Few family member or friends always asking me and Nina to reduce our family trip annually plan and save it to buy a house or car but we did this activities regularly since 2010 and one good statement that we could share to you is “We Love It!”
I’m 100% Indonesian and live in cultural city Yogyakarta, about 1,5 hours flight from Bali. Since 2009 I work together with my wife in wedding photography business. If you ever visit my town no matter for business or family trip than you will know that my city is quite nice to visit cause all price, especially for food are so cheap than people will give you tons of smile even they don’t know you. Rather than live in my hometown, Jakarta, I better to move to Yogyakarta and live from what I love, the wedding photography.
I know Nina at the first time in 2005 and I saw how beautiful she is while playing a top 40’s song with her indie band. Lately I know this girl is become my wife and mother of my four kids, yeahhh I got a big family right now! Two things that’s make me love her more is she love travel and eat so starting we become a partner we always take a short day-trip to Surakarta that we can reach by 50 minutes of train ride. She always dreaming to be able to sightseeing around the world even her mother never took her for go with a flight till the age of 20.
My parent in law is typically a traditional people who don’t really care about family trip, for them, it just waste their money and prefer to spend it to buy houses or cars. When I met Nina in 2005 I don’t have a car at all but her parent had 3 cars in a house that smaller than me. The fact is my mom prefer to take a joyful holiday rather than buy some pricy assets right away, she teach me how to stay in 5 star luxury hotel, go with the plane, or allow me to go camping in the mountain with my friends.
Today I’m so grateful that I found someone who love travel as I am till finally we decide to have our first overseas trip to Singapore when we have our own honeymoon back in 2010. She the overseas world at the first time let us dreaming to have more and more time to sightseeing around the globe and this is why decide to sell our wedding photography services to the worldwide market.
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1st Experience of Having an Overseas Family Trip
Obviously we do have Bali for romantic honeymoon but we prefer to choose Singapore to be our destination cause we never travel to other country before. It gonna be our first time to have a passport and stamp it on the immigration desk before we boarding to our plane. I remember that we’re so excited to touch down in Changi for the first time and choose to stay in 3 star Ibis Bencoolen Hotel near the Bugis station so we can move around easily by using a MRT. Exploring Singapore and enjoying their local food bring us to be respectful by any kind of food, we can negotiate with different culture or food taste no matter where we go now.
For remembering our honeymoon than I choose to bring the whole family member including my parent in law to Singapore in 2012 and they were so excited. I do love Singapore so much even I could feel that this city become my 2nd hometown better than my ‘real’ home town in Jakarta but even so many people tell me that Singaporean are so individual or they walk so fast but i still love Singapore really really much.
Few months ago we choose Singapore again to celebrate our 2nd son’s birthday and we travel to Singapore while I’m shooting for landscape, cultural, and buildings for microstock photography than sell all photos on Shutterstock.
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Get Our Overseas Photography Clients and Stay Focus on This Market
Back from our honeymoon in Singapore bring us to dreaming to get more and longer holiday till I decide to stop my local client and bring the hardest effort to be able to get our overseas couple that bring us travel around the world. To achieve this goals, Nina deliver 1000 partnership enquiries and reply over than 100 photo shoot enquiry to our worldwide couple. The sad thing is I have to face my $15,000 of bankruptcy when moving my market into overseas.
What I believe is God and hardwork never lie till we got our first overseas couple who gonna get married in Bali, and they we’re Singaporean. I work as best as I can on this wedding and some of the photos bring me won a photography award till I continuously receiving more enquiries to shoot on overseas destination. In 2014, a Hong Kong couple ask us to fly to Maldives and shoot for their pre wedding and it definitely blown our mind away cause we gonna travel so long from our home town and capturing a worldwide couple who never know about us before. Lately I know that this humble couple safe their money for 10 years to realize their destination pre wedding photo shoot in Lux Maldives with me.
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Do you want to know why I choose to solve my $15,000 of bankruptcy and move my market to international couple? it’s really simple, I want to get more working value and experiences rather than just a money!
I want to get more working value and experiences rather than just a money!
I do earn money quite a lot when shooting for traditional wedding here in Yogyakarta but money is just money and when you got no experience at all than it become boring. What I really know is I love wedding photography so much so I want to get more value and experience rather than just a money and spend it for daily needs and shoot again for money over and over again.
It’s Time to Make Our Children’s Future Better Than Us by Bring Them All to Have a Family Trip Regularly
I believe than having a great education is not only by taking my kids to the school and spend it with all their friends till 2pm but what we do is asking to them to start learn from this real world by visiting every single cities and countries in this world and see it clearly how this world running so fast. I’m not a home schooling addict cause me and Nina still take our kids to regular classical school system and we put them in a public school because it is free and safe our money to travel around the world.
From a simple nearby city like Surakarta which we can reach by 50 minutes of train ride till a downtown of Hong Kong that we need to fly for over than 5 hours than I’m still dreaming to bring all my kids to see this beautiful world directly from their eyes.
Regularly, I push my self to have an annual family trip once in Indonesia and once in overseas and I believe by doing this over and over again our kids will become a citizen of the world that would know this world better than us.
I want to share some short story about my other business, it simply for future investment actually cause now I run a small airbnb business by renting my free room for $12/night. See how my guest travel and why they choose to travel around the world rather than doing regular job bring me dreaming to move to New Zealand as soon as possible and start a new life in that such beautiful country.
I do Freaking Hard Work in Photography for Happiness and Not Just for Money
At this time I focusing my services into an overseas couple and push my self to be able to live by internet marketing. I shoot for 10-12 couple in a year and do more in internet marketing, sharing my photography tips, selling photos on Shutterstock till creating digital product like eBook, Photoshop Tutorials and something like that.
I don’t have any assistant in my house so when I travel with Nina for shooting a wedding than we gonna take our kids to Nina’s parent and back home after 7 to 9 days of business trip. Sometimes I ask the whole family to accompany me while I’m shooting and they could play in the beach or have an outdoor activities than meet me again on dinner time. Living as an online based wedding photographer is ain’t easy but I believe that it gonna be happen someday and I love this method so much.
I work so hard in wedding photography and joining an international seminar and workshop so I can be able to spend my time with family more and more, I work for happiness and not just for money and in this digital era I believe so much that it will be happen immediately.
Recommendations
I’m focusing my services in destination wedding photography so it could be a pre wedding, wedding, engagement, or portraits, if you planning to celebrate your marriage and want to ask me to come and document your big day than I will be more than happy to help you with all expertise that I’ve got. Here I will welcoming you to see my portfolio so know my style and how I work together with the most beautiful wife on earth, Nina.
I book my accommodation for over than 10 years by using Agoda so if you gonna travel for business of family trip than browsing hotels on Agoda will help you to find the most reliable hotel which provide with great place, price, and hospitality.
Me and thousand of photographers in this world are sharing and selling photos on Shutterstock so in case you wanna buy my photos for your blog, company, merchandise or anything than you can buy photos with various reliable price on Shutterstock.
Last, I will be more than happy to share my works and daily activities with some friends and share this beautiful way of life on this blog and my personal Instagram, anyway thank you for stumble upon my blog and read my opinion about why having family trip is also important to educate our mindset and all kids.