Jing first got the idea for the blog while living in Philadelphia in the summer of 2009, after deciding to learn how to use her camera. The friends and other amateur photographers she asked to join her were Jian Ming, a childhood friend from Chinese school in Malaysia, June, her roommate of two years from college, Tian, whom she'd met through the SEALNet network (and had recently led Project Malaysia '09 with), and Darell, whom she'd met at the Northeast Malaysia Forum at Harvard in 2008. None of them had met each other, but they all said yes enthusiastically.
June then came up with the name "colorfast5," and Jing insisted on the British spelling, "colourfast5." The blog was born on August 8th, 2009. The first task was to take pictures of themselves, since some of them had no clue what the others looked like.
