Snapshots: Steven Lee

By Edvarcl Heng, CNET Asia
May 24, 2007

We like to think that Steven Lee is good with faces. Author of two books (one to be published soon) on people and places in Malaysia, he certainly needs to be.

Now there is a reason why new photographers choose to shoot landscapes and other similar non-human subjects--you don't have to ask permission. Approaching a total stranger with the intention of shooting his picture takes guts. And a fair bit of it at that. Besides, after the permission has been granted, there's still the problem of stopping your nervous subject from "posing" unnaturally for the camera. Lee shows us how it's done with his set of shots.

The images you see from this feature have been reproduced with permission from Steven V-L Lee. If you wish to be featured in our interviews or know any photo buffs who may be interested, write to us, and we'll get back to you.

Name:
Steven V-L Lee
Type of photographer:
Portrait, travel, fine art, and events.
Equipment:
Canon 1DMark2, Canon 5D, EF 50mm f1.4, EF 85mm f1.8, EF 28mm f2.8, Olympus E1 & 14-54mm f2.8-3.5 Zuiko.

About myself:
I have been in photography professionally for eight years now, but I have always been a keen hobbyist during my school days in the mid-1970s Singapore. There was a lull when I went to the UK as a student in 1979, when I completely became detached from cameras. I remember the last camera that I owned in 1979 was a Nikon FM.

I got back into photography during the mid-1980s when I accidentally picked up a copy of Amateur Photographer magazine in the UK, and was surprised by the sight of SLRs with autofocus! Next, I got into rangefinders like the Leica M6 and Contax Gs, and digital equipment soon followed in 2001.

Back then, I was interested in becoming a travel photographer, and began to write short articles to accompany my photographs. Like most people, I was captured by the beauty and quality of the National Geographic images and wanted to be a travel photographer. It wasn't easy at first, tryng to get one's work seen, let alone being published. But my break came when I submitted a few stories to the Malaysian Insurance Corporation which publishes bi-annual in-house lifestyle magazines. Those articles were published along with several covers as well. In 2000, I pursued the publication of my first book, titled "Outside Looking In--Kuala Lumpur", which was a compilation of 76 black and white street images of KL, especially of the Chinatown area. Little did I know it was to become a document of Petaling Street just before the current canopy was built over the street, which has since been a topic of controversy!

Now, I am about to publish my sequel to "Outside Looking In", this time a color, hardback book title "MALAYSIANS Faces". This A5-sized book will contain over 250 portraits of Malaysians from all walks of life and races, celebrating the rich, diverse and ethnic composition which is Malaysia today.

In bookshops, I found that books featuring people are rather thin on the ground. There are plenty of lifestyle themes, interiors and beaches, but not many on people. Hence, this project. My writer and I traveled across Malaysia twice and it has been a learning experience. We met many fantastic faces along the way, discovered many misconceptions we had, and enjoyed the trips.

Beach football in Terengganu
I asked if the boy would mind holding the ball to pose, and he came up with this pose. I used a wide-angle lens to include the scene around him.

Tip: Experiment with the lenses you have to take portraits. Wide angles may not always be suitable, but it's good to know their potential.