Back when I just started photography as a hobby in Singapore, I used to consistently shoot strangers in the streets of Singapore. I would try and come up with personal projects that would push me out of my comfort zone (as if shooting in the streets weren’t challenging enough). One of these projects was my…
NUS is Singapore’s flagship university and is one of the top-ranked universities globally. Each year, NUS launches an Admissions campaign highlighting about 10 young alumni who have excelled in their respective fields, serving as inspiration to new blood. The goal is to capture environmental portraits of these accomplished individuals based on their area of expertise…
My family and I have moved to the good ol’ U.S. of A. Singapore has been a great home for the past 15 years. In fact, it was in Singapore that my photography was inspired, nurtured, and sustained – from shooting in the streets, to shooting corporate headshots, and creating images for ad campaigns. But…
It’s almost halfway through the year 2023 and I’ve been blessed enough to work on challenging projects that, despite my 10 years experience, always manage keep my toes up.
I was commissioned by a design agency based in Chicago to photograph the activities and facilities of Abbott Singapore. They were producing the Annual Report for Abbott and needed to capture authentic and candid moments as they were featuring stories about Abbott employees globally. We did a 1-day recce, then a 2-day shoot around the…
Every year, the National University of Singapore (NUS) launches their admissions publicity campaign that feature young NUS alumnus who stand out in their field and serve as inspiration to new blood. As luck is on my side, I was commissioned for the 3rd year in a row to be involved with the campaign. The brief…
I went back to my roots with candid street photography for this client work… International Community School (ICS) commissioned me to document their usual school activities to create an image library they can use for their marketing collaterals. For 4 days, we went from one class to another, shooting their everyday liveliness capturing that energy…
I received an email from the Creative Director of an advertising agency based in Boston. They were working on their client’s rebrand and launch of an ad campaign for a new breakthrough diagnostics for women. The objective was to take close-up portraits of women to get the message across different audiences and they referred to…
I love shooting portraits. It’s always a challenge to photograph a stranger and make that person look natural, relaxed, in the moment… and at the same time account for good light, apt background, and a conducive atmosphere. So when I was commissioned by Standard Chartered to shoot 50 people across Singapore, London, and New York,…
Earlier this year, I was involved in the production of a coffee table book that aimed to show how 50 companies in Singapore implement innovative work-life programmes for their employees. This was produced by TAFEP (Tripartite Alliance for Fair & Progressive Employment Practices) as part of the SG50 celebrations, with the help of Brilliant Agency.…
I was commissioned by Havas Worldwide Singapore to shoot portraits of 3 volunteers from Youth Corps Singapore for their print ad campaign. The look-and-feel of the images needed to be natural and authentic, raw and in black & white – real people with real stories. The ad is a call for young people from 16…
This shoot was one of the biggest project I’ve worked on. It all started when a US-based advertising agency emailed me asking if they could acquire the license to use one of the images from my Portraits of Strangers project. They wanted to use it as part of an image refresh for their client –…
One of the images that are on display in the Don’t Smile exhibit is a collage of 105 non-smiling faces, all of which were photographed through a studio setup in tcc in a span of 3 Saturdays. This involved an open call for faces… and all they had to do was look in the camera…
Ever since I started photography, it has always been a dream to have my photographs printed up large and posted on the wall. Just last week, that dream came true with the Don’t Smile! Photo Exhibition, my first solo show featuring images from my Portraits of Strangers project.
Jim Rogers is interviewed for Fortune Magazine, October 2013 issue and the magazine published my photograph of him taken in the middle of Singapore Chinatown. This was actually one of the outtakes from my shoot with Jim for his book cover. This is one of my favorite shots I got of him so I’m really…
One of the more interesting experiences I had with client work lately was shooting candids around a school. I was commissioned by Nexus International School to take photos of their students in action to use for their website. It was almost like shooting street, but done inside the campus.
Of all my years of shooting in the street with my trusty DSLR workhorse, I’ve slowly come up with a wish list of features that would make it easier for me to capture keepers. The top 2 on the list are: a smaller camera body, and a full-frame sensor. So when I heard about the…
A huge chunk of my street photos are those taken in the rain. So I was pretty excited when I eventually got to do an ad shoot for a rain wear brand called Totes.
Last month, I was commissioned to do an editorial for Mia, a female weekly magazine in Spain. They were working on a feature about the best educational systems in the world, and Singapore seems to be at the top along with Quebec and Helsinki. They interviewed a Spanish family from each of these places to…
Lately, I was looking through my archive of street photos taken from the past 3 months. As I browsed among the sea of non-keeper shots, I occasionally came across photos where the subject was looking straight at me with a certain disconcerted look. I thought maybe it would be interesting to put these together into…
I love shooting in the rain. If it’s a weekend and it’s raining, you’ll probably see me with an umbrella on one hand, and my camera on the other, walking (sometimes running) around Orchard Road taking photos of strangers as they run from one mall to another. Often times, it’s an adrenaline rush for me.…
I was emailed by Margery a few weeks ago, saying “My husband and I need a Christmas photo, but are not the type to pose in matching sweaters in a studio. All we really need is one good shot of us in the midst of the chaos that is Orchard Road. We are after a…
One of my dream projects when I started my interest in portrait photography was to shoot different people in different parts of Singapore. It was one of those ideas that I had at the back of my mind that I wanted to eventually pursue as a personal project. Fortunately, I got to do exactly that…
A few months ago, I got a message from Kelly, a project manager of a design agency in San Francisco – Tolleson Design. They were interested in buying a couple of photographs from my Portraits of Strangers set to use for a project they’re doing. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any release forms for any of…
Just recently, I had the opportunity to experience a 3-day intensive photo essay workshop organized by Leica, conducted by famed Magnum photographer, Abbas. I’ve learned about it on short notice, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet and learn from a master who’s been doing it for 45 years.
Stranger #77 was one of the most strikingly beautiful face I’ve photographed in my Portraits of Strangers project. So when I decided to do this “Strangers Revisited” project, she was an obvious choice. And when Atika agreed to do a photo shoot with me, I was so ecstatic yet pretty nervous at the same time.
I’ve always wanted to dive into portraiture, and my previous Portraits of Strangers project served as my personal transition from candid street shooting to portraiture. Looking back at project, I later decided to create a new series of photo shoots by revisiting some of the strangers I photographed. Thanks to my facebook page, I was…
About a month ago, I was invited by street photographer Eric Kim to be a guest writer for his blog. He wanted me to write a few tips on shooting street portraits. Although I’ve already blogged about my thoughts and experiences while working on my Portraits of Strangers project, I haven’t really provided any direct…
I love shooting strangers under bad weather. And for a while now, I’ve always wondered how it would be to shoot bad weather at night. I could only imagine how dramatic the shots could be with the combination of heavy rain and the night lights. Just a few nights ago, I’ve had the chance to do just that.
While I was working on my Portraits of Strangers project last year, I got an email with the subject: “Hey there… a mail from Ad-Land in Singapore.” Much to my surprise, the email was from Steve Elrick, Regional Executive Creative Director of BBH Asia Pacific. He came across my portraits series from a link in…
Every time I’m out in the streets, I would often encounter faces that make me look twice… faces that just stood out of the crowd without even trying… faces that are by no means ordinary. They range from the exquisitely beautiful to the strangely wonderful. Sometimes I would try to steal a shot without being…
I miss shooting in the rain. It’s been a while since I last walked around in heavy downpour, holding my umbrella on one hand and my camera on the other. I miss it so much that every time rained and I’m stuck in the office, I can’t help but think of all the bad weather…
I was walking along Orchard when I saw her walking towards my direction. She was wearing a simple one-piece dress, and was quite tall almost towering over most of the people around her. I wasn’t decided yet if I wanted to shoot her, but as I got closer, I knew I had to – she…
Just got featured in Singapore’s August Man magazine in their annual photography issue. They asked me to pick one of my street photographs and say a few words about it … and I happily obliged. Of course I chose the rain shot I took of the lady with the shawl walking in the rain smiling,…
Henri Cartier-Bresson is the father of modern photojournalism and widely revered as the pioneer for the art of street photography. I was watching one of his documentaries and one of his quote struck me; referring to his timeless street photographs, he said “It’s always luck. It’s luck that matters. You just have to be receptive,…
I was recently interviewed by SlashMaraud, a blog based in Boston. One of the questions was “What are some unwritten rules of street photography according to Danny Santos?” Well, my answers were really more like tips than rules, and they’re not according to me but more like stuff that you will just learn eventually the…
I’ve been recieving emails from fellow hobbyists asking me questions on how I do my stuff. I always try to answer each of them promptly, but I noticed that I often get the same questions and I answer the same answers. So I figured I should just write it all down here. So here goes…
I was looking forward to shooting a lot of portraits of strangers in the 3-day weekend we just had here in Singapore. But due to time constraints brought about by personal chores, I wasn’t able to go out on my usual 3-hour jaunts of just wandering around and looking for great faces. Instead, I just…
Weekend after weekend, I would walk around Orchard Road until I see a good spot with good light and good people traffic. The wait was hard, but spotting the right subject was easy – they would just so naturally stand out of the crowd and almost demand attention. I imagined myself a paparazzi taking fashion photographs of beautiful people walking nonchalantly in the streets.
I was standing in the middle of one of the heaviest rain I’ve shot on. As always, I was drenched from waist down and I kept my camera as close to the umbrella as possible. I’ve been waiting and shooting for about 30 minutes shooting here and there, but I haven’t really seen anything peculiar… until I saw a woman from afar wrapped with a shawl walking gracefully towards my side of the street. She just stood out from all the others who were equally rushing to shelter. It’s one of those moments when I thought “I HAVE to photograph her.”
One of my biggest pet peeves is when people tell me “You’re camera takes great photos!” It really irks me every time I hear that. It’s like cooking a delicious gourmet meal and your guests complement the stove, or completing a 42k marathon and your friends think it’s because you wore great shoes, or writing a bestseller and your peers think your macbook pro had something to do with it. The fact is, it takes so much more than just a ‘great tool’ to produce great outcome.
Last September 2009, Fleecircus and I started a project to create a collective portrait of the different personalities you can find in the streets of Singapore. Equipped with 2 cameras, a mounting board, and a bit of determination, we walked around Orchard Road, picked out one face after another, and asked if we could take their picture. “It’ll just take 5 seconds” was our usual excuse. Some said no, but most said yes. We did this every saturday for two and a half months, and now we have 446 faces at 5 seconds per face.
I’ve been shooting street for almost 2 years now, and looking back at all my “keeper” shots, the feeling when I took each and every one of these photographs is still pretty vivid in my mind. I may not remember the settings for the camera, but the thought process I had at the moment of…
I’m a weekend photographer, and I used to always stay at home and sulk whenever it rains on a weekend. I figured: the light’s no good, my gear could get wet, and the streets would be empty. There wouldn’t be anything worth shooting. I’d complain in the forums whenever a weekend goes by and it’s…