Artist’s Bio
Jace Tan has been making images for a long time. His mother forced him to attend drawing classes, where he learned color, composition, and other fundamentals of illustration. He then studied classical artists such as da Vinci and Renoir. He was asked to photograph for the school magazine with a teacher's borrowed camera, and his passion began, wanting nothing more than to be a photographer at age 17. A lack of a photography major at his school started a twelve year separation from cameras.

Jace bought his first digital camera in 2007. Eventually he moved from a Nikon D80 to a D300. By the middle of 2008, he was submitting photos to stock agencies. This year he bought a Hasselblad and launched 1000words.com.sg.

For his winning submission, Jace says, "I lighted the subject to pop out and yet remain mysterious. I think photography is meant to be a 'freeze-motion' tool. That's what a camera can and should do. I try to capture a fleeting moment or to stop time." And stop time he does with a Pro-8a Air 2400 and a beauty dish used in his winning submission.

Why I needed the Pro-8Air for this shot:
“I used a Hasselblad H3D-39 with an 80mm for the shoot,” Jace reports. “One of the reasons is the Hasselblad can use 1/800 sync speed on par with what Profoto Pro-8a Air lighting can do, to stop motion. My DSLR can manage only 1/250. My concept was black on black, white on white and I wanted the subject to blend into the background -- almost Ninja-like. I used a boom arm to suspend to beauty dish right on top of the model. This gives a nice fall-off on the model, a bit of the background, and disappears into the background. The beauty dish also gives a gradual 3D tone to the skin without any harsh spots.”