As of last night we have officially retired the domain www.sdbphoto.com and switched our entire web presence on to our spanky new domain www.hongkongphotographer.hk

The change was done to offer a better easier to remember domain that more accurately reflects the purpose and content of the site. ‘hong kong photographer’ is who we are and hongkongphotograper is what we do.

The .hk sufix is also to reflect that this is a local HONG KONG run domain.

My good friend Chris Jean carried out the domain transfer is such a way that all my old pages will automatically redirect to the new URL, for instance if you type in http://sdbphoto.com/fashion.html the page will automatically direct you to http://hongkongphotographer.hk/fashion.html

Thanks Chris…

Star Sports TV coverage of the F1 races really really sucks. Why? Too many bloody ads. Not like just a few, but every 5 minutes they cut to 2 minutes of Ads. Now they must know that the F1 is watched by millions of people and they probably have very good revenue from this, but how the (&%$£) can they justify the shear number of ad breaks they have. Really F1 is a race, a fast paced race, to cut away for even 30 seconds, you will miss some of the action. Someone could crash, someone could take the lead or any number of other things could and do happen. STAR SPORTS do not care one whit about their viewers, their only care is to maximize the number of ads they can pump out. The stupid thing is that half the ads they show are for up coming programs, surely this is completely unneccessary especially since they repeat the same *&%$ing ad throughout the race.. Yeah we just saw that, five minutes ago, do we really need to see it again. Now if I could only find an alternative supplier of my F1 coverage, I would cancel my SUPER SPORT package cause STAR SPORT F1 Coverage sucks eggs..

Whats more it has become abundantly clear that STAR SPORTS has some kind of sponsorship deal with ING Bank Insurance and whatever as they are as they give Fernando Alonso in his ING Renault an inordinate amount of coverage. Can I just say this again, STAR SPORTS ING FORMULA 1 coverge sucks the big one… and Hamilton is out of the race, YA!

Last night Hong Kong had the biggest rain storm I have ever witnessed in my 11 years of living in this city. It was coming down ‘cats and dogs’… well this was the scene in the morning when I went to go to the MTR… I couldn’t get to the Sheung Wan MTR cause all the roads around it were flooded. Really flooded, unfortunately i didn’t have my real camera with me…

This past week I had the honor of being the photographer for Deepak and Komal’s 25th Anniversary Celebration. These are my Sindhi friends, Komal is the owner of Sanskrit an Indian fashion boutique on Lyndhurst Terrace. I have been doing alot of Sindhi parties lately, it seems that I am the ‘Sindhi Photographer’…

The celebrations kicked off with a party on Friday night at LINQ on Pottinger street in SOHO. http://sdbphoto.com/komal_deepak_25th/ Wow these ladies and gents sure know how to have a good time and the party went til very late or rather quite early, which way you want to look at it.

The the official celebrations began on Wednesday afternoon with Komal’s Mehendi. A Mehendi is a party thrown by the friends of the bride, a few days before the wedding. The purpose of this party aside from showering gifts is to ‘beautify’ the bride and the ladies apply ‘henna’ the beautiful designs on hands and feet, so popular.

For their 25th Anniversary Celebrations it was decided that Komal would do a traditional ‘mehendi’… this took place at the Hong Kong Country Club and all the ladies wore their finest ‘saris’ and everyone was a glitter with jewels. The photos are here. http://sdbphoto.com/komalmehendi/

Day two was a small family celebration (if anything Sindhi can be called small) at the Aberdeen Marina Club. The traditional Chinese Banquet was enjoyed by the family and close friends. Deepak and his good friends really got stuck into the party and singing and dancing ensued. Some photos are here… http://sdbphoto.com/chinesebanquet/

Friday night was a big Cocktail party hosted by the family of the bride, held at the JW Marriott. Everyone was looking fine and the happy couple Komal and Deepak enjoyed an evening of merryment with their friends and family. http://sdbphoto.com/komaldeepakmariott/

The grand finale was a Gala dinner hosted by the family of the groom at the Kowloon Intercontinental Hotel. The grand ball room was decked out in glorious silver themed finery. Komal and Deepak’s closest friends and family enjoyed a fine sit down dinner with music and dancing provided by DJ Romi and a live band. Shanky, a close friend of the happy couple performed a rousing rendition of “You look wonderful tonight”… to much applaus.. As with every Sindhi party the dancing then went on til the wee hours and everyone had a wonderful time. The evening ended with the enforcement of the InterCon’s 2am noise curfew, but not to be outdone, there was a cooked breakfast waiting in the loby for the weary party goers… As this was such a fun evening with so much dancing I brought my friend Kal along to shoot with me, together we managed 1700 images, which I have now edited down to 633, but given that LightRoom gallery software only allows galleries of 500 I have had to make two galleries. They are here:

http://sdbphoto.com/galadinner/

http://sdbphoto.com/galadinner2/

Finally as the actual day of the Anniversary is June 1st, a Sunday night dinner was held at Harlans in the IFC mall. Harlans is one of Hong Kong better restaurants. A smallish group of some 120 sat down to dinner. It was with some thanks I was asked to join one of the tables and I got to enjoy the delicous Lamb chops… um so yummy.

Deepak and his friends were soon singing old favorites, with Deepak seranading Komal, accompanied by friends. The photos are here http://sdbphoto.com/anniversarydinnerharlans/

All in all a great week working for a lovely couple, part of Hong Kong’s vibrant Sindhi community. People who really know how to celebrate the bonds of family and love..

http://sdbphoto.com/komal_deepak_25th/

http://sdbphoto.com/komalmehendi/

http://sdbphoto.com/chinesebanquet/

http://sdbphoto.com/komaldeepakmariott/

http://sdbphoto.com/galadinner/

http://sdbphoto.com/galadinner2/

http://sdbphoto.com/anniversarydinnerharlans/

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Ordering Prints. Selling prints is not really our business and we do not have the manpower to handle many print orders, therefore we encourage people to ‘pinch’ the photos they like from the galleries. Deepak and Komal have requested a FLASH GALLERY so that you do not have to CLICK CLICK CLICK to see all the pics, only problem is this makes it difficult to ‘pinch’ the photo. Therefore I have also made a MASTER GALLERY, with all the photos in bigger size for everyone to take. Please feel free to help yourself to the photos that you want. They will print reasonably well up to 4R size (please note as these photos are optimized to a higher quality this gallery will load slower if you go click click click)… If you would like to order a bigger print of any or a larger number of prints, please contact me. Note we have a $200 minimum print order.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE. THESE PHOTOS ARE FOR THE GUESTS OF THE PARTY ONLY AND MAY NOT BE USED FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE.

Last week I was shooting a wedding at the JW Marriott Hotel in good ole Hong Kong. This was one of the deserts on offer at the buffet.  The funny thing was that it sat untouched all night, I think people thought it was a work of art and no one wanted to harm it, well toward the end of the evening, I dove in and had a taste. I am a huge fan of Creme Brule and OMG this was without a doubt the best I had ever tasted. I went back for a second helping and then mentioned to one of the guests that the Creme Brule was divine, word spread pretty fast and within 15 minutes, the work of art was reduced to dirty dishes…

For a long time I have been meaning to update our website and add some new photos to show the work we have done over the past year. Well I still have to get around to that, but in the meantime I thought it easier to just make a gallery with some of this recent work. So here it is White Box Photography Limited a selection of work from 2007. These images are all a collaboration effort, both Ike and I shot em…

White Box Photography Recent work.