Portrait Photography | The Joy of Childhood

© 2010 Wazari Wazir | FRIM | Forest Research Institute Malaysia

Just a short outing with my family at FRIM Forest Research Institute Malaysia in Kepong, just about half an hour from Kuala Lumpur. Actually I was invited by friend of mine Mdnoh Jalaludin for a Model photo shoot, he did bring three beautiful looking models for the outing but I did not take a lot of photographs of the models because I was busy with my family especially with my son. I did join the group of photographers there for a small photography talk.

I was in a hurry actually because I have an assignment in Malacca, just two hours drive from Kuala Lumpur, after few hours with them, I went back to my home and wait for my colleague to pick me up to Malacca in the late afternoon.

FRIM is a great place for photography purpose, especially those who love nature, this place is among favorite spot for wedding photographers to bring their clients here. If you shoot weddings here, you need to pay an additional fees for Photography purpose other than the entry fees. At the time of writing you need to pay RM100 for normal photography (weddings, portraits) for one day photos shoot and you need to pay more if you shoot for commercial or shooting films.

About the picture above, I will always try to photograph my family whenever I’m free, it is my greatest pleasure to be able to photograph them especially when my son is still can be considered as a toddler, how many of us can remember how we play or how we look without a photograph when we are somewhere around two to five years of ages, most of us can’t really remember or it is quite blur or blurry vision, I still can remember when I was about six years old when my late father teach me how to ride a bicycle and I still can remember how I play around with my friends at that time when I was about six years old, but I can hardly remember “how” when I was five years old and below, everything seems blur. Our family really can’t afford a camera at that time because it was considered as a luxury item rather than a necessity.

To those of you especially those who have a small child below five years old and have a camera, it doesn’t matter whether it is a DSLR or just a cheap compact camera, take a picture of your child as much as possible because the moment of childhood is among the sweetest moment of our children, don’t let the moment go away when you have the mean to captured it.

Even though I have a photographs many people, great people and personality including some of the world leaders, they are not my family, it is an honour for me to be able to photographed them but they are not part of my family and I don’t mind losing their pictures if my hard disk is crashed but I will get mad if my family pictures corrupted on the hard disk as well. Leaders come and leaders go but our family stay. Take a picture, don’t wait until it’s too late or don’t wait until your child can take a picture of their own. The joy of childhood is best captured and freeze forever for our family. It’s a treasure.