ABOUT ME

Who is Adrian Tung?

I am an amateur photographer hailing from the state of Penang, Malaysia. However, I am based in the Klang Valley area as my day job is located in Selangor. My interest in photography is mainly in nature and wildlife, though I'll shoot just about anything that's both interesting and beautiful.

I am also a freelance journalist and am contributing to some IT-related magazines, having over four years of experience in product and software reviews, advertorials, special product featurettes, photography guides, IT guides and more.

Although photography is primarily a hobby for me, I am also keen on taking photography as a profession and have done several freelance jobs for various people and parties. Things that I have shot on a freelance basis include product shots and weddings, among others.

My Biography

I'll avoid the typical who-am-I, when-did-I-pick-up-my-first-camera lines here and the rest of the regular stuff since I'm pretty sure that most people get tired of reading such stuff, and I'm not that good at talking about myself anyway.

So what else do I want to talk about here? I guess I can start off with hobbies; you can't go wrong with that one. Photography is of course obvious, and I also enjoy playing computer games. Being a long time gamer myself, I have gone through all the old classics including UFO: Enemy Unknown (a.k.a. X-Com), Master of Magic, the Ultima series, Wasteland (the prequel to Fallout), and more, to the modern breed of games such as City of Heroes and Baldur's Gate.

I'm a programmer by profession - a game programmer to be more exact, and even have one game under my belt during my employment at Phoenix Games Studio. I have worked on the Fung Wan (Storm Riders) Online MMORPG from its birth and all the way till release. I am currently still working as a game programmer though not attached to Phoenix anymore. I am also a freelance journalist for various local magazines and have over four years of writing experience under my belt.

Lastly, I'm a big fan of pencil & paper-based Roleplaying Games (RPGs), owning a sizeable collection of games from classics like AD&D 2nd Edition and MegaTraveller to current titles like D&D, Exalted 2nd Edition, GURPS 4th Edition, HERO 5th Edition, Shadowrun 4th Edition, Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Edition, Weapons of the Gods, Spycraft 2.0, Lone Wolf d20 and more. Sadly, I rarely have time to play these days due to my busy and hectic life. I'm looking to change that though!

My Photography

Although I appear to dabble in all things, I am best described as the macro freak, always armed and at the ready with my macro lens, teleconverters and extension tubes - equipment geared towards getting as close and as magnified as possible. I like detail - and enjoy capturing as much detail as possible from the smallest of things.

My other areas include event photography, both for interest and for side income. Covering events such as weddings, sports, etc. is a way to hone my attention and reaction skills - something which is important in the field of Photojournalism. "f/8 and be there", as the saying goes, be quick and be ready to capture the moment, at the spur of the moment.

One more thing I enjoy doing is studio-type work, where I have complete control over lighting, composition and other variables. I have a D.I.Y. home studio setup consisting of several slave flashes and home-made diffusers and reflector panels that are capable of small product photography, some of which have been used in local I.T. magazines.

So it seems that I am a sort of specialist - a macro, event and product/studio shooter - not something that you come across everyday. Most people stick to landscapes, architecture, travel and people; I'd like to get into these lines too if I have the opportunity to do so.

Shoot anything and everything, that's my advice to the newcomer in photography. The best way to learn is to make mistakes, figure out why they are mistakes and remember to do the right thing the next time you come across the same situation again. Equipment is not always important (though sometimes required for a particular type of field, e.g. macro, bird photography, etc) so don't waste money upgrading your equipment until you absolutely need the new gear. Making full use of what you have is also one way of enhancing your creative potential - if you only have one thing to use, you'll master it quicker than if you have a bag-ful of choices to choose from.

About this Website

I've always wanted a personal home page, there's no denying that. Ever since I was in the university I signed up with various free hosts including Geocities, Tripod and others. Then came AdrianTung.com. Initially I wanted it to be my photography website online, and shared server space with Adrian's Rojak Pot courtesy of my friend Adrian Wong who runs the site. It was a simple HTML site with a short-lived forum, but at the same time I was hosting my pictures at Image Event.

When I was near Image Event's storage limit I decided that I no longer wanted to host my pictures on third party photo hosting sites. Having two separate websites - a personal home page and an online photo gallery - is not something that I'm fond of. So my solution would be to integrate both home page and gallery and host them on one single site. But I did not want to create a gallery from ground up, so I scoured the 'net for a suitable gallery script and settled on Menalto Gallery, and I began to make plans.

Thinking back, shared hosting with ARP wasn't a particularly good idea. Now that I wanted to install and manage my own PHP gallery, I preferred to have full control over my website, database(s), e-mail accounts and so forth. Also if I'm going to do a serious website it's better to earn everything on my own rather than latch onto someone else's, taking up that person's space and bandwidth.

So AdrianTung.net is born, thanks to Lunar Pages hosting. I haven't yet decided on what to do with the old AdrianTung.com; perhaps I'll take over that domain when it expires and point it here instead. I'll get to doing something about it one day. In the meantime, enjoy your stay here. Cheers!