In a few hours, our studio will be closed for 10 days for the Chinese Lunar New Year holidays. Just want to thank all our clients for trusting us with the important moments of your lives & our fans for your following & support. We have never more excited about entering a new year.

At home, we start the new year with thanksgiving and forgiveness. Perhaps also good to do the same for the studio.

While we can plough the ground as hard as we can, unless God sends rain and sunshine at the right time, you don’t get a harvest. I learn that growing up around oil palm and cocoa plantations. Nobody succeeds alone and we owe ours to many. We won 3 more international awards in 2011: 1st & 3rd place at WPPI and winner of MPA’s open category. Proud to win major international awards five years in a roll…and being the only wedding shooter to achieve this makes it all the more sweeter. It is a testament to the commitment and dedication of the team.

While we always try our best, sometimes even our best isn’t enough. We want to say sorry on the occasions that we fall short. If you were in our studio, you would know how much every mistake stings us. We are a bunch of people that takes pride in getting things right and overachieving.

Rolling out a few major initiatives in 2012. We are implementing a tighter system and workflow that’s completely computerized. We have an on-time delivery of nearly 90%, in 2012, we are aiming for a perfect score! Louis Pang Studio will have a new home: both online and brick-and-mortar. We have outgrown our current outfits. It’s time to expand. You’ll definitely hear more of this very soon.

In 2012, we will engage with you even more. You’ll find out what a great thing it is to be our clients. Be prepared to be pampered, rewarded, inspired and wowed. We want to know more about serving you right, and you will know how serious we take that. You will see how we work, prepare your images, control quality, train the team. The album you hold in your hands and the prints you hang on your walls will mean so much more when you realize how each of them is painstakingly & professionally handcrafted for you.

Won’t be able to teach as much as I had in the last 3 years. The studio expansion & training of the expanded LPS team demand my full attention. I have two speaking engagements at Gulf Photo Plus in Dubai and in Creative Asia which I will honor. Despite the crazy schedules, I’m still in the forefront of bringing great education to Asia. More of that will be announced in coming months.

Never in a million years would I dream about being in the position we are in today, certainly not when we first started in 2006. Thank you for your support, love and encouragement. The best is yet to come.

Have a blessed, prosperous, fulfilling, loving, healthy & happy new year.

Shot this at a wedding recently and a few people asked about how I did it. I am happy to share that plus the behind-the-scene setup shots to show you exactly what I did.

Before we get there, I thought it will be fun to have a challenge. Anyone who can guess the exact lighting recipe will win a 135-minute World Tour wedding photography instructional DVD which retails for U$100 each. Deadline is next Thursday, 15 December. Good luck!

updated 15 December 2011
This is how we did it…

At a wedding, I always have to improvise and work with mobile tools. For a reasonable good ring shot, it has to be focus and sharp to bring out the design, cut and colours. I have the SB800 & 900s, Lastolite softbox, 60mm macro, and a mirror of make-up kit from the make-up artist Always be nice to the make-up artists. They can be your ALLY!

I need to achieve a few things: background must be almost pitch dark, enough depth of field to show the details of the rings. And for these reasons, I couldn’t have used ambient light whether indoor or outdoor. It would have created a lot of spill. A softbox on the other hand, helps me to contain, shape and direct the light as I see fit.

Shot it at f11, 1/250, ISO200. The low ISO and shutter speed allow me to kill off most of the ambient light so I can get a near pitch back background. At f11, I get reasonable sharpness. It is still some distance from say a De Beers or Tiffany ad, which would require more powerful lights and lenses and camera with higher resolution for a pin sharp shot of the ring. Yet given the little time and limited equipment, I have to compromise between being as perfect as a commercial shooter and getting a good enough shot.

Many correctly predicted the use of a softbox from the left and wrongly assumed that I had a reflector on the right. From the early days of photographing small objects, I’ve learned that mirrors gives a more specular bounce than white or silver surface. This is helpful to bring out the details and colours of the sapphire.

I wish I have a smaller softbox. Lost too much power with the Lastolite 24″. A smaller softbox may help me gain 1-1.5 stop of light, and thus allow me to shoot at f16-18. Oh well, this is guerrilla lighting, not always perfect, but always mobile and effective.

Thank you for taking part in this. Since nobody made a perfect guess, I’ll bring the prize forward to the next recipe challenge. Cheers!

What fun to have the energetic, versatile and expressive Putri back to the studio the next day. Picked up immediately where we left off. Went straight into high energy moves that dancers are accustomed to. Shooting with a blank backdrop is always challenging. You have to bring a story and a visual message to the set through lighting, direction and colours. Fortunately, in Putri and the equipment collection, we have all three.

Putri kept leaping for three hours. When I was ready for a wrap, she chimed in on an idea. Glad she did. We pressed through and came away with four pictures I was pretty please about. What an honor to work with such a talented and professional dancer who carries a wide range of skills and expressions. We called Putri when our first choice model bailed on us 24 hours before the shoot. What a happy accident!

Technically, we used the Elinchrom BXRi500 lights, Deep Throat Octa, standard reflectors and grids for rim rights. Pretty amazing when you have all sorts of light shaping tools. I’ll be sharing a bit more about using these lights and the various light shaping tools.

Just wanna leave you with four pictures from yesterday…can’t wait to get back to the studio and work on another set of pictures.

Deep Throat Octa from the top and a mid size rectangular softbox from the bottom. BXRi 500 on both softboxes.

Deep Throat Octa as the main light from top right. Two 500w on standard reflectors, one of them with a 20 degree grid for the separation light from left.

That’s how we did it

Switched to white backdrop and put red gels through two 500Ws. Deep Throat Octa from the top, without the silk in front for a more contrasty feel. Putri must have jumped at least 50 times for this. Gotta respect her abilities and tenacity.

When I nailed the previous shot, I was happy to wrap up the shoot. Putri convinced me to work on this dance move. This was a tough one. Used a stripbox (130cmx50cm) as mail light and then two 500W on standard reflectors on both sides for separation light. We kept tweaking until we get it right. Again, couldn’t have done this if not for Putri’s determination. It is wonderful when you can get great talents in front of the camera.

Getting my own personal shoot done is ALWAYS a gift to myself. The studio is always buzzing with shoots and edits for our clients. It is rare I get to shoot just for my own pleasure. I gave myself a gift this morning, working together with Putri, an aspiring dancer.

Of late, I have turned to Elinchrom for my lighting needs. These powerful Swiss-made strobes allow me to shoot at f/16…something I couldn’t achieve with small speedlights. I am falling in love with the Elinchrom, using the small Quadra for all my wedding shoots. It is not the case of Nikon vs Elinchrom, it is different tools for different kind of work.

Back to Putri…here are some of my favourite pictures from this morning. Four hours just flew by when you are having fun with four different sizes of softboxes, beauty dishes, grids, reflectors. It’s like taking in pure oxygen when I get to play!

Thank you so much for all the well wishes via Facebook, text messages, emails, Twitter. Social media has a way of overwhelming us which push the big 39 to the forefront of my thoughts this week. I can see age as just another number but I would prefer to see it as a marker of my life’s journey. What does the “39″ marker tell me? I’ve been asking myself.

Well, I am at the half way point of my life, if you take the average life expectancy of a Malaysian man. I reflect on what I had done in the first half and more importantly what I should do in the second half.

“Today’s shit, tomorrow’s fertilizer.” Read a note from a friend some years back when I mired in the the lowest point of my life. When I was drowning in a pool of shit, the note did little to lift my spirit. Yet years on, I realize how true this is. Definitely learn more from my failures than my successes. I am such a late boomer. My grades soared in the last two years of university. I got into photography in my mid 30s…and it took me a few years to figure out what I want to focus on. A wise friend encouraged me with Bob Bufford’s book Half Time, “Louis, whatever the score is, the game is decided in the second half.”

There are three things I want to do better in my second half.

FOCUS. That means I will be saying no more than I say yes. Devote my time, energy and resources to what truly matters. Can’t chase 10 rabbits at the same time! As a creative, the abundance of ideas is both a blessing and curse. God, I need wisdom to reign in the creative juices. The focus of my early career was building my personal success. Now, I want to build a great & successful team so the ideals of Louis Pang Studio can live on after I am gone. It’s gonna be a lot harder than the first half.

FORGIVE. This is a tough one. Patience is never my strong suit. The people that truly matter are the ones who love me and want the best for me well after I cease being a photographer. Gotta rebuild the broken bridges and strengthen the ties with them. I should live and be the best I can be for people that truly matter, not getting easily offended & distracted by those who don’t.

FAMILY. When I started shooting weddings five years ago, all I wanted were going places. What better way to announce how “successful” you are than being busy and on the road all the time. Why should I be obsessed with impressing people? Today, I crave for more time at home & in the office. I love working with our team of fabulous people. We inspire each other to go further. You have to be in my office to see how amazing this bunch of people are. Work has brought me to many beautiful and luxurious places, yet after a long day of shoot when I lied in bed staring at the four walls, I long to be home, on my bed with my wife.

The clock is ticking and the second half has just started. Not sure how well I’ll do, so help me God!