"The Love Train": A Contemporary Urban Outdoor Wedding Photography by Azhar Ariff

Wow! I took so much of me to overcome my procrastination! Finally I beat the hell out of procrastination, and resized these amazing shots of Akmal & Fazira's Urban Outdoor Wedding shoot. It's amazing what you can achieve when you've done your homework. Prior to the wedding event, on the same day, I scouted nearby location for an outdoor shoot near Pandan Indah. There were parks of small and large. Knowing me, I'm not much of a "shooting-outdoor-wedding-photos-in-the-parks, or garden". I just go blank when I'm shooting in parks or gardens. On the contrary, the urbanscape gives me textures, multiple colour variations, terrains, surfaces and most of all, human interaction with the public. There are a lot more elements that we can play around when shooting an outdoor wedding around the city. I can never run out of ideas in this manner.

We discussed on where to shoot the outdoor session with Akmal & Fazira, and after I presented my idea, both of them were excited and really up for it. "Let's go!" said Fazira without hesitation when I just finished throwing the idea. The easiest and convinient place I thought of was taking a train ride via the STAR LRT, from Pandan Indah to Hang Tuah station and back to Pandan Indah. The ride gives me a lot of opportunity, space and time to work around the couple. It also gives some comfort to them to be in the air-con for a while in the train. Talk about the heat man...

It all went really smooth and I was enthrilled that I got a lot of good shots. To give you an idea, I maxed out all my CF cards worth around 12 gigs of RAW files. Man, I'm telling ya, it is soo worth it. Thank you Akmal & Fazira.

Note for photographers: All was taken with ambient lighting. No flash was used. That's why I'm loving my Canons now. He he! :)

Just before the ride, at the train station.



I love the treatment for these shots. I wanted to create an atmosphere that doesn't look like Malaysia. The look that I wanted to make was as if this was shot somewhere in Australia, the UK or the States, with some nostalgic feel to it. Somehow, railways has that automatic nostalgic effect, no matter where it is in the world. Truly amazing. I love these..




I love these colour sets too. Something like a magazine spread.


The love story: Catching a ride on THE LOVE TRAIN.

Last stop and heading back home.