Making sense of the world with truthful pictures

BACK when Edwin Koo chose to pick up a camera and become a professional photographer, his family and relatives could not believe that a university graduate like him would pick what they considered a blue-collar job.

"I belonged to the privileged class of young people who attended elite schools, and so people thought I would take up something more 'cerebral' or 'financially rewarding' as a career," recalls the graduate of Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) School of Communication Studies (now the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information).

But despite the naysayers, he made a name for himself in the competitive industry, and even won the $30,000 ICON de Martell Cordon Bleu award last year as the most outstanding photographer in Singapore.