Somewhere In China, Westin Kuala Lumpur

I'm usually attending my meetings on Thursdays but I couldn't pass up on an invitation to attend a photo and film workshop sponsored by National Geographic and Astro. Thanks YY for the invite! Along with Teckiee, we headed to The Westin Kuala Lumpur last Thursday where the workshop was held. After registering, we helped ourselves to the some finger food and desserts. The workshop then started at around 8.30 with speeches from the Marketing Director of National Geographic Channel Asia, Basil Chua and Astro's Communications Director too.

Now about the Hutchens Brothers; taken from National Geographic website : -

About Peter and Jeff Hutchens

Peter Hutchens has shot and produced numerous programmes for National Geographic Channel. He was the youngest and only first-time filmmaker to produce a programme for the acclaimed Wide Angle series. Other NGC shows he has worked on are Inside, Hunter & Hunted, Is It Real?, and Lockdown series for which he has won several awards. He brings a creative eye, a passion for storytelling and an instinctive ability to relate cross-culturally.

Internationally awarded photographer Jeff Hutchens has shot professionally on six continents, where he's faced grizzly bears, lava floes, Komodo Dragons, and all manner of corrupt officials. From work on the surreality of life in China, to underground epidemics in the jungles of central Africa, to polar bears in the Arctic Circle, he captures images which convey a transcendent mood and subtle beauty. Jeff has won multiple awards in the World Press Photo Competition, National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) Best Of Photojournalism competition, Pictures Of The Year (POYi) and the White House News Photographers (WHNPA) Eyes Of History competition.

They took to the stage together and proceeded to show us snippets of each episodes; touching briefly on the scenes. We then had a 6 minute slideshow of Jeff's photos. They went on to tell us some of the techniques they used in filming and photo shooting. It was an interesting point of the workshop as they showed scenes which are pretty unusual in China, giving us an rare insight of China. After that, there was a Q&A session before the workshop ended around 9.30pm. Their approach towards documenting "Somewhere In China" is invigorating from what I saw; informative, entertaining and even funny at the same time. The camaraderie between the brothers is great and I guess that is a plus factor in making the show even more appealing.

There are 6 episodes in all, with the first shown on Oct 12. It's on every Sunday at 7 pm on National Geographic Channel 553. I'm gonna make sure I'll watch the remaining 5 episodes, Episode 2 is on today!

Happy Sunday everyone!