NUDE SHOOTS? SO WHAT?

STEADY hands, interesting subjects and an eye for beauty. You'd think that's all it takes to make a great photo. But for celebrity fashion and advertising photographer Warren Wee, guts are an essential ingredient.

One of his most memorable assignments happened last year. It required scaling one of Singapore's tallest buildings - UOB Plaza - to photograph another: One Raffles Place, previously known as UOB Centre. The buildings are each 280m tall.

The 25-year-old says that getting to the top of one tall building was the only way to get a good view of the other. The other option - helicopters - was out of the question.

He confesses he did not know what he was getting into until security officers escorted him to a platform three floors from the very top of the building. From there, he climbed several thin ladders before reaching the peak - alone.

By then, it was too late to back out.

"I'd already committed to do the job," he recalls wryly.

From models with diva-like attitudes to stingy corporate clients, he has seen it all.

Wee, who has shot the likes of Lewis Hamilton and Christy Chung and is often involved in the casting of models for shoots, says it is common for models to have bad days.

"Throwing tantrums, saying they'll walk out, that the clothes don't fit or they have an injury here or there when actually nothing's wrong - it's quite common."

It gets more challenging when the models he works with cannot speak or understand English. "You have to manually move their face as if they're a mannequin," he says, adding that good people skills are indispensable.

Wee began his photography journey when he was 17, where he worked for free as an intern at a commercial studio.

The Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts graduate freelanced for several years before starting his own business three years ago.

Asked if it is awkward to photograph strangers in the buff, he says he doesn't understand what all the fuss is about.

"It's just a body. With models, you don't have to talk too much. But with regular people, you have to get to know them as friends in order to gain their trust."

When it comes down to creating the shots, though, he minces no words.

"If you've got to take off your bra, you've got to take it off," he says.

But precautions are always in place to prevent possible misunderstandings.

"At nude shoots, I always have a female make-up artist around, so if I need to position the client a certain way, she's the one who does it, instead of me," he says. (The New Paper)