wfp - Grant Corban Photography Sdn Bhd

24 October 2023

Pulau Redang Scuba Diving Trip

Sunny Day on Pulau Redang at the Coral Resort

Arrived on a sunny day at the Coral Resort on Redang

The swimming pool at the Coral Resort in Pulau Redang

Beach front at the Coral Resort

Stormy day at the end of the season on Redang

I went to Pulau Redang for a Scuba diving trip last weekend. These photos are taken with the iPhone so saturation, sharpness and quality are a bit “Applely”. Needed to go for the trip to finally get my Scuba licence. I nearly completed it 12-13 years ago but due to other commitments I had to drop it. A bit of a shame as I had completed 5 open water dives around Tulai and Malang already with a group that trains in the CMAS qualification. I wish I had pursued it as most people don’t know what it is and it’s certainly more exclusive and less commercially oriented than PADI. But both work.

Well that aside, I needed to be retrained and complete my dives again and PADI was the quickest and easiest to do. Due to the impending monsoon closing in it had to be done by last weekend because it’s the end of the season and the resorts and dive centres were all closing down. Diving season is now closed until March next year I believe.

Water was not super clear but it did clear up to about 10m. Completed 5 dives on the increasingly choppy sea (2 other divers got sea sick) and managed to see some reef sharks, puffer fish, stingrays and moray eels amongst other things. The morays were LARGE. One of the sharks was as well. Black tipped reef sharks grow to a length of about 1.6m and one of them was likely very close to this size.

The day I arrived it was splendid weather but once the weather closed in…well you can see from the last photo above.

Getting there: FLY. I was told I should take the bus. Did that on the way up and the 15 hour trip was murderous. I “burned” the return and took a flight back with Berjaya to Subang. To me it’s a no brainer.

Where to Stay: The Coral resort is nice. IÂ don’t like slumming it. So it was an easy choice. 3x meals a day are included and the drinks at the bar are reasonably priced.

OK that’s it…I gotta go back to editing.

24 October 2023

Wilfred and Chintia’s Wedding in Pekanbaru, Sumatra.

Beautiful flowers in the church in Pekanbaru, Indonesia

Just back yesterday from covering a church wedding in Pekanbaru, Sumatra, Indonesia. Saw lots of friends from City Harvest Church in Subang Jaya as most of the friends in attendance know the bride and groom from their student days studying in Sunway/Taylors colleges. Pastor Kevin from City Harvest Subang was in attendance and made mention that it was the biggest reunion of the Indonesian contingent from City Harvest. All the old leaders and many familiar faces from many years ago when we covered Pastor Kevin’s own wedding.

Pekanbaru: The bride and her beautiful bridesmaids — The bride and her beautiful bridesmaids

The bridesmaids leading the bride to the altar

Peaknbaru wedding: Pastor Kevin from City Harvest Church conducted the ceremony — Pastor Kevin from City Harvest Church conducted the ceremony

wedding portrait photographer pekanbaru — A portrait of the beautiful couple, Wilfred and Chintia

24 October 2023

Super Fun Chinese Tea Ceremony with a difference

Chinese wedding tea ceremony in Kajang with VSOP

This is going to be a fun post. Last Sunday’s wedding in Kajang. Chinese tea ceremonies run the whole gamut of emotions. Sometimes they are just outrageously fun! This was certainly one of them. I strongly believe weddings should be F-U-N. In this case the traditional Chinese Tea ceremony was an opportunity for some early morning hijinks in the form of Wine, Brandy, Coffee mix and some outrageously large beer jugs! Well, I will let the photos speak for themselves. Fantastic.

Product placement. Still waiting on the sponsorship money.

Drinks are served

The bar keeper

A brandy connoisseur

Cognac does a fine job as a stand in for tea.

Time for some red wine

Red wine adds that special something

Very nicely lit. 3x flashes bounced

I kept thinking it was a bit like Christian communion

More wine!

There can be too much of a good thing. In this case beer jugs filled with TEA!

Getting romantic

Coffee sir? Some tea will wash that right away!

23 October 2023

Wedding at Restoran Fei Chui Kajang

Main wedding banquet table Restoran Fei Chui in Kajang

The Front entrance of Restoran Fei Chui in Kajang. Lots of parking below and behind.

We covered a Chinese wedding in Kajang over the last two weekends. I didn’t know of Restoran (restaurant) Fei Chui, nor that it was such a capacious venue. I think it is busy with weddings most weekends as it is likely THE major wedding banquet restaurant venue in the Kajang area. Very good banquet experience. The food was good (not always the case at wedding banquets) primarily because they are a restaurant and not a hotel, and the couple and their friends were great fun.

Beautiful wedding floral centre piece – photographed with off camera flashes controlled by radio. You can see two of them firing in this shot.

Available light photo of main wedding banquet table at Restoran Fei Chui in Kajang — Same shot with available light. One of the reasons I shoot with remote control off camera flash is because some clients complain their skin colours are off and want me to photoshop it to look natural. Sometimes that’s just impossible to do. Everyone’s taste is different. There is no right or wrong with this.

View from the stage. I think there were 70 tables in total!

23 October 2023

Peter and Akiko’s wedding at the Datai, Langkawi

I have been moving all of my older weddings from decaying DVD’s onto a new server and have been coming across some real gems of weddings that we have covered over the past 15 years(!) I realise now that when I moved from my old HTML 1.0 web site to wordpress that hundreds of my older wedding posts never followed us along! Ouch! So I am busy picking out some of them for reposting as time permits. This wedding is from December 2005. Back then we were shooting with the Nikon D2x and Canon 20D. Just viewing the images today I realise just how far camera sensors have come! Visible noise in ISOs as low as 400. Back then we were still transitioning from film so it wasn’t a concern, but in light of what we have today…wow! Now the tech talk is out of the way let’s talk about this wedding.

Peter and Akiko are members of the Malaysian Philharmonic orchestra. They are still there with them 8 years on so do look for them when you visit the MPO! Their wedding was at the Datai Resort in Langkawi. We have covered a few weddings there and I do hope to put more up as time permits. Peter is Slovakian, and Akiko Japanese. They decided on the Datai as it is a classy resort and neutral ground for both families. Peter’s family flew out from Slovakia while Akikos came from Japan. It was a small and intimate wedding. The Datai did a great job with very tasteful arrangement of flowers and the dinner setting. Akiko’s good friend Maho, and Peter’s brother Miro also attended. Both are also in the MPO and it turned out were courting. We covered their wedding when their turn came about! More on that in a future posting.