Framed by tall grass and evening sky, a father and son pose with a wau. The LED light lifts them from the dusk, reminding the viewer that stories of place, family and joy are always worth illuminating.
IN the grey hush of early morning, before sunlight spilled across the streets, Kota Baru stirred with quiet purpose.
The market hadn’t yet opened – no shouting vendors, no haggling over greens. Just workers unloading crates from trucks, stacking vegetables in silence.
The air smelled not of coffee but of cut stems, damp soil and the sharp bite of chillies and ginger.
Among the bustle, a small group of photographers moved carefully through the scene.
They didn’t talk much. Eyes fixed on the light, cameras slung low, they were here not just to observe – but to learn.
Bathed in gold, a dancer readies for her portrait. The play of costume and expression, magnified by careful lighting, blurs the line between reality and myth, capturing not just a face, but a mood.
This was the Sony Kelantan Master Workshop 2025, led by Lim Tian Seng, a commercial lighting specialist known for transforming even the dullest products into images of gloss and glamour.
But this time, he wasn’t in a studio. He was on the streets, in the jungle, on the beach – in the unpredictable, uncontrollable outdoors of his hometown.
And this wasn’t a typical walkabout. It was a lesson in lighting – not just chasing it, but creating it.
Lim’s approach didn’t involve strobes or flashes.
Instead, he used constant LED lights – portable, powerful beams up to 12,000 watts – capable of shaping an entire scene. These lights weren’t just for brightness; they were tools of warmth, contrast and mood.
LIm offers quiet direction to a shadow puppet artisan. For Lim, lighting is less about technique than intention: to reveal what the eye often overlooks.
The participants were taken into Kelantan’s cultural heart: shooting artisans carving wayang kulit puppets, silat gayong fighters in mid-strike and rebana ubi drummers in full flow.
The midday sun was unforgiving, but the LED lights filled in the harsh shadows, adding clean, sculpted depth.
Lim moved quietly on the sidelines, adjusting a light by a few inches, changing an angle, tweaking colour temperature.
“Without light, you see what’s there,” he told them. “With it, you see what could be.”
Daylight pours into the forest workshop as a craftsman inspects his wayang kulit puppet. Here, tradition isn’t displayed, it’s lived. The light, deliberately shaped, reveals each cut, each story, each ritual still breathing.
On the second evening, the group photographed a traditional shadow play. The natural lighting backstage was atmospheric but inconsistent.
Lim added a warm flood of LED, not to overpower, but to enhance.
The puppets didn’t just cast shadows – they glowed. Etched patterns stood out in sharp relief, becoming almost three-dimensional.
By then, no one was asking whether the light was “natural” or “artificial”. It was all just light – something they had learned to bend, control and shape.
As shadows dance across the wayang kulit screen, the puppeteer becomes both storyteller and silhouette sculptor, casting ancient epics in colour and motion beneath the focused gaze of photographers learning how to light a world already half-lit.
Outdoor photography is often seen as passive: you wait for golden hour, hope for overcast skies and accept what nature gives.
But Lim offered a different mindset – one of authorship. The environment was still the canvas, but now the photographers had a new brush.
That philosophy followed them through a portrait session with wau makers and onto the beach for a sunset shoot. Kites soared overhead.
Lim placed a gelled LED just out of frame, mirroring the setting sun. It backlit the subjects and caught the edges of the kites, making them shimmer in the sea breeze.
The workshop team rigging a 12,000-watt LED setup. In this moment, the beach becomes a studio and nature, an intentional collaborator.
By the workshop’s end, there was no applause – just tired, thoughtful silence.
The photographers left Kota Baru with more than full memory cards. They left with a new relationship to their craft.
They’d come searching for sunlight – and learned how to carry it with them.
Under a soft canopy of filtered jungle light, a traditional musician teaches a young listener the silent language of heritage. The scene, set against LED lighting, evokes the timeless bond between memory, music and mentorship in rural Kelantan.
Because the best stories don’t always sit in perfect light.
Often, they’re hidden in dim corners, waiting for someone to bring the beam, shape the scene and show what the eye alone can’t.
