On Thursday, we uploaded one of our latest conceptualised pre-wedding photoshoot image for Joshua and Sandora shot with so much love. If you guys haven’t seen it, you can either pop over to our Facebook Page, or read on to find out more about the photoshoot. đ
Here’s the photo description which we posted on Facebook along with the photo;
Dude, where’s my car? – A Valentine’s day gift specially wrapped for you, my toilet paper Queen. Love, your King of Pranks & Swagger.
Joshua and Sandora are one of the most awesome and interesting folks we have photographed for our highly exclusive conceptualised pre-wedding photoshoot! Their Biography came in 14 pages long packed with a punch of juicy details, unbelievable pranks and interesting stories! We never knew people with such colorful personalities actually exists in Singapore, and that makes us extremely blessed to have known them!
Friends of Joshua and Sandora would have known their little antics and things that interests them. Besides playing innocent pranks, Joshua is also a keyboard otaku + I call him the King of Tissoospert (Tissue Expert). He really amazed all of us at Raymond Phang Photography with his deep knowledge of all kinds of tissues/toilet papers and his tissue fetish. Some of the brand of tissues he mentioned are like total alien to us! Hence we decided to incorporate pranks + toilet paper together for our concept.
Beneath all these naughty things they do, they are actually one of the kindest people with beautiful hearts.Â
Hope you guys enjoy this photo, and here’s wishing everyone of you a Happy Valentine’s Day in advance!! Enjoy your day tomorrow while we reminisce our first date with Joshua and Sandora at Mustafa’s Rooftop Restaurant – Kebab’s N Curries!Â
We have also received a number of questions regarding the photoshoot. Again there might be doubt that the shot is photoshopped or “fake” as with most of the skeptical comments received for our conceptualised pre-wedding photoshoot. So here’s some of the behind the scene photos to share.
Before the shoot itself, Raymond was going around Singapore, scouting for the most suitable underground carpark for the shot. There were a lot of requirements coming from him – high or low ceiling, type of carpark lighting, texture of the wall, space and distance of the carpark, traffic/flow of the carpark, timing (some carparks are closed after certain timing) etc. Finally he shortlisted a few and team Raymond Phang Photography casted our votes for the most suitable one.
On location before we set up the final photography lightings, Raymond had to ask Joshua to drive the car in a position that Raymond wanted. Then he got Susu and me to stand inside his frame to see how it’d look like.
Once he’s satisfied, we started to toilet paper the car which was a whole lot of fun and some thought process involved too. Initially I’d have thought that it’s gonna be an easy job, just throw the rolls all over and we’ll be fine. But end up we had to throw the toilet roll under the car to “wrap” it up, else with too much ends dangling it didn’t look too nice at all. And it’s not easy to wrap the car cos sometimes the toilet paper decides to break up with each other when we toss them underneath. So toilet papering the car activated the entire team, including AL (Susu’s beloved darling boyfriend) who was there to help us that day. It’s also all thanks to AL who suggested that we should also drape the top to make it look more interesting.
Ah, the big guy with white sneakers, long hair tied in ponytail, wearing black tee and jeans is AL.
Sandora as the toilet paper queen had to conserve her energy and had magical powers. All she had to do was to use her eye power and us minions were made to do our job. Hahaha! Actually we just wanted her to go somewhere with aircon to rest first before we call her over to start toilet papering her. But she insisted on joining us and helping here and there whenver she can. đ
So here should be more or less the final wrap to the car where the boys used a long roll of toilet paper to tuck in the dangling ends to make it look neat.
Next up, we had to toilet paper Sandora! As you can see in the previous photographs, Sandora was wearing a long veil, a white tube top and a pink shorts with slippers. But for this toilet papering process, she had to wear her prolly 4 – 5 inch high heels cos we needed the height to bring out the flare of the toilet roll. That’s Raymond and Joshua helping out with the toilet roll gown making process. Might look easy, but it’s not easy too cos the toilet paper are pretty delicate, and again if you’re too rough, you’ll cause them to break up with each other especially at the bending area stemming from the toilet roll itself.
The direction of the lines must be the same and look good, distance must be equal and stuffs like that.
We also used toilet rolls to make a halter neck strap kinda thing for Sandora, which she’s currently just hanging it around her neck while we settle the skirting part.
Now working on the back and Susu bringing in more toilet rolls for Raymond. Maybe you’d have thought actually we only need to just work on the front skirting and leave the back empty. But when we start on something, we’d like to finish the process. And you never know, maybe you might just have a moment of inspiration to shoot from an alternative angle where you need the back. So instead of wasting time then, might as well finish everything nicely first. Towards the end, we ended up having Sandora twirl herself and the flared out skirting became a figure hugging mermaid dress which was really, really beautiful. Will prolly share the toilet paper mermaid wedding gown photo on Facebook another time. đ
You might think it’s easy on Sandora to just stand there and let us do our job, but actually she was having the hardest time. Cos we started the photoshoot session during the day with the Chickens concept, and right after we were done with that scene, Sophia Chia (Sandora’s hair and make up artist) came and Sandora had to start getting made up immediately. Once done, they had to move straight to the next location for the photoshoot so she didn’t have the time to eat and only had  few sips of water. By the time we were doing the toilet roll series, it was already past midnight. Her high heels were making her feet ache, the underground carpark was stuffy, and Sandora was starting to feel unwell with giddy spells. We almost had to call it a day just when we were about done piecing the gown together, but Sandora forced herself to stay on for a little longer for us so that we can complete what we started. If not for her determination, we’d never have this series (since we’re not sure if they’d like to spend the time and effort to toilet paper the car and piece the toilet paper gown again).
We also have people asking, how many toilet rolls were used for the shoot. To be honest we really didn’t do a count, but here’s how much was prepared for the shoot. There were probably at least 45 rolls used for the gown itself and a good mix of paper towel + toilet rolls for the car.
Packing and cleaning up was another headache, but wasn’t as time consuming since we just had to grab everything and made sure we left no rubbish. đ
Hope this explains the part on was the shot real or was it photoshopped and how many toilet rolls was used for the shoot. I mean, most people nowadays will do some photoshopping work to their images. Not only photographers, but people who take selfies or post photos on instagrams etc also does “photoshop” to their photos.
There are so many photo editing apps for phone users out there that does things to make you look slimmer, skin smoother, have your blemishes removed, eyes made bigger, and some apps even allows you to add on falsies, blushers etc. I guess it depends on what you mean by the term ‘photoshop’. Heck, even adding filters to me is “photoshop”.
So maybe now let’s clarify things – yes all our photos are photoshopped, but they are as real as you can see.
We shoot in RAW, hence we will have to look through every single image shot, and individually “photoshop” them in terms of exposure correction, color treatment (or what you guys call – filters), perspective and distortion correction, cropping and adjustments.
For the pre-wedding photos, occasionally we will “photoshop” to remove objects in the photos which we have no control over during the photoshoot process, especially things which we find distracting. Could be dust spots, background signage, a street lamp or lighting fixtures. Most of the time we try to get everything right before we take the shot so that we minimise post processing work. But things like lamp post, we can’t get a handyman or electrician to help us dismantle since it’s state property.
-___-“.
We could find another angle to shoot where we don’t see the lamp post, but sometimes it just so happen that we have the perfect spot, but there’s always spoilers around.
Do we add in other elements into the photo? Like say shoot a couple against a green screen and then add them into a background of their choice? No, we don’t do that. Do we shoot a couple in the carpark and then add in a car into the picture? No, we prefer to keep it as real as possible.
That being said, we do on rare occasions add in other elements into the photo, but it would be elements which we have shot ourselves. That we call composite where we grab a photo and add it on top of another photo to make one great image, only when absolutely necessary. For example one of our all time favourite conceptualised pre-wedding photoshoot of the couple and star trail;
Star Trail Conceptualised Pre-Wedding by Raymond Phang Photography
The couple is real, campfire, tent, car, mountain, lake, sand, even the circle pattern in the sky is real. Those are star trails and we need to use long exposure so that we can capture the movement, else all you see would only be dots of stars instead of trails.
We shot the couple with the car, campfire, tent and everything else first before we shot the star trails. Cos for long exposure of 3.5-4 hours, we can’t have the couple sit extremely still and prolly not breathe for that long a time. So we had to shoot the two elements separately but on the same day, and composite them together into this final photo.
Then again, everything is as real as it is. It’s not like we grab some photos off the internet or buy some photos off photostock and add them into ours.
So once again, yes we do photoshop our photos and it depends on your definition of photoshopt, BUT, they are REAL. Not fake.
If you’re still not convinced, I have a time lapse video of the entire process toilet papering Sandora’s gown. Let us know if you’d like to see it. Heh.
As to how did Joshua and Sandora have this toilet paper concept, and was this the only shot, here you go;
Let me answer the simpler question first. Fortunately this was not the only shot despite Sandora’s aching feet and giddy spells. We managed to capture a few more photographs, and there’s even one with her twirling her body and end up the flared out skirting became a mermaid silhouette which we really love as well.
Now for the explanation on the birth of the concept;
For those who don’t already know how Raymond Phang Photography’s conceptualised pre-wedding works, it’s actually highly exclusive and strictly limited to only ten couples a year. We don’t take any or every couple who come to us, so it’s something that even with truckloads of money, you can’t buy if you are really not suitable. We rather recommend you to other photographers who can do a better job for you than to take your money and spoil the shoot. It’s as bad as marrying someone whom you don’t love at all.
Reason being, the conceptualised pre-wedding photoshoot is extremely intensive, demanding, time consuming, and couples must be very committed to the photoshoot. Most importantly, their character/personality must match a perfect fit to our criteria, and all of us at Raymond Phang Photography must be able to click with the couple.
Couple must send us a biography write up of themselves before we are able to come up with the concept. There’s no limit or restriction to the number of words or type of info included. But we do welcome details, dirty secrets, childhood fantasy, proposal stories and stuffs with lots of photo evidence. The photo evidence will give us a rough gauge of how the couple appears infront of the camera – whether are they the awkward and shy type or the fun crazy type. You can have a mundane boring 9-5 job but an exciting after work life. Your interesting story will be the ignition to start our engine.
Joshua and Sandora had too many freaking interesting stories to tell! And we enjoyed reading through every single bit of them, so much so that we wished we could shoot everything~! Unfortunately there are some aspects which will be quite impossible to represent on photos, like for example their adventure in Taipei while looking for almond milk tea and their Chinese was really bad. So they had a bit of difficulty trying to tell people what they wanted since they didn’t know what almond milk tea was called in Chinese. This bit of their adventure would be good to tell through Video, but unfortunately not the Photo bit.
So from their biography write up, we picked up on Chickens, Pranks, Tissue paper fetish and came up with the concept of the toilet paper prank to toilet paper their car and also Sandora as well. Joshua’s deep knowledge of tissue papers really amazed us. If he didn’t send us picture of this Kleenex mansize tissue, we really have no idea what’s a mansize tissue and such a thing exists!!
Initially we thought to have Sandora mummified, but we wanted something beautiful and glamorous for her – at least it’d be a contrast against the funny toilet papered car. So we ended up giving her a toilet paper gown. There was supposed to be a toilet roll tiara with toilet paper veil, but we ended up using the actual veil instead which turned out really nice too so we’re pretty satisfied.
Phew! Long chunk of verbal diarrhea! Hehehehe. To those who managed to read till the end, give yourself a pat on the back and don’t go rubbing those eyeballs!
To end this post, here’s the final photo which we posted on Facebook with Joshua the king of pranks holding onto a packet of tissue paper with Angry Bird packaging;
Have a awesomelicious week ahead!
Cheers!! đ
Love,
Angeline The Sai Gang Warrior
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