WV photoegr

ONE OF the first things a
visitor to David Choo’s
West Vancouver
photography studio will
notice is all of the im-
pressive photographs hang-
ing on his walls.

By Surj Rattan
News Reporter

There are the traditional wed-
ding portraits, photographs of
children and a very impressive
night-time color photograph of
the Vancouver skyline taken from
the North Shore.

In addition to the photographs,
however, there are several other
items hanging on the walls and
their numbers are almost as great
as the photographs. They are
trophies and awards the 50-year
old Choo has won during his long
and very successful career in the
photography business.

Choo recently added to his col-
lection when he won two trophies
for his restoration of an old
photograph at a competition of
the Professional Photographers’
Association of B.C.

This is the second time in a row
that he has won these two trophies
for his skill at restoring old
photographs.

Other awards Choo has won in-
clude the coveted Beautiful B.C
award for his photograph of the
B.C. Rockies. He took that shot
as he was flying home from Ed-
monton one day.

“I just looked out the window
of the plane and saw the Rockies
and thought I had to get a picture
of this,’? says the soft-spoken
Choo.

But when Choo developed the
prints, he noticed there was a
large glare on the photograph

have

apher continues to

NEWS photo Cindy Goodman

WEST VANCOUVER professional photographer David Choo has won two more trophies to add to

his growing coliection.

from the window of the airplane.
So he blew the photograph up to
a point where there was no glare
and used the art of air brushing to
create his award-winning picture.

In 1986 he won the prestigious
B.C. Provincial Fellowship
Award, which is given for com-
petitions.

“You have to enter so many
competitions and if you win you
are given so many points. You
to accumulate so many

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points in order to win the
fellowship award,’’ says Choo.
“It took me 10 years to win that
award.”*

Last year he won the Master of
Photographic Arts Award, handed
out by the Professional
Photographers of Canada. The
organization is made up of about
1,000 photographers from across
Canada and out of that number
only 140 have won.

In all, Choo has won 12

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trophies for his photographic
work,

Choo was born in Borneo. If he
had heeded his mother, he says he

probably would never have ven-

win awards

(ured into the
business.

“When I was in school 1 was
very interested in the arts. My
mom told me all artists starve, so
[ concentrated my studies on other
things,’* Choo says. ““She wanted
me to become a government of-
ficial in Borneo,

“After high school I went into
the government services and
worked as a press officer and
photographer in Malaysia for 12
years. | won a scholarship to
study journalism in England and
as | was doing that | took night
school photography classes."’

Wher Choo went back to
Malaysia he found the political
climate in the country io be quite
volatile so he left and came to
Canada where he started to get in-
to photography on a_ full-time
basis.

He has never received a degree
or certificate of any kind in
photography. It has all been a
hands-on learning experience for
Choo.

There is, he says, a special
technique required to restore old
photographs.

“A lot of photographs are
printed on copper plates. If a
photograph is 100 years old or so,
the silver in the photagraph starts
to come to the surface and when
you try to copy the photograph
you get a fot of reflection.

“To eliminate the glare you
have to set up two lights with
filters on them at 45 degree
angles."’

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