portraits

Another Day at Liger

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Some of the many shots from an events photography shoot at Liger Leadership Academy outside of Phnom Penh. The photo shoot coincided with a group of visiting American journalists who had flown in for a special tour of the school, with the students pretty much being the guides. A combination of capturing the kids in the act for the Liger website, as well as loosely staged portraits for inclusion in the journalist's stories (The Sydney Morning Herald among others).

The last time I was shooting at Liger was around 2 to 3 years ago, the young kids I remember have turned into confident young adults. A unique school in an excellent study and living environment, perhaps the only one like it in Cambodia.

Portrait Photography in Cambodia

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Still a work in progress, additional Cambodian portraits and refinements of existing portraits can be seen in the Dreamyland gallery. I plan to expand the number of images and diversity of subjects, also to refine the technique.

Big shout out to Bunsak But on the retouching and post production end. We hope to exhibit the series one day.

ANZ Royal commercial shoot

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Commercial photography works I shot for ANZ this August in Phnom Penh. Again a pleasant experience working with their marketing team and the River Orchid team, professional and easy going photo shoots. Makes my job so much easier.

Phirith Uch was art directing again and did the layout design. Producer Seathan Pom, Srey Toiche did the makeup. As always my photo assistant Miss Tauch Lon doing the mans work, lifting, operating and placing my strobes where I want them. A nice choice of pro talents played by ANZ staff as well.

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Portrait photography at Liger Learning Centre

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I was recently hired to shoot a project during some of the hottest days yet this year, even hot for the Cambodian hot season, temperatures were up to 40C during this portrait photography session. My subjects were the talented students and staff at Liger Learning Centre in Ta Khmao district south of Phnom Penh, the heat didn't seem to bother the students, fans and surrounding foliage at the school grounds helped keep things a bit cooler.

The center is a charity foundation providing a proper rounded education to underprivileged children from around Cambodia. Out of around 1200 students aged 8 to 9, just 50 are accepted onto the 4 year programme. An exceptional school and a cool bunch of kids to work with, all of who could speak great English and hardly needed direction for the shots.

We also shot some architectural photography as well as groups, activities and class action photos. It was a nice change to the usual events and commercial photography. The photographs are to be used for the new Liger website currently in production. We shot the portrait photographs as requested in landscape format, outdoors. All the portraits were taken under a skylight on the roof of the school's main building. This diffused the otherwise extreme direct sunlight and created a soft natural look against the foliage of the surrounding gardens.

Below are some random samples from the portrait sessions.

Kampot Pepper Farm

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Perched between sea and mountains at Cambodia’s bucolic south-eastern coast, Kampot’s pepper plantations benefit from a unique soil and ideal climatic conditions for growing. But it is not only the rich minerals in the soil, the right amount of rainwater and sunshine that performs the magic. It is also the farmers’ traditional cultivation methods that play a crucial role.

Most of the farms started replanting about ten years ago. Nowadays some twenty tonnes are harvested every season on a total area of about ten hectares.

It remains a mere fraction of the 2,000 tonnes that were grown before the Khmer Rouge regime destroyed the fields, a fatal combination of plummeting world prices of pepper and nearly two decades of war and conflict saw Kampot pepper being wiped off the international market.

Today the farmers and traders are upbeat about the future. The once-forgotten king of pepper is fast on its way to becoming Cambodia’s first export product with Geographical Indication (GI) status such as Parmasan from Italy and Champagne from France.

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