09 Resolutions + 08 Recap

It feels like I'd been away from home for so long.

New year was quiet, I couldn't feel any difference crossing into 2009, other than doing this.


- Read more
- Spend more time on personal work
- Shoot more for my own happiness
- Release/produce noah-kh's artbook
- Move into China
- Finish retouching photos from 08


- Attending all 3 nights of X Japan's concerts in Tokyo Dome
- My first solo exhibition (at The Arts House, and a 2nd mini one at Klee Bar)
- Releasing my first photobook, Something Beautiful

- Major shoots:
Mercedes Benz zemotion.blogspot.com/2008/08/…
Harper's Bazaar zemotion.blogspot.com/2008/10/…
Luxury zemotion.deviantart.com/art/Lu…
Epic sakura zemotion.deviantart.com/art/sh… zemotion.deviantart.com/art/sh… zemotion.deviantart.com/art/Un…
Selia zemotion.deviantart.com/art/Op…
Alice in Wonderland (last Epic of the year, photos in progress)

- Visiting Yoshitaka Amano's home, having guided tours and meetings in Square Enix, Mad House and Gonzo
- Winning the Overaseas Fashion & Press Photographer of the Year 2008 at the British Professional Photography Awards
- Operating/translating for Quentin, resulting in:
- Being backstage at a Christian Dior Couture show, then returning to Paris a 2nd time + getting shown around the Dior showroom and meeting Dior Homme's designer
- Being at the Ing Cup Semi-Finals
- Being part of CGHub


The whole of last month while travelling I'd been thinking a lot about my works and myself. It's been like a long journey for reflection.

So much amazing things have happened in the last year, but as time passed I realized that concurrent to all that, the time that working in itself took up has lost me the chances for me to think about myself.

A large portion of my drive comes from the satisfaction of knowing that my story and images are inspiring someone out there; because to me, if I'd made a difference to anyone, no matter how small, it's a note to myself that what I'd been doing hasn't been in vain.

But as more jobs piled up, dealing with people while trying to satisfy myself in terms of the quality of images I produce because I don't want to be lazy and simply be a money-making machine; coupled with the constant needs and attempts at bettering myself, to create more personal work, I started to feel like I was losing my breathing space and drowning.

Growing up in the shadows and words of people who shone with auras of perfection, the will to do just as well was pressurizing, but I knew the least I could do was more than just chasing. If I didn't try, I'd never know if I could make a difference, never know if I'd ever be able to carve out a path I could call my own.

To keep myself on this track, I'd made up my mind to focus purely on personal work for at least the first half of this year. And the photos that I owe to many wonderful people from our sessions due to me being tied up with work since the beginning of 2008, I'll be spending this month to work on it all one by one.

So please bare with me as I catch up with this backlog, and whilst some images from the same period of attempts before I became satisfied with an idea may be similar, I do hope you'd still enjoy them all the same -- they were all parts of my growing up.

Thank you, for being the support that you'd been, there'll never be enough words to express my gratitude. Have a wonderful year ahead.