Photography. Poetry. Photopoetry.
Aside from arguing with my children over who gets the blue M&Ms, dreaming big and waking up the next morning wondering why I didn't sleep much earlier the night before, these are the things that I do a lot:
Photography
When asked by friends on the type of photography that I do, I'd shrug a little, blurting out the terms natural-light photography, family portraiture, lifestyle photography, documentary photography, and what have you. I guess what I really am is a storyteller. I have a deep passion in telling stories through my photographs and videos.
I provide photography services, specializing in...well, outdoor natural-light photography of babies, kids and families. I could go on about how I capture natural moments and emotions instead of posed moments. But again, that could be summed up as me being a storyteller. When you hire me as a photographer, you will not only get photographs. You will see your stories being told through them.
As an added bonus, I can actually literally tell stories to your kids during our sessions. I'm also Teacher Yaya from Littlest Hands, having experience in conducting workshops for babies and toddlers (Sensory Fun Workshop at Mothercare, among others). I do sensory play, art projects and storytime for the kids during those workshops. So yes, you can expect me to still be Teacher Yaya, entertaining your little ones during our photo sessions and getting extra excited at cake smash sessions (sensory play right there, my forte).
Poetry
Long before I discovered the greatness of cameras, I spent my days and nights (and a little more before falling asleep) expressing myself through long-winded written paragraphs.
I first realized I wanted to become a writer when I was ten and had a tad too many diaries. I wrote every moment and emotion I felt. At twelve, I began writing fiction, passing them around to my classmates for their reading pleasure. The first character in the first fiction I wrote was named Chaterine (apparently an alter ego to a high-school girl named Catherine). She was a chatterbox and her story lasted up to two faded exercise books.
It was when I hit thirteen that I started writing poems. Mostly of my family, first crushes and some rose-tinted teenage dreams.
I still wear rose-tinted glasses, I guess. Proudly sporting them with a mission to share that very same view with everyone I know (and about to know). In between photo gigs and parenting, I try to write inspirational poetic one-liners that I post on social media in hope to mend broken hearts.
These days, I write mostly about motherhood in between parenting my two kids. My poems on motherhood serve as love letters to myself as I try to free myself of mum guilt and heal myself from the stay-at-home-mum blues. I hope these poems could leave a smile on another mother's face too.
Photopoetry
And so there was the birth of photopoetry. I came up with the term photopoetry during my earlier blogging days in Blogspot back in 2006, particularly this one night when I combined poetic lines to match the photographs captured from a roadtrip I went around South Australia.
Photopoetry lives on up to this day, representing all that I do.
Love.