Conceptualised Pre-Wedding by Raymond Phang Photography

Good day to everyone, Raymond Phang Photography is back from New Zealand and Prague!! 🙂

It has been an exciting month for us, and it’s even more exciting to see the piles of backlogs sitting there waiting for us when we return after a month of missing in action. It’s a good thing! We’re gonna be suuuuper busy from now onwards with new plans brewing, and we’ll definitely share once things are in place. Hehehe. 🙂

That aside, we would like to touch on our pre-wedding since pre-wedding shoot seems to become more popular lately. Because our pre-wedding style is different from the usual romance, abstract arty farty, or even the super aesthetically pleasing ones, we need a lot of lead time for preparation up till the completion of the digital imaging and printing before handover. Of course this is not to say the other school of photography with a different pre-wedding style do not need as much time, and who knows they might need even more time than us. But here’s just a basic rough idea on how we roll at Raymond Phang Photography. 🙂

Each pre-wedding shoot will take us at least 3-4 months of time from the initial conceptualising and consultation, exchange and suggestions of ideas, props preparation from the couple, actual shoot, editing, designing of the album, printing of the album, QC of the album we received and buffer time for reprint (if any, but very rare cases). If your actual day wedding happens to meet the peak wedding season, we’ll need an even longer time as we’d have to buffer in days for AD shoots and total batches of weddings for editing as well. A lot of people don’t get to see how hectic is the “backstage” life, and how many tonnes of midnight oil we have burnt just to churn out the final image, but really, it is extremely taxing and time consuming.

Not a lot of couples can accept our kind of conceptualised pre-wedding where we do crazy things (or make couples do crazy things). One thing for sure, most couples will find it challenging to get their folks to accept this. And strangely we’ve had couples enquiring to meet us for pre-wedding shoots after they’ve seen our pre-wedding images on our Facebook, but we realised that what the couples are looking for is actually the romantic style of pre-wedding where couples kiss and look pretty in gowns, and they find our creative concept a little extreme for their liking. *scratch head*

We hope that all couples understand our niche for pre-wedding is in creating wacky images (sometimes unglam).  If you tell us you only want romantic shots on the actual pre-wedding shoot day, it can really give us heart attack. 😛

Maybe what couples can do is to really sit down together and have a good talk, ask yourself if our style of pre-wedding photography is really, really what you want. Because personally I feel that some couples enjoy looking through our pre-wedding works, but when it comes to them being the subject of the shoot, only then they’ll understand it’s not easy. It’s best for both the bride and groom to say yes to this, but if either one party feels apprehensive about it, maybe you guys should reconsider, just in case incidents of unhappiness arises during the discussion/props preparation, and worse is on the shoot day itself when we need you guys to do a certain pose etc. No point paying for something which will only bring you bad memories ya? 🙂

I guess we’ll just have to wait patiently for the right couple, someone who is as crazy as us, someone who can totally click with us and gel with us, and share the same passion. Therefore we have decided to limit the number of pre-wedding shoots we accept per year. We’re still in the talks on the exact number, but one thing for sure, we are currently not accepting anymore engagement for pre-weddings for the month of June and July as our hands are full with the current batch of edits for couples getting married in October/November.

Our pre-wedding shoot is definitely different from our style of shooting on an actual day wedding. During the pre-wedding shoot, we usually have to do a few times of retake unlike actual day where most events cannot be repeated (and therefore no retakes). Sometimes it’s long, long hours of shoot, everyone of us is tired (including the couple themselves), and we’re really thankful to have cooperative couples! Despite them being tired and having to juggle with their stressful workload, they were all really nice to press on with us and showed us their best! To every single couple of ours who has their pre-wedding shot by us, we will always remember you guys and the sacrifices made to produce the awesome images together with us. 🙂

Naggy long winded words aside, here are some images from our recent pre-wedding to share. Enjoyyyyyyyyyy!! 🙂

Believe it or not, we actually have 3 people throwing the food for this shot!! Chopped carrots, Spaghetti, dried mushroom, green apple, chilli padi, corn, there were oranges or something as well but I guess it missed the frame. We had fun throwing the food, and some of it hit the ceiling, the whole place was super messy after that (felt really bad about it though), sometimes an apple will land on the couple’s head or thighs as well….. but they were really professional, and gave us awesome expression! Fearless, nonchalent, and not a blink of eye. NICE! 🙂

This was a hot and stuffy shot – it’s actually an “oven” to dry the paintwork of the car and we were actually waiting for the oven timer to go off before we went in to do the shoot cos they had a car inside for drying. I guess the spray of water was an enjoyment in this case. Everyone was hot and hungry and thirsty during this shoot, and they had to wait while Raymond set up his angle and lights, but look at their expression! 🙂

Naughty naughty!! 🙂

This is actually a real place where we managed to recce for the shoot. The planet Earth was fake though… kekeke. But I like it! 🙂

Last image to share from our latest pre-wedding shoot in New Zealand – The STAR TRAILS!!!! Here’s an excerpt from Raymond along with the image posted on Facebook;

Contrary to the belief that the lunatics at Raymond Phang Photography are dummies to Romance, we present you with our latest pre-wedding work from New Zealand – TADAH!
Kudos to Colin and Emily the awesome for braving the wind so strong it can almost carry us away, and the teeth gritting cold that instantaneously transformed us all with chicken skin!
Getting this shot of the couple – sitting in the SUV holding hot steamy coffee mug in their hands, with the tent and a mini campfire isn’t all just me. I am extremely proud of my team that made it all possible – Angeline for making sure everyone is comfortable, art directing (nit picking so that the final image comes out as envisioned), holding lights and getting her hands all extremely icky preparing the Vaseline for the campfire. Not to mention Susu our talented awesome Digital imaging artist, who helped picked the dry wood and got a splinter on her finger as a result, hold lights, run around chasing tents that flew away in the strong wind and working her ass off back in the studio to put the final image together.
Colin was our “guest assistant” helping us to set up the tent and mini campfire, holding our “secret weapon” together with Susu in the wind (extreme arm muscle training!) to shoot the car panel so that it looks just right, both risking their eyes being blinded by the flash gun that Angeline was holding in the process. Colin didn’t have to do anything originally, but for the sake of protecting his princess Emily from suffering in the cold, he sacrificed. *bite lips with a distant look – everyone please say awwwww*
Without this awesome team I would not have gotten away with this image. I am truly blessed. This single image alone took a total of 4.5 hours from the beginning (setting up the scene) to the end (packing up in the wilderness) and when the camera was in the midst of capturing the startrails, I could clearly see Angeline and Susu dozing off in the car and that really pains me. We worked hard and played hard, and we hope this image is well worth our efforts. 🙂

I can’t wait to share the rest of the images from the New Zealand and Prague shoot!! One of the bestest things that we did in Year 2011!! 🙂

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Pre-wedding images aside, here are a quick few shots from our New Zealand travel.

Moo Moo Cow.

We drove all the way from North Island down to South Island – it was free and easy, and we drove all the way up to the Sand Dunes when we were on our way to Cape Reinga. Love the sand dunes, cold nice fine sand!! So we had to take a group shot there. Hehehe. 🙂

Next we went to this mini waterfall, and I had to take a picture with grumpy Su. :p

And we went to Cafe Eutopia!! Quaint little place selling organic yummies, and I bought a really pretty pendant called the Tree of Life. AHHHH!!! So many things to share on my travel!! I wish I had the time to post the images we took and the places we went to and the things we experienced!!

Susu had the most yummy Bagel!!

And my organic Lemonade tasted ssssssssssolidddddddddddd…

We went to another Cafe, and Susu had a hot chocolate. Susu is forever having hot chocolate.

And we went to Hell’s gate…. NICEEEEEE….

And a group photo of the five of us – Raymond, Angeline, Susu, Terence, and Scooby Loon!! Hehehehe…

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Till the next when I have more time, I’ll share on how I dumped my boyfriend and how Raymond dumped his girlfriend in New Zealand. Muwahahahahahahahahaha!!! Cheers! 🙂

Lots of ♥,
– Angeline