Portrait Photography | Girl Next Door

To the Photographers, Kundasang is a must-visit place if they come to Sabah. Approximately 90km or just two hours leisurely drive from Kota Kinabalu, you will reach this place. What’s so interesting about Kundasang? This is where you can see Mount Kinabalu an iconic image of Sabah  closely, this is where Kinabalu Park is located and this is the place where climbers start their trekking towards the Summit of Mount Kinabalu.

About this location, I take this picture at Desa Cattle Dairy Farm in Mesilau, if you come from Kota Kinabalu, head over to Kundasang War Memorial which is just 10 minutes driving from Kinabalu Park, when you reached Kundasang War Memorial, just go straight downhill and uphill and keep your eyes to your left and when you see Desa Cattle Dairy Farm signboard just turn left and you are on the right track.

Drive carefully and drive slowly because you can’t see this place from the main road, it is almost “hidden”. If the weather is good especially during early morning you can see Mount Kinabalu clearly from here and it make a perfect postcard kind of shot. First time I set my foot here is in 2003, back then there are few people coming here, only workers but now this pace quite happening with people from all over the world taking pictures here.

Even though when I came here for this Mesilau Photography Workshops, Mount Kinabalu was clearly visible, I’m not so interested to take landscape picture here, maybe I have enough pictures of Mount Kinabalu, so I just concentrate with the portrait session.

The truth to be told is, she ( the picture above ) is not our official model on that day, the official model for Mesilau Photography Workshops is Gzell, look for my previous post. Unfortunately I can’t take a very good picture of Gzell simply because all the great angle has been taken by the participants, so I just shoot this girl, a friend to my friend, maybe his girlfriend.

The portrait session there was conducted by Roslee Karim and Azman Jumat and I don’t want to interrupted the session since Roslee Karim taught about how to play with Creative Lighting System or CLS and I was Natural Light shooter. I don’t want to confuse the participant. Gzell is a very talented model while my “model” is is really just girl next door, she really doesn’t know how to pose well and I like the innocent look of her. Maybe she is a bit shy when a group of photographers taking picture of her.

This photograph was taken with natural light and by the time I took this shot, Mount Kinabalu was already covered with thick mist. This is really great place for general photography, landscape and for portrait and it is great location also for wedding photography. I really enjoy this location especially when there is a thick mist since i like to play around with the tone, I mean the color tone, the mist really help me get a beautiful Tones just like the picture above.

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