Anyone can take a beautiful picture, but it takes serious talent to compose an evocative image that causes the viewer’s heart to flutter, or arrests the jaded gaze.

SURROUND's principal photographer, Ming, is a trained graphic designer with a first-class honours in Graphic Communications from UK’s Loughborough University. Still, he isn’t one to let the rules get in the way; his keen sense of colour and eye for detail are guided by an extraordinary instinct for great pictures.

Ming the photographer is inspired by many things – of particular interest to him, however, is the act and art of finding beauty in the obscure and seemingly mundane. It’s this that gives his pictures their refreshing insights and gentle

humour; whether it’s a glammed-up lifestyle or fashion shot, or an intimate portrait of an 80-year old grandmother, Ming has a knack for bringing out the ineffable, inner essence of the subject that’s brought before his photographic eye.

There’s something of the chameleon, too, about Ming the person. Driven by a restless need to reinvent and see things afresh, Ming travels a great deal, and brings the experience garnered from his forays – whether to other lands or into disciplines such as film, sound, video, art and spacemaking – to his various projects. Ming relishes the opportunity to collaborate with different artists and practitioners.

Ming’s client list includes the National Heritage Board, Microsoft, Lenovo, Discovery Channel and the Design Singapore Council. St Regis Hotel and the HPL Hotels and Resorts have also approached Ming to lend his expertise in their branding campaigns and collaterals. More recently, his photographic sensibility was showcased in Monocle Magazine, a cutting-edge international news and design magazine.

Ming’s recent adventures in film, too, have received due recognition – his experimental film in Singapore panorama was selected for the Singapore International Film Festival in 2009.