Pooileng + Zikons Birthday Bash!!

It was an awesome party last Saturday night. Thanks to Poolieng for the invite to their ‘Legend’ary quarter-life birthday bash. It was just wonderful. There were all sorts of costumes from Super Mario to Pokemon.  James’ favourite costume was of couse “Aang” from The Last Airbender, its pretty funny that guy actually painted his head for the night.

our Birthday Boy + Girl

The venue was at bungalow 8, and was the second time James has been there. It is a great place! The last visit was the shooting for Zoey’s (one of James’ friends) 21st. However, unlike last time, Pooileng had booked the whole venue, so there was no random public attendance that came in (“total chaos” was the summarative description).

The drinks were “buy one get the other one free”.  And everyone had a great time, although it got a bit messy towards then end as you can see…

Check out James’s Facebook for more pics !! 

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=545381&id=649800384

2010
10/05
CATEGORY
Weddings
Write comment

Bitter Sweet

It was a priviledge to be invited to the Wedding of Natasha and Ricky. Words can not fully express the meaning  and the intention of this wedding. Brining it forward earlier to allow Ricky’s dad to be witness, it was still unexpectedly late by two days. However, the wedding progressed as planned and James and Danny did their best to make sure that it would be a wedding captured in its full glory. Check out the bride and groom’s prep below!

The ceremony venue was well decorated along the isle by some very hard working staff!

The time frame planned was quite tight, so everyone rushed to the Domain after some quick congratulatory handshakes and heres some of what ensued!

After the rush back, it was lots of fingerfoods, speeches, and unexpectedly, some partying! Check out some crazy pictures here!

 

It would seem every wedding has a story, and this was no exception. James and Danny were touched to have been part of this occasion and are definitely looking to be part of more.

2010
09/21
CATEGORY
Weddings
Write comment

Trina ‘n Dre

’twas another auspicious occassion at a Wedding Ceremony for Photoessence. James and Danny were engaged in another full wedding photoshoot over the weekend and they were lucky enough to be included in the dinner this time too! Check out some pics of the preparation of the bride (which took over 2 hours!)

                    

                             

The venue was a pretty awesome place as it had the chapel, reception dinner and lots of scenery for post ceremony photos, all in the compound!

                   

                   

The main ceremony took place in the chapel then onto the fun post-ceremony photos! Heres what it all looked like!

                   

                   

                   

The dinner was nice too! Check out the selection! Lets not forget about the ham that was available!

                   

The night wasn’t complete without some dancing and of course the imperitive bouquet toss.

                   

                   

 

The job pretty much finished around 9pm and they immediately went home to check out the selection ready for futher editing later on!

2010
09/14
CATEGORY
Weddings
Write comment

New Zealand’s Chinese Association!

Wow, what a weekend away for Danny down in Wellington! It was a dense weekend of discussion at an Annual Conference for the NZCA (New Zealand Chinese Association). As part of a recent decision to be on the committee of the NZCA and being voted in as their latest member, the annual conference was over the weekend of the 19th and 20th Jun. He wasn’t the official photographer at all but as there wasn’t any one else with a seemingly professional looking SLR camera, they all thought he was and was questioned as such! Check out some of the happenings that morning, and all the food during the breaks!!

Being the 75th Anniversary of the association, there was also a special dinner to celebrate. Lots of yummy chinese food and an invited guest. See if you can recognize the Honoured guest of the night!

After the dinner round about 10pm, there was some socialising until about 3am in the morning which did not hold well for Danny in the next day of big discussion. Anyhow, here are some of the scenes from the Library Bar in Wellington. It was decorated like an actual library in most places!

The next day, after 5 hours of sleep, and having slept only 5 hours the night before, the conference came to a close with many things of improvement for the association to consider. One of them was to improve the media coverage, and hopefully Danny can get Photoessence involved! James was definitely keen on the idea!

2010
06/22
CATEGORY
Events
Write comment

The Rock Club!

Yay!  A music gig to take photos of! What a nice night it was too since a good friend of James and Danny was playing as one of the members in a band called Split Second! The night started around 08:30 where the bands hadn’t really arrived yet but the usual environment evaluation and testing took place! More important since it was not the usualy daylight scene. and heres what it looked like!

The warm up gig of the night was a nice little solo effort from quite a talented star! Here he is in great form, very smooth and crisp guitar playing!

After that, a short interval before the main gig that James and Danny were there for, and they wanted to “Kick @$$!” according to the lead guitarist and singer. In fact it was supposed to be twice as hard as their previous gig! Check this out!

Being a rock band, it was quite a loud performance and it was rockin in there!

They weren’t the last performance but they had to go as the night was getting late, and they just managed to get the intro to Cash Cult. Definitely looking forward to the next music gig!

2010
05/22
CATEGORY
Events
Gigs
Write comment

Bethells Beach

Last Saturday James and Danny had a trip to Bethells Beach for a day trip with Auckland University Photography Society! This is a photography club that James was, and still is, actively involved in, and consists of university students who loves photography! It was raining very heavily in the morning and there were around 20 of the PhotoSoc members huddling under the Clock Tower meeting spot.  Despite the streets flooding with heavy rain,  the trip still went ahead as the Vans were already rented.

Arriving at Bethells Beach in the early afternoon, out west of the main city, the rain had stopped shortly before arrival. The beach was beautiful, covered in wet black sand reflecting rainbow coloured lights that sparkled like diamonds as they walked across.

The beach was also very wide and although there were 30 in the group, they were  just scattered all over the place! All that was seen shortly after arrival were different foot prints pointing toward different directions.

When sunset approached, everyone of them found their own positions to capture the golden moment!

Meanwhile James enjoyed his own world in the middle of nowhere…..surrounded by giant cliffs…

Here is what he saw!

Just after sunset, all the members gathered again and left for home. It was very surprising that there was not a single drop of rain despite that the forecast indicated there would be thunder storms that day…. luckily the situation was as such and the day ended pretty much with the gorgeous scene below!

2010
05/17
CATEGORY
Field Trips
Write comment

Pre Graduation Photo Outing

Sunday the 2nd of May  was no ordinary Sunday. Five of James’ friends have finally graduated, each from a different faculty,  Law, Pharmacy, Education, Arts, and Science – each one of them were in their pretty gowns and colourful hoods. We took some group photos in the studio in the morning and it was very enjoyable. There were also  formal shots, silly poses, tossing of the hat etc and everyone had a lot of laughs.

We then departed for Auckland Domain for some outdoor photos, the weather was great! Blue skies, bright sunlight and a little bit of cloud made all the flowers seems very fresh and colourful. We began with some formal looking group portraits.

Then we tried different things…Here was an idea of getting them to march along the way in a line, the end result seems rather interesting!!

Now all the attention is on James’ girlfriend…

From left to right, Commerce – Orange,  Law – Blue,  Arts – Pink, Pharmarcy – Light Blue, Science – Dark Blue.

After sunset, everyone was hungry so we found a nice  Japanese restaurant in Newmarket called Don Don Rikka. The food was very nice with unique names like , Ninja, Sumo, Sakura Chicken etc.  It also came with nice dessert and all the food were served with this funny ground sesame which James  spent half of the time grinding the seeds.

…the Sakura Chicken Dish with big portion of rice underneath!!

…and the  sesame seeds that were fun to grind!! The expression tells it all!

Another eventful day to be remembered!

2010
05/10
CATEGORY
Graduations
Write comment

Sylvia Park Fashion Festival ’10

Hows this for fun? James and Danny got last minute word of the Fashion Show at Sylvia Park! Apparently, Sylvia Park’s fashion stores were displaying their new fashion line and were having a show case featuring garmets for all ages.

The models were pretty awesome! Unlike traditional fashion catwalk models, they were great dancers too, jumping all over the the runway.

The whole event lasted from 6:30 – 9:30 and right before the second section at 7:45 there was a BELTING session by one of NZ’s well known presenters! See if you know who it is!

The second section began at 8pm featuring garmets from more mature stores such as James & August, Andrea Biani, TimberLand etc.  Check out the bag made of Real Flowers!

It was definitely a night of fun as this was just a little spontaneous event that was completely unplanned the day before!  James and Danny definitely had some fun with this one! Not to mention there was a small section with some lingere lines!

2010
04/25
CATEGORY
Events
Fashion
1 comment

Church Health Seminar

It would seem James and Danny have their share of work cut out for them! Last Sunday was the Health Semniar event based in The Auckland Chinese Prebytarian Church in St Vincent St.

It started with food stall in front of street – there were cakes, tea leaf eggs (a chinese specialty which tastes awesome! look it up!), the usual noodles and salads and a standard sausage BBQ!

Then they had a female speaker talking about womens’ health and how it affects not just the women but also men, whether it be the men in women’s lives due to their relationship with them, or even just breast cancer of the male themselves!

There was also a male speaker who went in quite some depth about the heart and how it is one of the most important organs in your body! So much in depth he ran out of time and only covered less than half what he wanted! He was definitely a specialist and made it very clear that the topics of the heart could almost go on forever! (lucky he was limited by time as some of the participants were getting rather impatient he seemed to drag on! Danny however was most keen…).

The event ended with a prize draw that everyone was most greatful for, a treat to end a seemingly endless speech session! Needless to say, the winners were pretty happy!

Once again, it was another enjoyable event!

2010
04/21
CATEGORY
Events
Write comment

Laura & Allen

Wow!! What a night! James and Danny just spent another big bulk load of time selecting the photos from the L.A. wedding! It was another late night and they are still excited about the wedding as they recollect the event below.

Bride and Groom exchanged vows after the usual dedicated speech from the pastor. A long awaited moment for everyone!

The first kiss! It was a bit awkward to get so in their faces but that was what they wanted James and Danny to get!

This was followed by a beautiful dance performance by the Bride’s dance group that she normally participates in…

The ceremony was concluded by the release of some white doves. A sign of peace, and just a beautiful event in itself!

There were many delicious foods and desserts and this was James’ favourite dish!

Their first dance - a very happy moment for the couple… from their expressions, they must have been joking about something…

Even though the bridal party were so busy, we managed to get hold of them for a walk along the beach after the reception for some private shooting just before the sun went down.  This pic was done as a fun representation of a classic boy vs. girl idea! What a fun photo that turned out to be! Everyone in the photo loved the idea and enjoyed taking it!

All in all it was such an awesome outcome! It was a fantastic wedding to recap!

2010
04/01
CATEGORY
Weddings
Write comment
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.