I first heard about the Pujie Girls and planking while watching a local Taiwanese talk show that featured ongoing fads. Karren and Jinyu were on the show demonstrating to local university students how planking can be both fun and done safely.

I loved the photos and the idea of planking seemed very visually interesting to me; I had to find out more about it. After a bit of research online, I found that there was a whole community of underground plankers who posted their escapades via various social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

I added myself to the fanpage of the Pujie Girls on Facebook and introduced myself. I was hoping that they would contact me soon so that I could secure an interview session with the internet celebrities for Reuters.

The pair are Taiwan’s most well-known plankers, with almost 100,000 fans following them on Facebook. They are so popular that China’s version of Facebook, Weibo, has invited them as VIPs on the tightly controlled social network to promote their activities across the strait.

Calling themselves the Pujie Girls which literally translates to “falling on the street” in Mandarin, the name is also a pun on the Cantonese curse “Puk Gai” which means “may you drop dead.”

Karren contacted me a few days later after the message. I was very excited about the interview and the shoot. Sometimes as photographers there are events where you know you won’t get any good pictures and there are events which get you super excited because you know the pictures are going to be superb. This was the latter!

We had arranged to conduct the interview and shoot at the historic Chiang Kai-shek Memorial in Taiwan. Both girls turned up similarly dressed in their Japanese manga-inspired outfits accessorized with a red school backpack. They were petite and pleasing to the eyes, which would have made for nice photos if only they show their faces in their planking pictures.

Karren, who coincidentally was also a full-time photographer, scouted a few locations and said she was ready. At first, it was a little uncomfortable taking pictures of a girl lying down with her forehead touching the ground but she was very professional the whole time as we went to the various locations.

During the planking session, young people walked up to the pair to ask if they could take photos of them and with them, while older passersby gave them strange looks. Hong Kong tourists shouted “Puk Gai, Puk Gai.”

While planking may have developed a bad reputation from dangerous behavior that killed one man in Australia and left another seriously injured, the Pujie girls chose to use the medium to promote positive causes, such as planking with stray dogs to draw attention to the plight of animals, or planking in famous tourist spots to promote travel.

After the assignment, Karren and Jinyu playful teased me to try it out to find out how difficult it was to plank. So I did!

A global celebration of Earth Hour 2011 from Nicky Loh on Vimeo.

I was given the assignment to not only photograph the event from Taipei, Taiwan, but to produce a multimedia video that showcased the world’s landmarks without lights as part of the fifth annual Earth Hour.

The Reuters online team in Toronto and I had decided to produce a video to illustrate the event with pictures by our photographers around the world. The idea was to fade before pictures with the lights turned on into the exact same image without the lights on.

The most challenging part of this was coordinating with the chief photographers around the world to advise their staff photographers of exactly what I needed in the pictures to make the transitions in the video seamless.

These were the instructions given out to everyone:

- No Verticals. It’s hard to fit a vertical photograph into a video production. You often have to crop it into a horizontal or have large spaces of black on the two sides.

- All images should be shot from a tripod – fixed points must line up exactly. This was to ensure that when a cross fade was applied to both pictures, it would be 100% smooth and accurate.

- Both pictures should be exactly the same size so if you crop, set the dimensions to the same height and width. This was to help with my pre-production so that I did not have to photoshop hundreds of before/after pictures to the same pixel size.

- Think about how to show the greatest contrast between lights on and lights off. I advised photographers to shoot on the same exposure settings on manual mode for both before/after. If they were shooting on Program, Shutter or Aperture priority for the after shot, the camera would meter expose for the darkness and make the after shot still look bright. The idea of cross fading from light to darkness would then be defeated.

The production of the video was a breeze and it took no longer than 3 hours for me to complete the piece which was featured on Reuters.com.

I feel there is added poignancy to this production because of Japan’s nuclear disaster, which raises doubts about nuclear power as a possible solution to the world’s energy needs. The Earth Hour global effort was a show of support for renewable energy and some promoting sustainable energy have seen nuclear power as the answer. The March 11 earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeastern Japan, sending radioactive material into the atmosphere, have made many think twice.

I send all my best wishes to Japan and hope that the victims will recover soon. I also wish that the world will find a balance between seeking renewable energy to save the climate and preventing disasters like the one in Japan.

My chance to meet real life professional ballerinas came when performers from the State Ballet of Georgia performed Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial in Taipei. I was granted behind the scenes access to the famed ballet piece which was also the core theme of the movie. I felt like my sense of curiosity for ballet would be duly curbed.

I was excited the night before and did all the research I could on Swan Lake so as not to sound like a fool when talking to any of the dancers.

The next day, I arrived at the venue and was waiting for the media relations representative to bring me in. As I was waiting, a man came up to me and started asking me which brands of camera he should buy and what lenses were good for dance. We started to chat and I asked him what part he played in Swan Lake. “The prince!” He replied, beaming with pride. I was taken aback as I did not expect to be chilling out with one of the stars of Swan Lake backstage (and he did really look like one of the lighting guys in the crew). I thought to myself “aren’t these dancers supposed to be super intense?” But there we were, chatting and joking around just before his rehearsal performance.

I was pleasantly surprised and happy that despite being masters of their craft, they are just everyday people too. I say this because I think that for someone to spend all his life making that incredible amount of self-sacrifice for the art form, it has to make them pretty intense. This experience certainly changed my perspective.

I also had the opportunity to speak to Lali Kandelaki, who plays the lead characters of the White and Black Swan. The veteran ballerina has been with the Georgia State Ballet for 20 years and counting. She was jovial during the interview but the intensity showed once she got on stage.

A Day Out With A Swan from Nicky Loh on Vimeo.

Swan Lake is definitely a visual buffet for any photographer. The gracefulness of the ballerinas was a feast for me to shoot and I hope I have a chance to revisit this topic for pictures again.

When China-friendly Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou and his party took power in 2008, the main story for the island was how it’s historic and sometimes hostile ties would with improve the advent of this new leader.

It’s been almost 4 years since I first transferred to Taiwan from Singapore as a staff photographer covering various cross strait events and I realised that I had amassed a hefty collection of photos over the years to tell this story.

I began thinking about this Taiwan & China cross strait relations multimedia project because most of my assignments were spent covering historic events like the first direct flights between China and Taiwan. You see, before the deal was signed, if you wanted to fly to Beijing from Taipei, you had to fly to Hong Kong or Seoul first before flying into either side. A simple 4 hour flight became 8 hours.

Once compared to the two bickering Koreas, Taiwan and China have been praised by other neighbouring countries these past few years for making efforts to build closer economic cooperation. Such cross strait stability saw a boom in economy as Taiwan’s GDP continued to expand steadily after talks began with China.

If Ma retains his presidency after elections in 2012, it would give him four more years to pursue more in-depth cross strait policies with China like military issues. A reduction in an arms race would benefit both economies a great deal.

While most big news stories are often results of huge losses of lives, protests and bloodshed, it feels good to cover an important story that has a positive tone to it and I hope it continues on this way.

My quest to illustrate this in Taiwan was fulfilled when I negotiated exclusive access to cover the final stage of a nine-week intensive Amphibious Training Program for Taiwan Marine Corps titled “Road to Heaven”.

Taiwan Marines’ “Road to Heaven” test from Nicky Loh on Vimeo.

Ironically, this final test is far from heaven. Trainees go through hell crawling through a 50 meter-long (50 yard) path of jagged coral while stopping to perform various exercises. All this while constantly taunted by instructors and graduates of the course. The crawling lasts 15-20 minutes, if you are lucky. If you are unlucky, unsatisfied instructors may ask you to start again when you near the end.

The test was created to simulate a marine assault on a rock and coral filled coast, as not all beaches in the region are soft sand coasts. It has become almost a rite of passage over the years and ritual a for all Taiwan marines.

The bread and butter of the assignment was documenting the painful expressions of the trainees, but I realized there was more than one aspect to the story. Even though the instructors were harsh with their trainees, they had a good understanding of their limits. The instructors were firm but humane and all trainees passed the test.

Wives, children and parents of the trainees cried as they saw the bodies of their loved ones slowly turn red from bloody scratches while maneuvering through the sharp uneven surface.

The squad of trainees presented strong comradeship and a sense of brotherhood. After receiving first aid, those that had completed the test first, immediately went to the sidelines and broke into army songs to support their fellow soldiers still in the grueling process.

It reflected on what I was told in the army a long time ago. “If you’re not fighting for the war, fight for the person beside you”.

While shooting this feature on prisoners trying to reform themselves through the art of traditional drumming, I was reminded of a question once posed to me by a lecturer when I was 18. Are all men inherently evil or is it society that makes them so?

When I first met the inmates at the Changhua Prison to work on this feature, I was surprised to find the drum trainees, whose ages ranged from 18-25, well-mannered and soft spoken. Far from the dangerous criminals that I had etched in my mind. Rather, they were just men who were no different than I was. I felt guilty for having such exaggerated thoughts in the first place.

Hearing their stories during the interviews made me realize that they were basically boys whose lives took a turn in the wrong direction because of a lack of good guidance and peers. I count myself fortunate to have been able to grow up with a decent education and support from my friends and family.

So, I commend the arts group for creating such a program that provides the inmates with a goal to work towards. Aside from the drum training, the participants are also trained spiritually by practicing meditation and martial arts to help build up the prisoners’ confidence for life outside the prison walls. I immediately noticed the glimmer in their eyes as they performed during a practice rehearsal for Reuters coverage of the event. There is optimism in this group of young men and you can feel it in their energy and music.

There is no guarantee where their lives will head after they serve their sentences, but when they make the next choices, I sincerely hope the achievements they have gained from this program will be able to make them believe that they deserve a second chance in society.

When I first arrived in Taiwan I made a checklist of odd things to cover. I shot numerous mass weddings, fights in the parliament and the enchanting sky lantern festival.

Wanting to complete my list, I did my research, marked down on my calendar and made it a point this year to cover the Hakka Yimin festival in Hsinchu where worshippers breed pigs to a fattened state for sacrifice.

The Yimin Festival commemorates ancestors who fought for the Chinese imperial army during the 18th century to help put down a local rebellion. After their deaths, locals built temples in their memory and offered pigs as a sacrifice during the annual ghost month, the seventh month of the lunar calendar.

Breeding giant pigs has become a professional industry in the small town following this tradition. Families buy their super-sized pig from a special breeder, with the price for a pig weighing over 600 kilograms (1323 pounds) starting at 600,000 Taiwan Dollars (US$18,738).

I was shooting this assignment a few hours before the scheduled sacrifice and what really struck me was that these pigs actually do get the most luxurious treatment by their owners. The pigs which are often too fat to move get water cooling fans and soothing music to keep them calm. They also survive on a specifically formulated (and expensive) high protein diet.

An owner whom I chatted with was standing beside his pig and petted it proudly like a prized horse. I was wondering how could he show so much affection for this animal when he knows he’s going to be hiring someone to butcher it a few hours later. It was just insane to me.

While most animal rights activists see this as a form of cruelty, the culture of fattening pigs for the annual sacrifice is pretty much ingrained into the lives of the people from this small town who really just see this event as traditional and something they grew up with.

Being a wire photographer, we often document things that are happening before our eyes. Sometimes these events happen so fast and we miss that one great picture or sometimes it may take 12 hours of waiting outside a courthouse to get that bread and butter shot to whet the appetite of newspaper clients.

The truth is that when wire photographers go out to shoot, we rarely have control over what happens during our assignments. We definitely cannot meddle with or control our subjects for the frame because that violates journalistic integrity.

Every now and then though, every news photographer wishes that the subject would do exactly what they have in mind for that particular shoot.

Take for example, a stock market story: To illustrate a big dip in market prices, we would ideally want a trader in a suit tearing his hair out in front of stock market panels. Also, ideally the color of the man’s suit matches the background and hopefully he is pleasing on the eyes too. This rarely happens though and you probably have to spend three unfruitful hours sitting at the stock exchange waiting for the right moment.

Although the description of the above image is stereotypically stock, that’s probably the money shot to bet on that papers will use to illustrate an 8% dip in global markets.

Deep inside, wire photographers (I know I do) wished that occasionally they could control their subjects or shoot sometimes to get that one good picture.

In my case, I had an assignment to cover the 2010 Taiwan International Tattoo Convention in Taipei. Not a newsworthy event but a good opportunity to produce some colorful features for the file. Being a tattoo buff myself (I have two tattoos), I was generally excited about covering this event and checking out what was new in the tattoo world.

The world’s best in tattooing had gathered here to promote the industry and garner positive thinking towards tattoos and I was excited to showcase it through my photos. When I got there, I was a little disappointed because it seemed like just another convention with lots of booths and none of the fire breathing and forked-tongue people I had expected.

I was still determined to make the best out of this assignment though and then an idea struck me. Why not set up an impromptu studio in one of the empty booths and do portraits of women with fully tattooed backs. Why women? Well, let’s just say that women with tattoos had always fascinated me because they seemed to combine the characteristics of wild and classy into one form.

I talked to the organizer who kindly gave me a space to set up a small backdrop (a giant black reflector) with my Canon 580 EXII flash attached to an umbrella that was triggered by my pocket wizard. Voila! That was my makeshift studio!

The next part was to convince women at the convention that I had just met to show me some skin for the shoot. It was uncomfortable for them considering that I didn’t know any of the women before the shoot and there I was telling them to lower their tops for a photo! Thankfully, most of the people who agreed to the shoot were very sporting and cooperated greatly with what I had in mind.

Over the course of the afternoon, I had the pleasure of having the company of 12 intriguing ladies who shared their passion for tattoos as I shared mine through photography.

It was satisfying knowing that I was actually controlling the subject and environment for once and at the same time, really enjoying the process while producing pictures that I liked for a wire assignment.

The Tattoo Girls Of Taiwan from Nicky Loh on Vimeo.

Legislators throwing objects, splashing water and kicking one another inside the parliament is probably one of the most interesting yet bizarre news events I’ve covered during my stint in Taiwan. Seeing grown men in suits going at each other like children, yelling and even laughing as if it was all sport, is not something you would expect to see every day.

In fact, everybody in the Taiwan media knew that the opposition DPP were going to clash with the ruling KMT party lawmakers. It was just a matter of how and when. A fellow local photographer told me that the fighting between the parties only happens when lawmakers need to send a message to the public through the media. You could even say that lawmakers act out violence to get some publicity from the media, though some of them really do get hurt in the process.

The root reason for the fighting stems from tensions between the two biggest political parties in Taiwan – the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the ruling Nationalist (KMT) Party, which is headed by the China-friendly Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou. The cause of the brawl this time? Disagreements on how the recently signed Taiwan-China cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) should be reviewed.

The KMT government has hailed the ECFA, saying it would bolster Taiwan’s economy, but the opposition claims it would jeopardize Taiwan’s sovereignty and make the country too economically dependent on China.

The whole session started harmlessly with opposition lawmakers shouting slogans as the ruling party’s founder Sun Yat-sen glared down at them from a giant wall portrait. Shortly afterward, they were not contented with just shouting and started climbing onto the packed podium to try to stop the head of parliament from speaking.

Things started getting messy with many pictures to shoot because there was shoving and punching happening everywhere in the cavernous auditorium and it was hard to observe every single thing through a viewfinder.

When things got heated, I realized that I got a bit flustered too with my snapping. I had to take a step back and remind myself to calm down so that I would not just blindly snap away with a fast camera. I took pride in believing that anyone can snap, but it takes a professional to recognize and get the right news picture.

With a little bit of luck and skill, I got a few frames of an opposition DPP lawmaker who managed to make it to the top of the podium only to be pushed from a great height down to the ground again. This moment happened in just a split second but fortunately I captured it and from the correct angle too! The competition were all shooting from the left side of the hall so their shots were not ideal as they were shooting the back of the subject’s head during the fall.

The reason why I chose to shoot from the center and not from the left side, where all the other local and wire photographers were, was simple. I knew that all the 20 photographers present would be shooting it from that angle and getting the same pictures.

It was a calculated risk. I wanted to get a different perspective and if I had really screwed up, I still had the security of picking up any significant pictures from the local photographers on the left. In fact, I was a bit puzzled why no other photographers chose the center position that I shot from. At the end of the day, when we try something different, we might just earn ourselves a little luck from the process.

Asia’s Largest Solar Power Plant in Kaohsiung, Taiwan from Nicky Loh on Vimeo.

The first time lapse sequence was shot over a period of one hour at 1 frame every two seconds on a lens baby. I chose to use still photography to capture the time lapse over video as the movement of the panels was so small that a continuous one hour raw video file on the 5D MKII would have crashed my computer.

The second time lapse sequence featuring the overview of Kaohsiung City, used to illustrate a city gaining electricity, was shot over a 3 hour period, at 1 frame every 4 seconds, from inside a hotel with an overview of the city. Because the hotel room lights reflect on the glass panel of the hotel room window which I shot through, I had to sit in the dark for nearly two hours for the camera to finish snapping.