Percy the Photographer

I became a professional photographer in early 2003, but photography has always been a lifestyle for me which started from my childhood. Dad had a cool SLR back in the '70s. It might have been a Pentax. I loved the smell of the brown leather case and how happy I felt when he let me put in the film roll. Once the automatic snapshot cameras came to the market, Dad got quite a few of them laying around the house ready to point and shoot.

I got the real training of photography and the creative skills in the autumn of 1989 when I started the five-year program in printing and photography at a journalism college in Taipei, Taiwan. Dad sold a couple of his XO cognac to buy my first Nikon FM2 with a 50mm and a 35-105mm marco. I also loved producing prints in the darkroom. I asked Dad many times to convert one of our two bathrooms into a dark room, but it never happened.  I was then sent to the US to study business in the mid '90s. The FM2 was one of the first things I packed with me.

Living in the U.S. changed me in many ways. I dropped the boring Business Management major to Communications and Advertising because it had many more interesting courses than Accounting. I learned how we could use graphical design to generate meanings in different contexts. I enjoyed studying cultures and media. I also found my passion for visual communications which then led me to a fun career in the creative design field. My first job was a junior graphic designer in San Francisco and not too long after I was a communications specialist working for Nokia, Sweden.  Later on, I even started my own marketing communications agency.

When the spring of 2003 arrived, I was busy with my first pregnancy and the relocation to London. During that time, I received my first digital camera, a Olympus C5050-Z as a present.

My firstborn inspired me in doing baby portrait photography. She was born a preemie with only one kilo, and I was amused and mesmerised by every detail of her. It was a visual feast to my eyes when I looked at her fine little fingers and tiny toes, her delicate eyelashes and the little curls that refused to set behinds her cutesy ears. I took so many photos of her!  I went on to set up my own home studio so I could take better shots with proper lighting and backdrops. God gave me the most patient little model to play around. My little baby was a dream model for any photographer.

(Gemma.)

After I set up my home studio, I invited my Japanese neighbours who also had a cute baby girl to do some family portraits for fun. The father cried after he saw the outcome. He encouraged me to turn my photography into a business. Three more baby photo sessions later for my friends, and they all suggested to me the same idea. They began bringing their friends to me for photo session, and I didn't know how to even charge my work at the time.  I just loved how my photographs made the parents cry (in a touching way) - that worth more to me than the extra cash.

Photography side-tracked my career in marketing communications. I was shooting family portraits and also got commissioned by commercial businesses internationally. My works got featured on parenting and fashion magazines in UL, Holland, Japan, Taiwan, and the UAE. Dad pondered why he spent his hard-earned money to send me abroad and I ended up as a photographer. I asked him how then he could have his lovely grandchildren if he didn't invest all that money (I met my husband in the university.)

In 2005, my husband's work took us to  the United Arab Emirates. To this day, the country still occupies a large part of my heart. I've formed many special friendships during the seven wonderful years living there. 

Many had told me that my family photography gig would end there because Arabic people would not like this kind of things. So I was super excited when I was invited to do a photo session for a local family. I knew very little about the Arabic culture other than from the media at the time. Local Emirates were very friendly people and always had patience to answer my questions about their culture and life stories (some of my questions could be quite random and blunt.) From one initial photo session to many more with the local people, I later on became a royal family photographer. Wearing my favourite pair of broken jeans, I was in and out of palaces and upscale villas to photograph some of the most down to earth people I ever met.