Malaysia & Palestine | The Official Assignment
Kuala Lumpur | May 27 2010, Yang di-Pertuan Agong ( King of Malaysia ) Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin had a 30-minute audience with Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas at Istana Negara.
Just a quick update about my “Normal” job, this is what I do for a living as a government photographer ( I’m not the only one ) , I’m not going to talk about “World Issue” here but just wanted to share about this assignment at National Palace or Istana Negara in Malay. Usually when there is a world Leader visiting Malaysia, we will get their itinerary few days in advance, so we can plan our assignment, where to go what time and what to wear or equipment that we should have.
About this assignment covering visiting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with our King, usually we will arrive one or two hour earlier at the Palace and the Official from The Palace will brief us, the Media about what will take place, the flow of the event or function, when the President will arrive, where will he arrive, our location to take photograph, the room that the meeting will be held and few other details.
Usually most of us know this detail already, I mean the PRESS, but it is great to fresh our memory once in awhile, sometimes there will be some changes to the original plan. About the photograph above, we the photographers have less than a minutes to take this photograph, once The King and The President seated and begin to talk a few words, we have to move, the bodyguard will tell us to move or to stop taking pictures, less than a minutes, so we need to planned ahead and need to act fast. There is no room for error because there is no second chance.
I choose to share with you here the established shot where you can see a framed picture of our King and Queen hanging on the wall, The King and The Palestinian President and also The Minister in The Prime Minister Department Dato’ Jamil Khir bin Baharom seated on the right there. I also manage to get a close up shot of The king and The President together, even though we have a very short time but like I said, we need to planned well in advance about our photo opportunity.
