Last month my friend was supposed to get married in one of the capsules on the Singapore Flyer. I was invited to help him photograph this once in a lifetime event, and what a memorable event it turned out to be!

On that fateful day, the Singapore Flyer had a malfunction and trapped over a hundred passengers in it’s “circle of doom”  just half an hour before we were schedule to board!

In the end my friend had to have his wedding registration held in the VIP lounge instead of on the top of the world (his compensation is stull under negotiations). Of course everyone was dissapointed at first, but after seeing that the passengers were trapped for about 6 hours, everyone was glad we were on the ground instead of being forced to pee in a corner of the capsule.

Back to our story. During the post solemisation dinner which was held in the restaurent at the base of the flyer, most of us (being the typical nosey Singaporeans) stepped out for a moment to take a look at the rescue efforts. There was a flock of photojournalists all over the place taking photos from every angle I could think of, so I took out my camera and fired off a few shots for keeps sake.

Back home I spoke to a friend who worked at Reuters and he told me to let him see the photos, long story short, my snapshots of the rescue efforts made it to several international newspapers.

Extracts from Vancouver Sun, Edmonton Journal, Irish Independent, Marlborough and Waikato Times newspapers.

So now I have a by line in a newspaper!

So there’s the story of how I became an accidental photojournalist (at the expense of other people’s misery unfortunately).