ELAINE LIM · CO-FOUNDER
WHITE ROOM STUDIO SINGAPORE

Elaine Lim is an award-winning photographer, and the Creative Director and co-founder of White Room Studio, a natural light portrait studio at 219 River Valley Road in Singapore. She trained in Australia through the 2000s, studying commercial photography at RMIT in Melbourne. In the mid 2000s she worked at Robert McGrath Photographic Exhibitors, a fine art gallery, and then as production manager at Jeremy Byrnes Photography, an esteemed portrait and wedding studio in Sydney. She won awards in Australia and the United States, and came home in 2009 to start White Room Studio with her brother Dan Yeo. A mother to one, Elaine has travelled with her daughter Hillary to Bhutan, Antarctica and the Arctic, sharing piano music in places most people never see.

 

She has played piano since the age of six, and it runs through everything since. She directed and produced The Girl and Her Piano, an eleven minute documentary that streamed nationally on PBS and won awards in Bhutan, Berlin, Tokyo, Brooklyn and Los Angeles. She is a climate ambassador for the Antarctic Climate Expedition and BIG ACE, photographed on both, and is one of eight principal photographers in The Remains of the Antarctic.

 

Has being a mother changed how you see this work?

Hillary is fifteen now, and I have photographed her at every age, which is exactly what we do for everybody else. What it taught me is how fast it goes. One day she fitted in the crook of my arm, and now she is taller than me and mostly busy. So when a mother tells me she wants the shoot done before her son gets too big to sit on her lap, I know precisely what she means. It is the same instinct behind every family session, every newborn and every graduation we photograph. We have also travelled together in some fairly unlikely places, from a village in Bhutan to the Arctic sea ice.

 

Why did you start White Room Studio?

My mother photographed all through the 1970s in Singapore, which would have been an unusual sight then, a young woman carrying a 35mm rangefinder everywhere she went. My brothers and I were her constant subjects, and I still have those portraits. So the cameras were always there, but I did not think of it as mine until much later.

I went to Australia at 23 to study at UNSW. In 2000 I bought a film SLR for a backpacking trip to Japan, and that was the end of computing. I spent my last nine years there on photography. When I came home in 2009 my brother Dan had already founded his own studio here, so we started White Room Studio together that April and moved into 219 River Valley Road in July.

Read more in A Legacy Beating Strong: Elaine Lim on the past, present and future of White Room Studio.

 

 

What kind of studio did you wish existed?

There were plenty of photography studios in Singapore then, and some of them were very good behind the camera. But not one was doing the thing I had learned in Australia, which is that how you look after someone matters exactly as much as what you see through the viewfinder. The greeting, the guidance, the printing, the way the album is stitched. All of it is the work. That is the studio I wanted to walk into, so we built it.

 

 

What is one belief you have never compromised on?

We do not hard sell. It has never worked on me and I doubt I would ever practise it on anybody else. You come in, we photograph you properly, and then we show you what we made and you choose what you want to take home. That is the whole transaction. Nobody is talked into anything.

 

 

What are you most proud of?

Not the awards, although nine consecutive years from Tatler still surprises me. It is that families keep coming back. First as a couple, then with a newborn, then a first birthday, then a graduation. The five month old baby we flew to Kuala Lumpur to photograph in May 2009, on our very first shoot, is almost an adult now.

Film

2024 · The Girl and Her Piano. Director and producer. Streamed nationally on PBS. Watch it at thegirlandherpiano.com

2024 · 2099: Power in Us, Ocean Geographic. Appears as a climate ambassador. On the 2023 Antarctic Climate Expedition, narrated by Dr Sylvia Earle. World premiere 7 to 9 November 2024, Blue Water EduFest, ONE°15 Marina Sentosa Cove, Singapore

2026 · Voices for the Voiceless, Ocean Geographic. Appears as a climate ambassador. On the 2025 Arctic expedition. Premiered 15 June 2026, Shaw Theatres Lido, Singapore

 

Publications

2005 · Black and White Magazine, United States

2024 · The Remains of the Antarctic, author Michael Aw, OceanENvironment. Principal photographer, one of eight, alongside David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes. Chief Scientist Dr Sylvia Earle. Curated from over 8,000 images made by 120 expedition members

2026 · The Remains of the Arctic, author Michael Aw. Contributing photographer. Foreword by Dr Sylvia Earle

 

Exhibitions

2002 · Nikon Award finalists’ exhibition, Australian Centre of Photography, New South Wales

2010 · My 4 Walls, M1 Fringe Festival, Singapore

2023 · Melting Ice, Sinking Cities, CDL Green Gallery, Singapore Botanic Gardens

2026 · Melting Ice, Sinking Cities: The Arctic Impact, CDL Green Gallery, Singapore Botanic Gardens. Presented by CDL with the National Parks Board and Ocean Geographic

 

Expeditions

2023 · Antarctic Climate Expedition

2025 · Bears, Ice, Glaciers Arctic Climate Expedition, led by Dr Sylvia Earle

 

Awards

2002 · Finalist, Nikon Award, Australian Centre of Photography, New South Wales

2005 · Two international photography awards, Black and White Magazine, United States

2008 · Two awards, Australian Institute of Professional Photography, New South Wales

 

White Room Studio sponsored the Bears, Ice, Glaciers Arctic Climate Expedition in 2025, and the book and documentary that came from it. The studio also sponsored the grand piano used for the 2023 Antarctic performance. More on the studio’s climate work is on our sustainability page.