Sit back, relax, and just witness faces of strangers as seen in the streets. About the project: I often encounter faces that make me look twice; faces that stand out in the crowd without trying; faces that are out of the ordinary. They range from the exquisitely beautiful to the strangely wonderful. I started to…
Singapore is a beautiful city that’s host to a multicultural population resulting to a variety of street destinations each having it’s own vibe and experience. This is what I tried to photograph in this series of streetscapes. My early influence has always been street photography – capturing the day-to-day as it happens in the streets.…
Portraits has always been my favourite to photograph. Every face, every personality needs a different approach depending on how they look, how they feel, who they are, and where they are. On top of that, there’s the push to getting a portrait that has that umph. I think a good portrait should make you look…
I started photography 10 years ago, and have been doing this full time as a career for around 5 years. My main focus was in street photography, then ventured into portraiture, and eventually commercial ad shoots. When I began shooting Corporate Photography, it was a natural transition as I could apply my general style from…
I received an email from the Creative Director of an advertising agency based in Boston. They were working on their client’s rebrand and launch of an ad campaign for a new breakthrough diagnostics for women. The objective was to take close-up portraits of women to get the message across different audiences and they referred to…
I love shooting portraits. It’s always a challenge to photograph a stranger and make that person look natural, relaxed, in the moment… and at the same time account for good light, apt background, and a conducive atmosphere. So when I was commissioned by Standard Chartered to shoot 50 people across Singapore, London, and New York,…
It’s been a long long time since my last blog post… around 2 years. My apologies for this, I’ve been crazy busy with client shoots. I’m not complaining though, busy is always good, right? Anyway, in the next few weeks, I will regularly be coming back to this blog to post some of the interesting…
Earlier this year, I was involved in the production of a coffee table book that aimed to show how 50 companies in Singapore implement innovative work-life programmes for their employees. This was produced by TAFEP (Tripartite Alliance for Fair & Progressive Employment Practices) as part of the SG50 celebrations, with the help of Brilliant Agency.…
I was invited to try out the Nikon Df for a couple of weeks to see what I think about it. I knew it received a lot of backlash from the online community when it was released, most thought it was all form and no function. But there was one thing that really piqued my…
The last time I photographed portraits of strangers in the streets was around 3 years ago. Since then, I’ve been busy doing candids, studio shoots, and commissioned work. And as the recent exhibit is wrapping up, I’ve been wanting to go back in the streets and add new faces to the project. Then just recently,…
One of the images that are on display in the Don’t Smile exhibit is a collage of 105 non-smiling faces, all of which were photographed through a studio setup in tcc in a span of 3 Saturdays. This involved an open call for faces… and all they had to do was look in the camera…
One of the more interesting experiences I had with client work lately was shooting candids around a school. I was commissioned by Nexus International School to take photos of their students in action to use for their website. It was almost like shooting street, but done inside the campus.
Of all my years of shooting in the street with my trusty DSLR workhorse, I’ve slowly come up with a wish list of features that would make it easier for me to capture keepers. The top 2 on the list are: a smaller camera body, and a full-frame sensor. So when I heard about the…
A few months ago, I was contacted by Michael, Art Director of Random House Inc based in New York. He had an author in Singapore and needed a photograph for the cover of his upcoming book called “Street Smarts”. I was crazy excited about it, it was my first time to shoot for a book…
I was commissioned by Jan Brunaes, CEO of IFS Asia Pacific, to take corporate portraits for 3 guys in his office. I haven’t really done any corporate portraits before so I figured I’d try it out.
A huge chunk of my street photos are those taken in the rain. So I was pretty excited when I eventually got to do an ad shoot for a rain wear brand called Totes.
Lately, I was looking through my archive of street photos taken from the past 3 months. As I browsed among the sea of non-keeper shots, I occasionally came across photos where the subject was looking straight at me with a certain disconcerted look. I thought maybe it would be interesting to put these together into…
I love shooting in the rain. If it’s a weekend and it’s raining, you’ll probably see me with an umbrella on one hand, and my camera on the other, walking (sometimes running) around Orchard Road taking photos of strangers as they run from one mall to another. Often times, it’s an adrenaline rush for me.…
I was emailed by Margery a few weeks ago, saying “My husband and I need a Christmas photo, but are not the type to pose in matching sweaters in a studio. All we really need is one good shot of us in the midst of the chaos that is Orchard Road. We are after a…
One of my dream projects when I started my interest in portrait photography was to shoot different people in different parts of Singapore. It was one of those ideas that I had at the back of my mind that I wanted to eventually pursue as a personal project. Fortunately, I got to do exactly that…
A few months ago, I got a message from Kelly, a project manager of a design agency in San Francisco – Tolleson Design. They were interested in buying a couple of photographs from my Portraits of Strangers set to use for a project they’re doing. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any release forms for any of…
Just recently, I had the opportunity to experience a 3-day intensive photo essay workshop organized by Leica, conducted by famed Magnum photographer, Abbas. I’ve learned about it on short notice, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet and learn from a master who’s been doing it for 45 years.
Stranger #77 was one of the most strikingly beautiful face I’ve photographed in my Portraits of Strangers project. So when I decided to do this “Strangers Revisited” project, she was an obvious choice. And when Atika agreed to do a photo shoot with me, I was so ecstatic yet pretty nervous at the same time.
I’ve always wanted to dive into portraiture, and my previous Portraits of Strangers project served as my personal transition from candid street shooting to portraiture. Looking back at project, I later decided to create a new series of photo shoots by revisiting some of the strangers I photographed. Thanks to my facebook page, I was…
About a month ago, I was invited by street photographer Eric Kim to be a guest writer for his blog. He wanted me to write a few tips on shooting street portraits. Although I’ve already blogged about my thoughts and experiences while working on my Portraits of Strangers project, I haven’t really provided any direct…
I love shooting strangers under bad weather. And for a while now, I’ve always wondered how it would be to shoot bad weather at night. I could only imagine how dramatic the shots could be with the combination of heavy rain and the night lights. Just a few nights ago, I’ve had the chance to do just that.
Every time I’m out in the streets, I would often encounter faces that make me look twice… faces that just stood out of the crowd without even trying… faces that are by no means ordinary. They range from the exquisitely beautiful to the strangely wonderful. Sometimes I would try to steal a shot without being…
I miss shooting in the rain. It’s been a while since I last walked around in heavy downpour, holding my umbrella on one hand and my camera on the other. I miss it so much that every time rained and I’m stuck in the office, I can’t help but think of all the bad weather…
I was walking along Orchard when I saw her walking towards my direction. She was wearing a simple one-piece dress, and was quite tall almost towering over most of the people around her. I wasn’t decided yet if I wanted to shoot her, but as I got closer, I knew I had to – she…
Just got featured in Singapore’s August Man magazine in their annual photography issue. They asked me to pick one of my street photographs and say a few words about it … and I happily obliged. Of course I chose the rain shot I took of the lady with the shawl walking in the rain smiling,…
I was recently interviewed by SlashMaraud, a blog based in Boston. One of the questions was “What are some unwritten rules of street photography according to Danny Santos?” Well, my answers were really more like tips than rules, and they’re not according to me but more like stuff that you will just learn eventually the…
I’ve been recieving emails from fellow hobbyists asking me questions on how I do my stuff. I always try to answer each of them promptly, but I noticed that I often get the same questions and I answer the same answers. So I figured I should just write it all down here. So here goes…
I was looking forward to shooting a lot of portraits of strangers in the 3-day weekend we just had here in Singapore. But due to time constraints brought about by personal chores, I wasn’t able to go out on my usual 3-hour jaunts of just wandering around and looking for great faces. Instead, I just…
Weekend after weekend, I would walk around Orchard Road until I see a good spot with good light and good people traffic. The wait was hard, but spotting the right subject was easy – they would just so naturally stand out of the crowd and almost demand attention. I imagined myself a paparazzi taking fashion photographs of beautiful people walking nonchalantly in the streets.
I was standing in the middle of one of the heaviest rain I’ve shot on. As always, I was drenched from waist down and I kept my camera as close to the umbrella as possible. I’ve been waiting and shooting for about 30 minutes shooting here and there, but I haven’t really seen anything peculiar… until I saw a woman from afar wrapped with a shawl walking gracefully towards my side of the street. She just stood out from all the others who were equally rushing to shelter. It’s one of those moments when I thought “I HAVE to photograph her.”
Last September 2009, Fleecircus and I started a project to create a collective portrait of the different personalities you can find in the streets of Singapore. Equipped with 2 cameras, a mounting board, and a bit of determination, we walked around Orchard Road, picked out one face after another, and asked if we could take their picture. “It’ll just take 5 seconds” was our usual excuse. Some said no, but most said yes. We did this every saturday for two and a half months, and now we have 446 faces at 5 seconds per face.
I’ve been shooting street for almost 2 years now, and looking back at all my “keeper” shots, the feeling when I took each and every one of these photographs is still pretty vivid in my mind. I may not remember the settings for the camera, but the thought process I had at the moment of…
I’m a weekend photographer, and I used to always stay at home and sulk whenever it rains on a weekend. I figured: the light’s no good, my gear could get wet, and the streets would be empty. There wouldn’t be anything worth shooting. I’d complain in the forums whenever a weekend goes by and it’s…
Shooting candids in the streets is a challenge. Not only is it often daunting to point your camera at a total stranger without permission, waiting for the right subject at the right light and at the right moment requires a ton of patience.