Intuitive capture of life in its ordinary moments

ANY job comes with its occupational hazards, as former publishing editor Melisa Teo, 41, will tell you. Eight years ago, the editor, who wasn't at all "techy" when it came to cameras, had finished sifting through thousands of images for a photo book when she had an epiphany.

"After looking through so many thousands of photographs, I just really had this urge to shoot. All the photographers had different styles and after so many images, I understood the meaning of style, emotion, light, darkness, shadow - it all came to me and I went out to buy a camera!" she relates of her experience working on the Editions Didier Millet publication, Nine Days in the Kingdom, which featured works by 55 top photographers.

After she got the camera, she started shooting everything. "Even my office table and the car park!" she chuckles. The camera shutter was like a Pandora's Box for her as it unleashed all her unrest and boredom. "I started to have this existential crisis ... I was miserable but didn't understand why. I wanted to see the world. I was asking myself what's the meaning of life."

So she quit her job and went travelling, taking pictures. She didn't like reading manuals and didn't know what was shutter speed or aperture, so she kept experimenting and her style evolved from there, she believes.

Teo's first photo exhibition work came out from her big spiritual quest, when she was based in New York and her travels to Cuba and Mexico where she sought answers to her question about life.

Her first exhibition was a joint one with Magnum photographer Abbas in 2011 in Singapore, and then followed solo exhibitions in Singapore and Paris. Light From Within (2012) was a search for self as she journeyed through the spiritual worlds of Buddhism, Hinduism and Santeria.

Now, for her third solo exhibition, Teo was approached by The Arts House to put up the first show for a new gallery space which replaced the former café and gift shop in the Old Parliament House. The Light Beyond is about how she looked for magic in the ordinary in her pilgrimages to Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, France, Israel, Morocco and Taiwan.

Again, she's guided mostly by intuition and emotion, rather than theme, and often times, just shoots when she hears a voice asking her to. "Even after editing down the photographs, I tend to pick the ones I captured by intuition," she shares.

It's also part of a Buddhist philosophy of "absolute truth" where light and colour is the reality; rather than conventional truth which one filters through preconceptions and experiences. "In shooting by intuition, could it be my true and ultimate self?" she asks.

Her technique is to leave the shutter open for longer than necessary, so her images are blurry. "I think life is constantly moving and I capture that movement in a still image, by keeping the shutter speed slower, and my shots are always hand-held and spontaneous," she describes. "There's so much colour, energy and life in the world so I guess this is how I express it in my images."

One of the key photos - blown up large and taking up one whole panel in the gallery - shows monks taking part in a walking meditation in the woods in Hue, Vietnam. Another is of a monk meditating in the woods in Chiang Rai, Thailand. But mostly the pictures are of normal street activity and even some landscapes. Teo uses a Sony A99 camera and does all the effects in-camera with only minimal post-production like adjusting contrast and saturation to improve the overall look of the final photograph.

"I try to see how far I can go in the way I shoot: like how blur or slow can I go, how much can I mess up the picture and what will remain that wants to be seen. It's pushing the boundaries - which is the idea of transcendence in the work," she says.

What remains to be seen, is what keeps her going. "All I wanted to do was to see the world, and the camera was a great pretext. Everything looked fresh and exciting through the camera. I say that one can live one's dream!"