With workshops spanning across a period of a month, the professional photographers and award-winning film makers involved include:
Michael Yamashita, a veteran National Geographic photographer with over 30 years of experience, combined his dual passions of photography and travel to covered subjects like Vietnam and the Mekong River, Marco Polo’s journey to China, the DMZ between North and South Korea and aspects of the Japanese culture, from the traditional to the present. He has won numerous awards, including the National Press Photographers Association Pictures of the Year, held major exhibitions of his work around the world, and published ten books.
Manny Librodo was named by Scott Kelby as one of the five best photographers in the world in 2009 and is a multi-awarded and internationally published photographer. He has achieved worldwide fame with his particular style in digital retouching in portrait photography, turning an ordinary portrait into a work of art. Born in the Philippines and now living in Thailand, he now spends most of the year traveling around the world conducting workshops and seminars on digital photography and editing.
Winner of the prestigious Venice Film Festival’s Lion of the Future Award and Orizzonti Prize in 2009, Pepe Diokno is one of the film industry’s youngest rising stars and was mentioned as one of the world’s 100 exceptional emerging film makers by UK’s Phaidon Press. He will share tips and tricks on storytelling and visual imagery to help get a film off the ground.
Auteur Jack Neo is a household name locally and regionally, best known for films such as Ah Boys to Men and I Not Stupid. Recipient of the Cultural Medallion and Public Service Award, Neo’s films take a satirical look at the Singapore culture and community and will talk about his film making journey and how to develop one’s personal style of movie directing.
Gladys Ng is a Singapore-based photographer, specialising in fashion editorials and portraiture. Having a keen eye for angles and details, her work is subtly dramatic in a picturesque manner. Winner of the Harper’s Bazaar x ION Photography 2012 competition, she explores new ways to push the envelope, from conceptualisation to post-processing. She was recently handpicked to participate in “Moments in Style by Sony”, a photo exhibition that is organised as part of this year’s Audi Fashion Festival. The exhibition will run from 25 April to 19 May.
Oggie Ramos and Ferdz Decena are two freelance travel photographers whose works have been featured in several inflight magazines and will share tips on how to capture that perfect shot while on holiday, using the idyllic Batanes island group, the smallest province in the Philippines, as an example.
Alexander Obana is a passionate photographer and videography enthusiast. He caught the photography bug during his university days and eventually turned it into a career. Besides his day job as a multi-national real estate company’s creative department lead, he is also the man behind kokobanana – a group famous for wedding videography. He will be leading a session on how to maximise your DSLR’s video-taking capabilities.
Benson Guek has more than 20 years of photography experience that covers different genre of photography and astrophotography is one of his specialisations. A mix of art, patience and science, he will reveal how to compose a shot in the dark, instead of simply mounting a camera on a tripod and pointing it upward to the night sky.
Taking photos at night or in dimly lit places can be very challenging. It might be too dark to shoot with natural light and if the built-in flash is used, the mood of the photo can change quite drastically. Wedding and portrait photographer Ding Yan will share techniques on flash control to help expand one’s creative options.
