A Sweet Mistake

Imagine having to decide on a location within less than 5 minutes, with the choice narrowed down to architectural and a little bit of green landscape? Yes that’s exactly what went down last Sunday where I was supposed to be shooting a post wedding session at KLPAC with Marissa and Aqif (I shot their solemnization the previous Saturday). Actually we were supposed to do the session on the next day (last week’s Sunday) but I suddenly got an invitation to shoot a baby shower in Singapore so I had to reschedule their session to the next available day.

So basically Marissa was the one approaching me for the shoot and we were supposed to meet before the solemnization but she was caught up with something and only Aqif could make it to the meeting. I was quite nervous in the beginning because I rarely meet the couple before their wedding day so I had no expectation and experience in that department. The meeting went for a little longer than 2 hours but we only talked about the wedding for like 20% of the time. We really hit it off because apparently Aqif has a lot of things going on with his life and those things really caught my interest. I mean, a pilot, an aerial and landscape photographer, a project manager? How could I hold myself from talking one topic to another right? So from the meeting, we got really comfortable with each other which I think was a good thing to have.

On the wedding day itself, I got to the hotel where Marissa was getting ready early and because I had a session that morning in that area. I was quite tired and need to recharge. She offered me to rest and if that didn’t sound like a dream comes true, I don’t know what else. But obviously I could not just sleep because it’s in my nature to keep it professional with the client and people were coming in and out of the room so it was quite hectic. We ended up having a long conversation; how they met, how long have they been together, what she’s doing and so many more questions (we even got to the personal topics).

Enough about the wedding day. So last Sunday, we scheduled the session to be at 9am but they had a little bit of problem with the preparation so they got to the KLPAC around 10am. While waiting for Aqif to find for parking, an aunty approached me and Marissa and asked us whether we got the permission to shoot there or not. Marissa told her that we did not because Aqif used to shoot there before and there wasn’t any permission needed. Just about Aqif got to us, a guard came and told us to get the permit and explained how the rule has changed recently. So instead of paying RM500 to shoot about an hour or two, we decided to look for another place.

Mind you that we were in the middle of KL city and unfortunately I rarely had any session schedule in KL other than in Perdana Botanical Garden which is usually so packed with people in the morning. We were running out of ideas but suddenly I was reminded of Sultan Abdul Samad bulding from Mas Angelina’s photos.

So we drove there instead and had a terrible time finding for parking. We also were not aware that there was like a motor racing thing going on on the road in between where we parked and the actual place we were supposed to shoot at. So we had to take a detour and go around the track to cross the road. It was almost 11am that we started shooting but luck was really on our side. The sun was hiding behind the thick clouds but it was still pretty bright and no harsh light (only that they were misting the river at the beginning of the session so we had additional prop to work around with). I was already sweating a bucket from the walk to the location but as soon as I got to scan a few possible spots, nothing else mattered.

The session went pretty quickly as I was so excited to be shooting there for the first time. There were so many nice spots with bright walls and a little bit of green. The big trees by the river gave a really cool blurry effect for the background and Marissa and Aqif were really great. They were so spontaneous and on board with any ideas that I uttered to them, although it might sound a little bit crazy to do in public with people passing by but they just really hit if off. Shout out to Mars and Aqif for being patient with me. Lesson learned: we should really check if the location needs permission or not, else we might end up shooting at bad spots (if we are not lucky like this time around). Anyway, here are some of my favorite shots from the day.