My letter to Wondermilk - Shops in Kuala Lumpur needs a new understanding

Hi Wondermilk,

I'm very upset with your reply. Frankly saying I was surprised. I'm not trying to argue here but there are shops that are glad to offer a space for normal people who wanted to leave their memories for themselves, as your reply you have made it impossible for people to do so. I'm not sure about the non-closure charges, for a normal people, without notifying wonder milk can simply walk in, have a coffee and use their DSLR to shoot their friends in your facilities, and they are not being told to stop. I'm just curious, what are the difference between us and them? Because we have asked wondermilk (just because we are nice) and wondermilk want to insert a commercial interest in our proposal. You need a clear policy between commercial and personal interest. 

We seeing your company is started to grow recently, this policy clearly has disappointed many of us. But, you are not the only company I'm sure, but I hope these companies can look further ahead because they are indeed your loyal customers, some people met new friends in wondermilk, some people fell in love, some people had such a strong memory behind which I guess you have successfully created the space for these occurrence to take place, but you also need to honor them, giving them opportunity for them to leave their memory behind. You made them having a good memory in your shop, and finally they decided to get married and you charge them Rm600 just to tell them that you should have a fair share in their memories? This is bad. I'm not sure you able to get what I am saying. 

Regardless if its a gown or a casual wear, if its for personal interest your company should offer it free for public, because your company should do some good deeds for them because you are serving them right? Unless we put your work for commercial value, wondermilk can simply sue them if you see it, not a big issue as well. However, depend how your organization see it, inviting commercial shots (depend on your vision) can simply increase your noise level for free too, free marketing, more customers, more income, more expansions. To me the return is huge. 

Or is it because of me, I'm Dennis Yap, a professional photographer, thats why you want a fair share from the couple? Well, I'm just fulfilling their goals, they are the ones that you need to serve. I'm just talking on their behalf. 

Regards,

Dennis

We Love Because - Eddie & Julia Pre-Wedding

Met Eddie in Kelly's wedding way then, I remember Eddie came over to talk to me and we were discussing about Kelly's wedding slideshow, he told me that the pictures I presented was different and he likes it. After a while Eddie called me up while I was shooting an assignment in Singapore and we met up in a shopping mall. Had some drinks and food, nice chat. Eddie and Julia are a unique match, where Julia really enjoy Eddie's company and Eddie just feel comfortable with Julia and they love food. LOL. During the shoot Eddie brought over a guy who also interested on photoshooting and 2 other friends, we all ventured into Frim where they love the greens and such. We started with a short session back in Ara Damansara a little, made some shots in Wondermilk, and got chased out by Wondermilk because we did not get permit LOL. But we got all the shots for that location, I can't share with you the shots captured in Wondermilk because I think it is against their rules if I use those shots for commercial or blog purposes. Maybe next time. :) Thanks Eddie and Julia, many encounters were had gone through, they are one of the couple I will remember, well actually I remember most of them, and writing down all those memories will enable me to recall them.

The Unspoken Laughters - Yeow Hwee & Lilian Wedding Day in Singapore

Really thanks to Yeow Hwee & Lilian for having me. I remember the first time I met this couple from Singapore was through Facebook, and right at the moment I found something quite in common with Lilian and me was we both like the book that people seldom read, which was the book by Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Right at the moment I felt that Lilian might be a strong thinker and quite excited to cover her. 

Lilian is a very nice person, it was nice to put me up in Mandarin Orchard, which is where the wedding dinner was held. Both of them came to see me a day before and we discussed a little and Lilian wanted a short portrait session in between. Both of them is lovely and sweet, and loving the color theme. Usually people have stereotypes about people working in Barclays but they are just fun, though I believe the nerdy part is still with them hehe. Fall in love with many of their shots, all of them are just so real and genuine. The most important is they we really had lots of fun that day, not really like a procedures and such. Also loving the venue they had in Singapore, good choice for selecting Mandarin Orchard, though running around in that venue require some skills but its all worked out pretty well. I was shooting with a videographer that day and he appreciate my slideshow that day saying it is different from the others. I really honour his words because appreciations is hard to come by from a fellow Singaporeans. Loving every part of it, especially Lilian has this really sharp eyes, when you see her in real person, you might get the first impression that she might be a fierce lady but in fact after a while, the sharp eyes that she has is her most attractive part. Bravo Yeow Hwee~ I really wish to see both of you again.

Canon Sponsored Booth - Romance in Fate 2012 in Midvalley

2012 Bridal Fair in Mid Valley sponsored by Canon Malaysia

Enjoyed my very first appearance in a bridal fair. Before this, friends have been asking me why I want to waste my time here because in common understanding its a "totally different market (the bridal shop market)", people will be asking for big discount and I bet many photographers have been talking about it. At first I was very nervous if I put myself in a weird environment by promising Canon, but after a while I have this feeling: To be in a wedding fair is cool, but to be in a bridal fair is SUPER cool! Because it shows that Malaysia is seeing our existence and furthermore its free so I am just going to display my pictures and see if I am able to get any attention. I'm very glad I am part of this unique playground and I've learned a lot here from simply listen to what my visitors has to say and express. Thanks to Canon Malaysia, mom and dad, Su Li, Chew Yen, Wayney, Jeff and Cliff for all the help needed and run the preparation in a very short interval. I still remember the time required to prepare for this unique event with limited time. I am so glad that I have so many friends who helped me, most thankful to my parents who helped me all the way, even accompany me for setting the place, and Jeff given many ideas, LOL, we had so many ideas but we just do not have time and finally we came out with this adhoc solution. With the help from Cliff as well. Sometimes miracles just happened, I believe it. And yes, I can consider myself a lucky guy. 

Before Day 1 - Enjoyed my very first appearance in a bridal fair. Thanks to Cliff from Happy Fish for giving your hand on the setup. Before this, friends have been asking me why I want to be here because in common understanding its a "different market (the bridal shop market)", people will be asking for big discount and I bet many photographers have been talking about it. At first I was very nervous if I put myself in a weird environment by promising Canon, but after a while I have this feeling: To be in a wedding fair is cool, but to be in a bridal fair is SUPER cool! Because it shows that Malaysia is seeing our existence and furthermore its free so I am just going to display my pictures and see if I am able to get any attention. I'm very glad I am part of this unique playground and I've learned a lot here from simply listen to what my visitors has to say and express.

Day 2 - This is me with my little flyer... I heard from Canon that numerous "neighbors" were not very pleased with this little paper and it created a big discussion among them, and now I guess everyone know who I am, its a way to say hi to new friends I guess. Please do accept the little peanut as your friend. :D

Dennis Yap Photography 2012 Promo Video

Its so hard to select pictures for this video, but here it is~ my first promo video after few years... Actually there is a title for this slide, its called "A Woman's Symphony", 送给女人的交响曲. It describes all aspect of women's emotion when they in love. When I shoot more pictures I began to understand women more, they seemed complicated but there are a lot of sacrifices when they began to give in themselves to their love ones, sometimes they'll feel confused, missing their love ones, submissive, sweet, thoughtful, hopeful, looking forward, forgiving, etc, to spend their life with the one they love. Love can be in many different stages, and in life it is indeed complicated. What I hope to present is their purest part in them, which many time in real life we felt so hard to express. With photography I discovered a lot in them, many tears have dropped, many stories have heard, they all are unique individuals with a unique theme. This is one of the thing that kept my passion going. Thanks to everyone of you!

Dennis Yap Photography featured in NTV7 Evening News

Dear all, its been a fantastic year in 2012, I received a big present from NTV7 on valentines day! I was surprised that they have added a few clips about me in the video clip, a big thank you to NTV7 for featuring me. Its my second time to be featured on TV. The first one was 15 years ago LOL. Well the feature was great, just only I found that I have gained many weight compared to the first one. Time flies pretty fast.

Before you click the link, maybe I can write some of my stories behind the words that I have spoken. When I was a little kid (don't worry, I won't bored you with a long story :p), my dad had told me if I score good in my result, I can reach to the moon, he said that was many people's dream, and it made me feel like I wanted to be an astronaut. And over the years I have been visioning this similar trait, of course in the old days, if anyone that is good in physics, math and art, of course people will ask me to pursue science. Over the years, schools have been honoring more on nerdy people than artistic people. So I have been treating art as my hobby, I love to draw, to take pictures, to read, to sing, I did many things but my main trait was science. And people have been telling me that, those people that studied science will have a better future. And schools have been educating me that professionals can earn more. Nobody have asked me to be a CEO. :p So I venture myself and become an engineer, did my studies in the States and earned a degree in Aerospace Engineering. Worked in an Airline for 7 years and ended my carreer as a Contracts Manager in the Engineering Department to pursue something what I really feel like doing, which is ART.

You know, when I was young, I wanted to achieve a lot of things, but all those things are about myself. My dream was to be nominated as one of the TEN OUTSTANDING YOUNG MALAYSIAN by doing a lot of innovative work in a corporate world. But overtime, my perception changed, after 30s which I had persued the knowledge I wanted, the experience I have gained, I began to think WHAT CAN I CONTRIBUTE TO THE WORLD. And I began to realized many things and pursue photography as my new carreer. Pictures can speak many things, after went through my process of switching my career, I noticed that many people are relectant to change and live their lives with their dreams being abandoned. And by doing photography I have received mails from young individuals about what should they do in their lives after they graduate. Its not like in the old days where people have less selections in their lives. Therefore my vision had turned to young individuals, with my experience and persistantcy, I hope my work and my profession can inspire more young individuals to look back about themselves and lead them to a brighter side of life. I have also found that we do not have a lot of Hero's in Malaysia, which is someone that we inspired and able learn from his vision, someone that willing to sacrifice like Ghandi and Mother Teresa, someone that can spent their whole life searching for a clue to cure cancer. And many individuals have lost their spirit and become materialistic. Most that have been inspired have left to overseas. Therefore I made myself as one, I do not think I am the best one but I have pictures as my tool. Hopefully with pictures I am able to tell individuals a message behind, something positive that can make their heart shine, something happy, something that can make the couple love each other more, something that able to create an impact in their lives. Hopefully in the future, we can see more individuals with spirit, and work extra hard to move a step forward. This will remain as my dream!

Hope you love this video clip. Thanks everyone that have seen it, and experienced it. Thanks for supporting my views and vision, and glad that many of you have loved my photography. I also want to give a big thanks to my mom and dad that have supported me, they did not stop me for pursuing my dream, but giving me freedom to prove myself. Thanks to them, hugz.

For this year of the dragon, I am open to educational organizations from high schools to colleges to invite me for a speech and allow me to help student finding their own world in their lives. Below here is one of the speech I have did last year. This is my little vision for this year aside from my photography work. To inspire.

2012 Valentine's Day Couple Voting Contest

Its been another wonderful year in 2011 and I promised to launched another valentines day couple voting contest for 2012 if my fans had reached a number above 30,000. And surprisingly it did, and we did another round of contest this year in 2012. Thanks for all 36 couples that had participated for this years voting contest. Congratz to Jared and Zengie (couple number 2) for winning this prize. As promised, the couple that gets the highest vote will win a free couple portrait worth Rm1,800. The contest goes on for 10 days and we had just announced the winner couple of hours ago. 

People may wonder why I would run a contest like this, its really simple, as a photographer that shoot mainly weddings I have witness numerous love stories, for couples that have not decided or have already went through the process of marriage, I hope I am able to extend their love, or to those that have not participated in this contest, I hope they are able to feel the true stories from each and every couple that have shared their stories. By doing this I hope I am able to use this hopeful day on valentines to promote positive thinking on relationships. There are people that enjoyed most in relationships but there are people that are also suffering from relationship, or lost in some way, I hope this campaign can build their confidence to look forward in their relationship, or to those that do not have a partner, might gather those love stories and have a positive mind in their future relationships. Its just mainly something I would feel like doing every year to help or to heal the souls of humanity. 

In this contest I asked couple to send in their stories, write a short story about them, and also state why they love my pictures. And I am surprised and learned a lot how each individual perceive my pictures, below are the statement they have sent in. 

"I Love Dennis Yap Photography because his photo full of feeling, every photos have different feel for me. For the wedding photo, I can feel the bless and happiness between the bridegroom and the bride. I like Dennis Yap Photography's photos! ♥"

"I love Dennis Yap Photography because you are the best amongst the best."

"I Love Dennis Yap Photography because....your technique of shooting is very nice and modern!"

"Why i love dennis yep's photography because i have an excellent taste ;)."

"I Love Dennis Yap Photography because his photo full of imagination and meaning, bringing out feeling in every photo, and the best Photographer!"

"I Love Dennis Yap Photography because the photo that he take give me diffrent feeling and got his own style."

"I Love Dennis Yap Photography because, i saw your photography as a way of feeling, of touching & loving. 

What you have caught on your film is captured forever... it remember little things, long after you have forgotten everything. i love your pieces of art & passion” ♥

"I love Dennis Yap Photography because he is "THE Great". ( Photos better than words)"

"I love Dennis Yap Photography because your photography is meaningful to me and it just like story-telling. I love to sense on photography as I love photography too and I find the feeling of natural on your most photography. Your photography is amazing all the way and I just love it."

"I love Dennis Yap photography because we able to find ourselves in the picture :D"

"I Love Dennis Yap Photography because he shoot an extremely lovely couple pictures, heart melt!"

"I love dennis yap photography because...He manage to capture the true feelings of the moment...the moment may have passed, but the picture brings the feelings back...^^ i'm luvin' it."

"I love Dennis Yap Photography because his photography full of feeling when i review the photos taken by him. Besides, his photography create the sense of natural beauty, that why i like his photography."

"I Love Dennis Yap Photography because he manages to capture real moments in pictures that make you feel as if you were there when it happened."

"I love dennis yap photography because the photos being taken by him is an art and able to tell a story."

"I love Dennis Yap Photography because all the pictures was taken not only for fun,,but Dennis Yap can give someone feels very extraordinary and the pictures taken not only meant to get happy but it is meant on realizing some moral ethics or attitude for people to get self motivate..(^_^)v"

"I LOVE DENNIS YAP PHOTOGRAPHY BECAUSE HE CAN CAPTURE THE GREAT PHOTO WHICH FULL OF FEELING AND NATURE OF ♥ LOVE ♥!"

"We like Dennis Yap Photograph because his pictures are so true and lively, can explain a story without adding words."

"And I love DennisYap Photography for his photos - shine as the true events. Truly Inspiring!"

"I love Dennis Yap Photography is because every single picture taken, every single detail concentrated on, leaves a footprint of memories forever "

"Because we are married and you are the chosen photographer for the BIGGEST day of our lives and we love your work! What else can be better than these reasons!"

"I love Dennis Yap Photography because I wish to use his service in our wedding album.His photos are so lively and the photos explain everything without our explanation!! Amazing!!"

"I Love Dennis Yap Photography because he can captured all the right moments with the right feelings."

"I love Dennis Yap Photography because every picture taken looks natural, full of live and romance."

"I Love Dennis Yap Photography because of how it captured that very moment. ♥"

"I love Dennis Yap Photography because your photography is meaningful and beautiful. Anyway, i just love it."

"I Love Dennis Yap Photography because the pictures captured by him do paint a thousand words."

"I Love Dennis Yap Photography because your pictures so creative, very special, also very interesting."

"I Love Dennis Yap Photography is definitely because his pictures speaks louder than words and it shows every single detail of happiness and love in it. Thumbs Up !"

"I love you from the sincere of my heart...I love Dennis Yap Photography because his photo full happiness and meaning.I love it..."

"I love Dennis Yap Photography because his photos make me cried ~~~"

Thanks for all your comments; it really had melt my heart. For the reason I am doing photography is simply to tell the world that pictures can be more than just beauty. It can speak, made someone realize something, and can also heal or extend their love.

There are also an obstacle that I have faced for this year's voting contest, I have also learned that facebook voting contest has emerged to a different scenario, which is the question of fairness. You know what I want in this contest, is simply to be fair with everyone and I felt that I have great responsibility to make it as fair as possible because I am dealing with 36 lovely couples here, simply do not want to disappoint anyone. 

To define the true winner, the winner has to be able to generate enough true vote from their friends or from friend's friend, this should be the true meaning of the contest, which is to get the highest support from their friends. However, dealing with heteroscedasticity in facebook is never easy. If you do not know the meaning of heteroscedasticity, it is simply the most extraordinary numbers in a statistic group. Everyday I have been monitoring the fans that have 'liked' the pictures. The software I have been using to monitor like statistic is called "Flirt". Flirt is a software created for only mac machines to monitor facebook events and it serve viral focus to gather specific likes for marketing purpose in both macro and micro monitoring. Out from Flirt I noticed these specific events as shown in my pictures below.

I was a little nervous when it comes to this because these are irregulars and I also found numerous likes were generated from duplicate facebook page which has only 1 member in the page. When I reasearch more indept on knowing where does all these duplicates were coming from, I have learned that there has been many competitions that was organized by large organizations which is considered unfair. Such as this page over here that I found to be unfairly organized, in this page the winner had gathered 36,000 likes and with total of 90,000 likes but the page has gathered only 11,000 fans, strange right? Which means that there are a great number of ghost voters. For my case I have had 17,000 likes in total, with 4,800 increased on members. 

I have been pretty unpleased with facebook and it had somewhat discouraged me on whether to launch another couple portrait contest next year. But since I have launched this contest, I am set to develop a way that will be fair for everyone. So below is my approach.

In order to create numbers from viral reach behavior, you gotta know the 'like' performance of this competition. For example, the biggest fact from getting likes is how much effort the individual or the group of individual contributes to get likes, and versus the likes they have gathered. It is a known fact that if the main contestant that have shared the like invites to their own group of friends will more likely to get more likes, and their friends that have shared their pictures will more likely to get less likes. This is a known fact from Facebook experience. Therefore, the more days the competition had run, it is more likely that their effort versus like is less. And therefore the contestants have to use more effort to gather likes. In this scenario I called it 'like integrity'. Like integrity is a way to measure what you will expect from their effort and their actual 'likes' must be lower than the expected due to like deterioration from viral reach. In a competition like this, it is abnormal to see contestant that have spared less effort and able to generate great amount of likes, this is due to the viral reach performance. Of course, it also depend on how many friends each friends has in their account and therefore I have monitored and calculated the 'like expectation' from this competition; which also means the average number of likes gathered from each invite off from this contest. The contest is all about who you ask for likes, if individual had asked for likes from an unknown 'power like' group, then the viral reach will then failed and many ghost likes will be contributing and looses its like integrity, means that irregular activities occurred. Like integrity is a way to measure how likely people will be interested to like your page and support your contest.

The individual from 'power like' group that have liked the contestant will expect the contestant to like back, so I spent time to delete those invites in order to discourage them from doing so.

If you able to know what is the inclusion method, you will know how to gather 'like integrity'. For this I used a weibull method from statistic to measure how many ghost likes as a start. And this is my formula, the number of 1 to 10 are critical numbers used from risk analysis measured from mean of number of likes per invite. To gather a weibull number one has to capture the like contributed on each day and also percentage of ghost likes from Flirt because it will be tough to monitor them after next day.

Like Integrity = [Weibull = (1)/(1+irregulars) from life data analysis, thanks to Flirt and Reliasoft.]x[Invite performance = 0.1 to 1]x[Number of actual like]

So thats my effort for one single contest, and the winner gets a free portrait session from me. :D So much effort had been put in place, in order to voice out one VISION. 

Congratulate Jared & Zengie, you guys have proved to have the biggest support from your friends and family, I will not disappoint both of you. ^_^

The Seal of God - Basil & Clare Church Wedding Ceremony in St Thomas More

This was one of my most memorable wedding assignment, before the wedding day NTV7 gave me a call if I have any assignment coming up where they would like to feature them in their evening news, so I approached Basil and Clare. In the early morning while Basil was dressing up, he received a call from NTV7 said that they would like to feature them and they said yes. It will a little funny because both Basil and Clare is english educated and the NTV7 news is in mandarin. 

It was quite a happy day for Basil and Clare, the gate crash was a short one since everyone is not so young anymore, but his love and sincerity for Clare is touching indeed, and first time I saw a guy kneel down right beside Clare's room, and Clare gave a sweet smile back to Basil.

Love the Church, both of them had a very religious ceremony in St Thomas More in USJ, the church was quite new and cozy. Just only the priest was quite particular on the shoot so we just listen to him, glad to have Cliff shooting with me that day so that I could get some shots from different sides.

And both Basil and Clare had a small interview session right after the ceremony, and me as well LOL, I was surprised, but since I given a chance to say something to public, I did used my given time to say something I strongly felt about in my career. Which is to inspire more young individuals to realise their dream. Thanks for Basil and Clare for having me, both of you really have a sweet and loving character, and I still remember that Basil said that he fell for Clare on first sight. Thats quite motivating hehe....

Recruitment: Searching for that unique candidate

我想表白一个很明确的条件，寻找那个正确的人选。然而我用中文的原因很简单，就是他必须是会念中文的。你看到的首要条件可能对你来说很奇怪或新鲜，但这是我要寻找的伙伴，寻找这伙伴的确是有一点困难，有些人用一生的时间来寻找，很多时候是要看缘分；但其实是一些蛮普通又独特的条件，如果你是喜欢艺术的你，肯定知道我在要求什么，也明白我做艺术的精神着重于什么。

工作岗位：1. Designer + Editor (Priorty／业余,有当全职的心愿), 2. Photographer (Less Priority／业余，有当全职的心愿).

如果你对我的艺术感兴趣，不妨看看你是否符合这一系列的要求，也许我们可以在艺术创作的空间有火花。

1. 你一定不可以是一个拜金主义者

2. 你对艺术一定要有自己独特的梦想与热诚

3. 你在艺术创作一定要有自己的思维，要有想启发我的心愿，可是不能太过于执着

4. 你必须要有自己的嗜好

5. 你必须要有肯为艺术牺牲的性格

6. 你必须是一个喜欢压力的人，又可以在生活里寻找喜悦

7. 你必须要对生活存有自己的态度，能够自我学习的一分子

8. 你必须是个喜欢音乐的人

9. Located in Kuala Lumpur

如果你不愿成为在艺术领域的牺牲品，想要在做艺术的生活里寻找喜悦，也许你就是我要寻找的人，不妨让我让你发亮。如果你有以上的精神，请email我你的resume。我们在一杯咖啡的时间洽谈，看看我们是否存有共识。希望我可以找到你，谢谢你啦！

Promotions on Signature Weddings Magazine

Haha... I love this promotion! Its going to be fun. Inside Signature Weddings you can find this small little promotions hidding on the last page inside Jan 2012 issue. If you are a frequent cityville player, good news! Anyone that are able to franchise Dennis Yap Photography in their Cityville are able to receive a 10% off on either one package of mine~ The shop must be placed in the middle of your city.

At first Signature Wedding paused and asked why would I made a promotion like this one, I told them that my goal is to make them laugh and see me as a cheerful photographer. Well, its quite funny afteralll, say you are looking a wedding magazine with your serious eyes and you saw this promotion with wierd requirements. But believe me, I mean it LOL. Its not a joke. :p