Happy New Year 2012. We had a wonderful time in 2011. Thank you for the support.

Yes, we are ready for the new era of 2012. Let’s rock this year.

I can’t believe that it’s been 2 years since we first met Aswin, Anne, Marcel and Ken in our audition for Foto Expression Sydney. They have done some wonderful jobs hanging on with us. It’s never an easy joyride when joining the brand like Foto Expression who highly demands passion and commitment. That’s because it’s what we are. I am sure most of you agree how creative we are, but we are more than happy to be recognised by the high level of commitment in our journey of giving couples great memories.

I am sure we have said so many times to our team “Thank you” for living up with the name so we can make that as our culture and tradition.

Now, it’s time to see the new fresh talent again. That’s why when I said on my personal blog that 2012 will be our year of revolution.

But this time, we are hiring in two different positions.

1. First position is the creative photographer, who will be joining our photography team straight away.

- this position is for Foto Expression Sydney only.

- one position

- must have a professional equipment level such as Canon 5dmk2 or Nikon D700 with the range of lenses.

- must have shot weddings minimum 5-10 weddings as a primary photographer – not as an uncle bob.

- recommended for photographers who wish to pursue the career as a wedding photographer but does not want to deal with the back-office works.

If you meet all the criteria and ready to join, read below:

- tell us a little bit about yourself (send your facebook page or your photo will be nice too)

- reasons why we should accept you

- gears list

- salary expectation

- your full time commitment?

- what kind of photographers you wish to become (listing your inspirations is also recommended)

- prepare at least 2 full set of wedding images from your primary photographer’s assignments

Time to share this news to your friends as if he/she passes our probation time in 3 months working with us, we will reward you with a brand new ipad 2 16gb with 3G. So please share this to the world to help us looking for new talents Send the evidence to us (to hiring@fotoexpression.com) and make sure the photographer you are referred to mention how he/she find out this vacancy.

2. Second position is for assistant photographer.

- this position is for Foto Expression Sydney only.

- minimum two positions

- must have a minimum semi-professional camera (Canon or Nikon camera preferably)

- understand the basic camera operation

- great teamwork and possess people skills

- No wedding assignment necessary but if you have shot some that will be great

- Training will be provided freely.

- Recommended for casual photographers who have free weekends, wish to earn a bit of money and also ready to be professional photographers

If this is you, we would love to hear from you.

- tell a little bit about yourself (send your facebook page or your photo will be nice too)

- reasons why we should accept you

- gears list

- some of photos that you took personal or professional

Send this before January 9 as we will be reviewing them.

Please don’t hesitate to share this blog to others via your facebook or email. We will be conducting our audition this January 16th for the right candidates. Please send us your answers to hiring@fotoexpression.com

I’ve been spending many hours in the week leading to Christmas writing personalised Christmas postcard to our beloved couples. It’s the first time we produce our own Christmas card, it’s really exciting!! To be honest, the last time I wrote Christmas cards was probably in my uni days. I used to enjoy writing special words to close friends and families. But in the past years, come Christmas, we were just finishing off busy Spring wedding season, exhausted and looking forward to have some normalities back in our schedule. Sometimes that just leaves no room for anything else. Busyness can truly make us forget doing things that matters to us.

But this year we want to make sure we don’t leave out important things in our lives. Well at least for me, Foto Expression has been my life in the past 6 years. We can be what we are now, is truly due to the support of our awesome couples. We hope, by receiving our Xmas postcard, our couples are reminded we appreciate them sincerely for their continued support.

I also would like to extend my gratitude to our team. From our photographers to videographers, our production team, and customer service support team. You guys have been awesome beyond words, working hard and making things happen. For that, we thank you!

As much as we want to send our Christmas postcard to everyone, we apologise if we’re missing out on some people due to incomplete postal addresses. And I hope, for those who didn’t receive the postcard before Christmas day, it will soon arrive.  Here’s the online version

We had a fun night on the Christmas night. We hung out with all of our Foto Expression, the BIG films and Foto Xpress team and their families. Of course they were lucky to taste my delicious ribs
Here’s the behind the scene short movie of our Christmas party at our nest.

Also please check out some fun instant prints that night by Foto Xpress.

MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR. We hope 2012 can be a blessed year for all of us!

We have super excited news!!

It’s never just about the photography style when it comes to business, but the team is the key for everything. We know it too well based on our experience of building a super awesome team in Sydney. They are not only hard-working and team players in every wedding projects but we also have a great time hanging out. The results speak for itself.

Ilona and I have been traveling to Indonesia to shoot weddings in these past two years. We saw potential to make many couples happy to have their weddings documented with our natural storytelling style. I guess we were fortunate to be able to meet a lot of potential photographers during our speaking engagements with Wiki School Pedia in Indonesia. On that event, we met two different personalities that could fit straight-in to our team. They are Mario and Darmawan.

They know what it takes to be FE. They have been shooting for us since July this year. So this blog is just to officiate that Foto Expression Indonesia is now servicing weddings and pre-weddings in Indonesia. Check out our temporary websites before we have time to revamp the brand new website.

Indonesian couples in Sydney, now you know where to go if you want to combine the pre-wedding and wedding coverage in Sydney and Indonesia

Please come back again soon as we have more news for Foto Expression – Indonesia next year. Don’t forget to give Mario and Darmawan a warm welcome!

Yayyy, what a pleasant surprise that I end this year with two awards from one and only the coolest wedding photography Fearless Photographers. Please check out my first award.

Fearless Photographers is an online community to meet up the most creative and awesome wedding photographers in the world. When I said they are creative, it means they are out of the world. They are full of photographers who were my idols during my early career of becoming a wedding photographer like Huy Nguyen, Ray + Erwin of Apertura and also Ben Chrisman. In other words, yes I am competing with my own idols. It’s a super tough competition.

This time I sent five images to compete. I can tell you I was so fortunate to nail to win one among 1850 images to compete for. The feeling is wow. It’s like winning a world cup.

I am not only winning just an award, but this time my photo is one of ‘Best of Show’. I hope you understand what I mean, I am one of the BEST

But check out my award winning photo. Please tell me if I deserve to be part of the elite

Normally, I am not that sentimental with no of likes, but this time I am happy that a lot of people agree about the photo you can also certainly send your vote to this

This photo was taken during my trip in Jakarta, Indonesia in last July. I was honour to tag along my friend Jeff O’Neal of Poetih Photography to shoot this traditional javanese wedding of Adrianto + Tanya’s wedding. I hope that I can get the chance to blog the wedding separately.

After a couple weeks ago finally back to Sydney, I started to sit down to think what I learned during my trip. One of the things that I learned a great deal for my wedding business was what I explained during my talk in 4-days Wiki School Pedia events. The events were attended by professional Indonesian Wedding photographers. It’s funny hey, I taught people based on my past experiences and how I did them was also the time I was reminded what I needed to do for my business. That’s the beauty of teaching. I enjoy every minute out of it.

What I was reminded is how the best client education started from when you set the brand. That’s how I realise that I need to re-brand my wedding business to the direction of what we want. So that’s what kept me busy nowadays. So wish me luck! It’s  definitely exciting time to work hard for these upcoming projects ahead. I am also back shooting again weddings (after 3 months sabbatical period). It freshens up my mind and makes me to look forward so much for every project

In the mean time, here are some of very limited snapshots I took during the trip

Sharing time on the photographers’ chill out session with Patrick Low and the gank. I talked my experiences of doing fusion (still + motion pictures)

This below photo was a quick snap for some of the attendance during the practical session day 2 of 4-days event of Wiki School Pedia workshop in Jakarta, Indonesia. Please click here if you wish to see how all the students are performed on that session. And of course please find the full coverage of day 1, day 2, day 3 and day 4 of the event.

As soon as I completed the workshop, I flied again This time was in Belitung Island, 45 minutes from Jakarta, Indonesia. We were there for 1 1/2 days. But it’s sad that the first day was raining.  Normally I always had a back up plan. For some reason, I never thought it would be raining If it is for just a photography, it’s cool. But for fusion, it’s harder to change. Anyway, just check it out, I really can’t wait to see the end product for this

Remember just watch this space to see something BIG