Days In Analog

Tell us a bit more about yourself.
I’m a very easygoing guy, just taking life one day at a time. I also like photographing my daily life and the things and people that I encounter every day.

To me, photos are like having permanent memories. When you look back on them, you can actually remember what happened on that day. If you take some time to just immerse yourself in a photo, it will definitely bring back some memories from that particular moment in time.

This is why I always have my camera with me—it’s always in my pocket, so whenever I find something that catches my eye, it will be within reach, and I can just take it out and snap a photo.

When did you first get into photography?
I started photographing since 2015. Back then, I found an old camera in my wardrobe—it was a film camera, so I decided to just play around with it, and I’ve been photographing until now. But these days I shoot digital lah. I only shoot on film occasionally.

I enjoy shooting on film, and I actually chose this particular Fujifilm camera because it’s very much like a film camera, but now that film prices are going up, shooting digital saves a lot of money in terms of the film developing part.

You probably have a lot of photographs then. What do you usually do with your photographs?
Yeah, I think I have like, tens of thousands of snaps. I don’t know how many, really.

Usually, whenever I take a photo, I won’t bother to look at it on the same day. I will only start looking at it over the next few days, because that’s when your perspective will be refreshed. When you take a photo, you might not like the way it looks today, but it could actually look nice to you on a different day. So it’s more of that shift in perspective lah.

Out of them all, what’s your favourite photograph that you’ve taken to date?
It’s a photo I took in Dubai. I was on a trip, travelling in a car, and I managed to get a film photo of the empty road that to me, is poster-worthy. So this has been my favourite photo—I had this printed and put up in my room.

Have there been instances where you got in trouble for taking a particular photo, or snapped a photo of something you weren’t quite supposed to photograph?
There was one time I was taking a photo of a random guy. He was just chatting with his friend, and I took a photo of him from a distance, but then he realised, and then he started questioning me. He said “Eh, why did you take my photo?” So I said “Oh, it’s just a daily snap of my life.”

I was surprised, but he actually wanted to engage in further conversation with me. He was sharing more with me about his life, and that’s when I managed to get a proper portrait of him, which he gave me permission to take.