Maxby was featured in Digital SLR Photography magazine, October 2013 issue.

Here are some of the excerpts:

“It has always been the lifelong passion of Maxby Chan, who is a retired housing developer but now an adviser to a few tech start-up companies, to build up a photography community. This fuels the unwavering perseverance in him to advocate community building via PhotoMalaysia.com and PhotoSafari.com.my. What’s more, he’s going to launch Guerrilla Photo Exhibition, an exhibition which aims at discovering new blood.

All this while, Maxby has been beefing up his efforts in “Community building” and “Community Engagement” through PhotoMalaysia forum and PhotoSafari respectively. PhotoMalaysia.com Forum is a virtual platform that connects all the aspiring photographers, in hope to forge sustainable friendship between Asian photographers regardless of their origins. On the other hand, PhotoSafari.com.my serves as an anchor that engages all the photography friends made from PhotoMalaysia in photography journeys.

“I’m glad to see aspiring photographers to walk away with some invaluable experiences.” he added in gratification, “and of course, confidence to pursue their photography.” According to him, some of the members have even become award-winning photographers; some have their own photo exhibitions while some even become Canon’s ladies ambassadors.

So, what is so special about PhotoSafari? Intriguingly, Maxby emphasized that what sets PhotoSafari apart from the common leisure trips is 3R- right location, right timing, and right people.

“We will make it point to organize our photo trips to the places that are worth the effort of doing photography.” he added, “and they are rarely travelled places, for instance Himalaya, Old Silk Road, Kashgar, Nepal, Komodo Island, Padang (Indonesia), Ha Giang (Vietnam), Ethiopia and so forth.”

On Street Photography:-

Street Photography

“Everyone can do street photography,” he added, “but to be proficient in it, lots of thoughts, courage and years of trying are required until he finds his style, as photography is a mind game.”

To him, photography is the mirror of photographer. A photographer should understand himself before understanding photography. Photos are crafted by the emotions of photographer, regardless of whether they are happy, sad or humorous photos, it’s all.

“Good photos can tell visual stories,” Maxby continued, “and there are various styles to convey the stories.” Via PhotoSafari trips, he had abundant opportunities to do “experiments” for his street photography. Noteworthily, creating suspense is one his favourite techniques in his photography.

 

On the Future.

Future Plans

As regards to his future plan, Maxby shared that Guerrilla Photo Exhibition is his major focus at the moment. It is a self-help Exhibition without Curators, which aims at giving the freedom of self-expression of the generation Y. He hopes to elevate more aspiring photographers through this platform.

“There is a lack of effort in finding, developing and promoting budding talents to keep photography going though we have many veteran photographers.” said Maxby, “For that, giving these young aspiring photographers the opportunities to showcase their work is the best way to get their talents discovered.”

According to him, photographers need to pay some shared cost to exhibit their work in Guerrilla Photo Exhibition other than paying for their own prints, but they need to guide visitors to understand their works. Also, there are frequent changeovers in the exhibition so that it gives chances to more photographers to exhibit their work. In the Guerrilla Photo Exhibition last year, there were more than 3,000 photo prints comprising of more than 200 photographers from Malaysia and Foreign countries been showcased- and to his surprise, there were some talents being discovered and they have made a name for themselves.

Last but not least, hoping that Malaysian photography community continues to grow, Maxby reiterated, “See photography as a visual communication art form and enjoy it. More ideally, help those who are passionate about it and make a real big thing out of photography!”

 

Go and grab a copy of the magazine at the nearest news-stand to find out more.