know 2years from now I’ll look back on this and be ashamed of myself once again as I do now on my works 2years back.
Teamwork is another word for using the people around you to reap benefits. Great renaissance masters used art students to do their work for them while them directing how its done.
In advertising, there is no place for teamwork. An ad must be written by one person only. Not by a committee. Advertising is like a sales pitch. Imagine a group of salesmen infront of you trying to sell you say a toothbrush. One after another cutting in on each other. Compare this to only one perspective of one salesman. Of course that one salesman has to be damn good at what he does.
Such is the case in alot of things in life. Every company needs those few good men who can lay the golden eggs. The rest are just pawns who can be retrenched when the company is not doing well. Higher management knows this. No one credits a team, only individuals.
A lot of my spare time from the breaks I get in between jobs would usually be channeled towards hibernation. However it has come to my attention that I do indeed come up with theories in my deep sub-conscious that may carry much truth in them.
Other then John Mayer indulgence, guys, gentlemen, you may wish to consider reading through my words and contemplate through them well. Majority of them would be common knowledge yet almost ignorant to a lot of us.
Well, my 8 Rules to talking to ladies is my framework whenever i do approach one, a lady that is. ‘They’ say don’t generalise ladies. I’d like to re butt that opinion. Every lady yearns to be treated right, to be viewed as unique. These 8 rules are not meant to be used for manipulation, rather it should be used to enhance your treatment towards ladies. I abhor idiots who go around cheating ladies into love just to dump them for someone who appeals better. All is fair in love and war, yet it brings much heartache and despair.
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Rule 1.
Approach with a smile and be confident. Nothing charms a lady more than confidence and compassion.
Rule 2.
Do not start off with a cheesy line, rather, a firm and confident handshake would fare much better. Be candid and professional. Don’t try too hard to be a comic. Empires were never built on humour.
Rule 3.
Maintain eye contact as much as possible. This shows that you are ‘in’ the conversation.
Rule 4.
Talk about her interest rather than yours. Listening is always best when you’re with a lady. The wise man closes his mouth and opens his ears.
Rule 5.
Never ever forget that the prettier she is, the more self-conscious she will be. Remind her of how nice she looks and you will be rewarded handsomely. However too much of flattery can be damaging. Use moderately.
Rule 6.
Be a gentleman, never be harsh in your manners nor your words. Be polite. Profanity is never appreciated. Chivalry may not be common but when done subtly is much recognised. Opening of doors or standing up when a lady leaves for the head can still be done if you make it a habit and not on an ad-hoc basis. Offering to pick up the tab is nice but make sure you first have the bangs in your wallet to back it up. Being stingy with money however is a definite no no.
Rule 7.
Failure is part of the journey. Never be disheartened if one doesn’t respond well to your actions even after you follow these rules. Chances are she is not that much of a lady you thought she was. Learn to cut your losses and move on.
Rule 8.
If you can dream it and believe it, you can definitely do it. The moon landing would seem inferior to your accomplishments.
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