Photoblog celebrates Malaysia’s beauty

PETALING JAYA: Whether it’s our sun-soaked beaches or colourful snippets of city life, netizens can now share photos of what makes Malaysia beautiful to them via a crowdsourced collection of local sights.

Student Rebecca Choong Shu Wen started the A Beautiful Malaysia photoblog to get everyone sharing the “little bits of positivity that they see around them”. 

“The project is a place for Malaysians to ‘detox’ themselves from all the hatred and negativity we see on every news source," said the 21-year-old when contacted by The Star Online.

To her, it is important for Malaysians to look at the brighter side of the nation, focus on the little things that make them proud to be a citizen, and take a few moments to appreciate how beautiful the country truly is. 

At first, the recent onslaught of negative news had saddened the first-year student of Economics and Business with East European Studies at University College London.

Choong found that death, terror and news of public indignation with “dog trainers and sex bloggers and rebel rappers” had filled front pages to the point where she wanted to be insulated from the outside world.

“But I realized that I needed to be reminded of the beautiful parts of Malaysia so that I wouldn’t give up hope, pack my bags, and leave like many of my peers,” she said. 

Her subsequent tweet about starting a photoblog was well-received, which encouraged Choong to create A Beautiful Malaysia.

So far, the project has garnered positive reactions.

“A lot of people might have had similar sentiments to mine, and were hence relieved for a change of environment,” said Choong.

A quick scroll through the site reveals professional-level snapshots of beautiful landscapes alongside idyllic Instagram pictures taken with smartphones.

As Choong had no prior experience with Tumblr, her boyfriend Pang Jo Fan helped with the photoblog’s layout on the microblogging platform. 

“Instead of crowding our visual space with unnecessary tabs and links, Tumblr’s simplistic layout allowed the pictures to be the highlight of the website,” said Choong of her choice.

She also named her friends at the Otak-Otak Internship Program an “immense help” as they provided encouragement and spread the word on the project.

While A Beautiful Malaysia will remain on Tumblr for now, Choong hopes to eventually migrate it to a site of its own. 

“I think the project would be a success if people naturally gravitated there as a place of refuge from the flurry of negative news,” she added, noting that Google Analytics has revealed an encouraging number of visitors so far.

Find out what makes Malaysia beautiful at www.abeautifulmalaysia.tumblr.com. Photos can be submitted to http://abeautifulmalaysia.tumblr.com/submit or sent to [e-mail].