“I can’t do that,” he remembered telling her. After all, their IT company only built websites for clients.
“What people normally did was download photos from stock sites and get us to Photoshop off the copyright watermark,” the 53-year-old explained.
Despite his hesitance, his wife went ahead and told clients they could shoot professional photos, and to their surprise, they got paid for it.
“That’s when I realised photographers make quite a bit of money,” the Penang-born Boey noted gleefully.
This unexpected leap into photography marked a significant pivot in his career, transforming him from an IT entrepreneur into a renowned photographer and educator.
His breakthrough came in 2001 with a photo he took in Vietnam of a group of young boys fearfully shielding themselves from his camera, thinking it was something else.
This photograph was used in a Nikon ad campaign across nine countries and earned Boey the title of Nikon’s brand ambassador for three years.
“That one photo changed my life forever,” he said. This accolade propelled him into high-profile projects, including work for Ford, Versace, and Bank Negara.
Currently, Boey and his wife run Beyond Photography (previously known as Nikonian Academy), offering photography courses and professional services. He has trained more than 20,000 students over the years.
Boey is committed to nurturing the next generation of creative professionals and finds immense satisfaction in teaching.
“What motivates me is the students saying thank you after a class or one of them saying ‘this is my video, what you taught me really worked’.”
Boey’s passion for teaching may have been inherited from his father, who was a mathematics teacher in Penang.
At the age of eight, his father handed him a rangefinder camera and taught him the basics of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. These early lessons later resurfaced, aiding his transition from IT to photography.
Initially, Boey pursued a degree in chemistry at University Sains Malaysia, influenced by his strict father’s belief in the stability of science.
“Back then I realised one thing: you get paid more by being creative. But mum and dad came from a life where one is one, zero is zero. So they said, take science. Never go into arts, because you won’t know when your next pay check is,” Boey shared.
Understandably, he struggled to reconcile his scientific knowledge with his creative interests.
“When I hold the camera and look at something that catches my eye … there’s a liberty to it, that sense of escapism. Because all I can think about at that moment is, what are the different ways I could capture that object,” Boey explained.
He nonetheless graduated with a chemistry degree and worked as a chemist for a Singaporean industrial-chemical company. However, the monotony of the corporate world soon wore him down.
“I remember that one particular day I was driving and I dozed off. I was that bored, that tired,” he recounted.
This made him consider leaving the corporate world to pursue something more fulfilling.
Serendipitously, Boey was dismissed after a fellow manager at his company discovered his side business selling computer peripherals, which violated company policy.
While many would have been devastated, he saw it as an opportunity. He switched to IT, converting his small computer business into a network infrastructure and digital advertising company.
At the same time, he pursued a Master’s degree in Information Technology. With the IT industry in turmoil, he turned his attention to photography, a field where he could blend his artistic inclinations with his technical skills.
Despite the business side of things somewhat dampening his love and passion for photography for a while, Boey learnt a powerful lesson — the importance of resilience and continual self-improvement.
“Keep learning. Never stop. And don’t sell yourself cheap. Don’t undervalue yourself. That’s what I refuse to do,” he concluded.
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