problem

I have this issue, and it's that I always get these ideas in my head, be it for stories or for photoshoots. But I can never bring myself to fully execute them. I write up one chapter and I get tired, so I stop writing. I think of wonderful ideas for shoots but with the excuse of lack of logistics, I dare not try to do the shoot. Maybe it's because of my lazy nature, or my lack of motivation. But I never ever set out to finish what I can imagine. And I always found it a shame, because my imagination is wild and I dare to imagine things that break all sorts of norms. But sadly, this is the problem I will always face.

vsco aesthetics // back to my roots

I have said it many times, but Instagram has become a place where every photographer is copying another, where everyone is jumping on trends, where everyone is too focused on the "perfect photo", and every photographer is too concerned with what everyone likes / wants to see. There was barely any photos or photographers that would inspire me there anymore. There was simply nothing creative, or aesthetically pleasing to me. Nothing weird. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just safe photos of cityscapes, and boring portraits. 

Of course, I was no exception to this. I found that my portraits were getting boring, and hence I stopped taking portraits for the most part. Just a different model, and a different backdrop, but the same posing and the same framing. Rinse and repeat. What even was I doing anymore? This was never the photography that I wanted. Sure, I did some really cool concepts. The all pink shoot with Michelle was amazing. The 'I hate u, I love u' concept I did with Nehe and Bev was also fairly interesting. My recent shoot with Megan at Hawpar Villa was also a little weird and retro. But apart from those, all of my other shoots were simply boring. 

And being deprived of inspirations made it harder to create. 

I found myself on VSCO editing some phone shots. I decided to take a scroll through VSCO's feed since it's been years since I last did that. And I was blown away. What really amazed me was that even after all these years, VSCO was still curating photos that they felt were aesthetically pleasing. These photos did not belong to any one genre or aesthetic. They varied from style to style. There were many weird concepts for portraits, there were photos of random objects on the floor, random aesthetics. For once in years, I was actually inspired. "This was what I've been searching so desperately for", I thought to myself. 

I'd always taken a weird approach with my photography when I first started. Photos of chairs, of brooms, of flower pots, of slabs of meat found on the floor. But Instagram changed me to conform to all these "perfect" shots. Because it was all that I saw, it narrowed my mind and perspectives so much. Being on VSCO widened my perspectives again, and I've been scrolling through the feed to find more and more inspiration. I don't think I'll be doing much portraits in future, to avoid boring photos, unless I have some weird concepts I want to try. But mostly, I want to get back to my old VSCO aesthetics, taking random photos of this and that. Capturing fleeting moments on both my phone and on my camera. It's hard to explain what this aesthetic is, but basically, I've decided to say screw what everyone thinks. What matters is that I like what I'm shooting. 

The High is Epik

When it comes to Korean music, I've always had a preference for their raps. And the one band who really shaped that preference of mine, was Epik High. I first got to know their music when they joined YG entertainment back in the day and released '99'. I was in love with mainly two songs from that album - 'New Beautiful' and 'Don't Hate Me'. 'New Beautiful' was an anthem for me at that point in time because I was struggling a lot with my self-image and that song really helped me in feeling better about myself. 

But it was their subsequent albums, 'Shoebox', 'We've Done Something Wonderful', and 'Sleepless in ___", which solidified me as a fan. 'We've Done Something Wonderful' in particular hit me in the feels real hard when I first heard it. The raps were mostly on the emotional side, and they inspired me to write even more. 

Throughout the years since I first discovered them, I knew I wanted to catch them live at least once. It was on my bucket list. But I knew it was near impossible, they only ever performed in Korea and America. Not once in 6 years did we ever hear news of them having the possibility of coming to Singapore to perform. That was, until this year. A few months back, a friend of mine shared with me a post by Tablo, announcing their concert in Singapore. So you can imagine how happy I was to hear it. 

I'll skip the unnecessary details, but long story short, on the day of my shoot with Megan, we both decided to go for the concert together. And Epik High was hands down the best performers I'd ever watched live. The energy, the interactions, the live rapping. They were simply the best. I never thought I'd get to hear Tablo's machine gun rapping in real life, and my ears were blessed. I enjoyed myself much more than I even imagined. 

Megan and I thought it'd be packed and because our queue numbers were in the 900s, we thought we wouldn't be near enough. But we were wrong. The audience was so chill, you wouldn't think they were here to watch a Korean concert. Most K-pop concerts are usually filled with screaming teenage girls who are pushing and shoving. But the audience this time was mature, and since there was a makeshift "bar" at the side selling drinks, a lot of them were actually hanging at the back with those drinks. No one was trying to squeeze to the front or anything. Just a bunch of few hundred people here to enjoy Epik High's performance. It was the most enjoyable concert I had ever attended, honestly. A lot of my favourite songs were sung, so you can imagine how happy I was. I was just a little bummed that they didn't sing a few more slow songs. 

But overall, it was the greatest concert ever. Thank you Epik High. It was worth burning a hole in my pockets for this.