You are what you read

There’s this one thing i’ve been doing at every house visit I make, be it an actual day wedding, or a pre-wedding shoot, or even a family shoot at home. Once I enter the place, I often find myself snooping around the house looking for the coveted shelf of books.

It’s a very, very interesting feeling when I first spot the row of books when I enter the room. Some are neatly arranged, some basically an organised chaos. More than ever, I notice how some of these books give me a small insight into my brides, or what the family is like.

For the families, it’s usually a very organised row (or a whole library) of children’s classics. Waves of nostalgia when I spy Enid Blyton or Roald Dahl sending me back to my own childhood days.

Amongst that, I get to spot the mix of culture and intentional teachings that my brides or the children in the room subject themselves to. I get the Japanese crash-courses, and then I see a fair mix of English and Chinese books for the early readers.

But the cool ones are the ones that clearly reflect against the type of people they are too. You get military-related books for the regular soldiers, and then you get Traditional Chinese Medicine books for the medical practitioners.

There are of course the great self-helps and spiritual books I come across and in the process, I do find similar books which even I have come across and read. It makes for great conversation starters when I make conversation based on these books that I too have once pored over!

But at the end of the day, everyone has their own favourites. and it’s one of my favourite moments that I look forward to at each shoot. You are what you read, and to me, that’s absolutely facinating.