It’s day 13 of my road trip. I have been teaching seven of the last nine days. It’s been fun and exhausting. Teaching takes A LOT out of me. It takes energy, boundless energy, to impart. The larger the crowd, the more it takes. The trip affirms me of two things I LOVE. Shooting & teaching. Going outside of our comfort zone is something I repeated in all my workshops. I gotta walk the talk right?

Just wanna share with you a few frames from workshops in Kuala Lumpur and Penang. These are shots created with techniques and equipment I hadn’t tried before. The coolest part was to do it in live audience. I feel alive to come up something new. If you are reading this, please go out with your camera and create something fresh in the coming week.

Next up…Inspire+ Seminar in Penang tomorrow and speaking at Intel next Monday. Take care everyone!

This is how we created the first shot. Triflash through with a Skylite Panel & a silver reflector for bounce. Used the grey-ish sky as my background. The ability to light just opens up so much possibility in our shoots.

Shot during a 20-minute shoot challenge. Inside a elevator, flash behind Priscilla with half cut CTB gel (color temperature blue), and full cut CTO gel on key light with HONL honeycomb. Nailed this under 10 minutes

Thanks to Nikon, Lastolite, Elinchorm and Epson, we brought in plenty of toys for the workshop participants.

Strip light by Elinchorm via Quadra, and white vinyl backdrop by Lastolite…I love these small studio strobes!

70-200mm at f/2.8 for shallow depth of field + 30″ Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe & Triflector MKII to fill from under the chin.

Inside the “secret” hallways of the hotel where kitchen staff bring out the food, I saw a possibility.

There you go, a Cat Woman & Pulp Fiction inspired frame. Two SB800 with red gels at 1/2 power about 70 feet away. The gloss paint and floor surface is wonderful for light to skip over. Key light a SB800 at 24mm, TTL.

Photography has never been about charts and formulas. It is an expression accomplished with the use of light, posing, composition, & depth. Sure, we can get technical about these three things and get downright serious about them, but techniques serve the sole purpose of sharpening our communication–expressing ourselves via photography. We sometimes mistaken technical knowledge as the secret to photographic excellence.

Well, if there was any secret at all in photography, it is to simply shoot from the heart. What does that mean? To see things with our heart. We channel our feelings and imagination into a photograph & hopefully it communicates our hearts’ content when an audience see it. That’s my idea of visual communication.

I am really excited to be teaching the Get Real Workshop in Kuala Lumpur this week. Ninety percent of our participants are out of town photographers. What an honor! They are one dedicated bunch! Each time I teach, I become a better photographer. Excited to shoot these three frames yesterday during the workshop. It is something fresh to me. Take care!

I had such a blast teaching the Inspire+ Workshop and Seminar in KL on July 23 & 24. The workshop was a one-day hands-on teaching with tons of lighting gear & five models. We covered so much ground in one day. Shooting with available light; mixing available light with artificial light; using pure artificial light and knocking out the ambient light. Phew! Here are some pictures from the two-day event.

While we had 100 photographers during the seminar, many said it felt like a intimate classroom. It was great that the participants asked LOTS of questions. Great bunch of people. I am honored by the presence of so many out-of-town photographers with a big group from Malacca & Singapore. It was nerve wrecking to shoot before a live audience. There is no place to hide any mistakes. That made the shoot fun and challenging. Just throwing myself to the deep end and try to swim home safely. Then we had Hafiz Ismail, who took my workshop last year, sharing about how he overcame his fears and started to shoot from his heart. Man, his slideshow was so moving.

Had a great time sharing about business strategies and management.

I was exhausted by the end of the day but the response and the enthusiasm of the crowd just energized me. Still the questions kept coming after the event was over. I was just happy to stick around and help out as much as I can.

A BIG thank you to our anchor sponsors: Epson, Lastolite & Nikon. Also special thanks to Pretty in White for providing the gowns for the shoots, and the celebrity appearance of Wedding Guide Asia boss, Stephanie Chai, acting as a “soon-to-be bride” looking for a photographer. That was quite a mock consultation session. Thank you Simmon for the great photos you took of the event. Not forgetting the make-up team from Bridal Glam, who did a fabulous job.

Next up: Penang, Kota Kinabalu, Miri & Brunei. http://inspireplus.tv

Low key lighting: strip light via an Ezybox Hotshoe 24″

Another low key shot…with available light this time.

Strong sunlight via windows at the back to create a strong backlight & high key effect. Ezybox 30″ to fill up Ong Tou.

Priscilla was a brilliant model. Two softboxes. One over the head and one below it.

Shot this at 2pm using the 400ws Elinchorm Quadra. Will be using these babies a lot more often from now on!

Stephanie pretended to be a bride looking for a photographer. Showed everyone how we handle consultation in our studio.

The closest I got to being on TV was hanging out with Drew Gurian at the NTV7’s visitors lounge while the Breakfast Show interviewed Joe McNally last February. I remembered cheering on for Joe when he went on air. Not that he could hear us, but it was just so great to see him inspiring the viewers with his stories & journey while we watched the whole thing live. It was like seeing a family or close friend on TV…and I get to brag, “Hey that’s my pal on TV!” I did made a little wish while watching Joe on air.

That wish came true on 30 June 2010.

NTV7’s Breakfast Show invited me to talk about winning the International Portrait Print of the Year at WPPI, Las Vegas. I was very honored by the invitation. Being the only guest that morning, the hosts, Aisha and Joanne, spent nearly 19 minutes chatting with me on air. If you had missed that, I’ve got it on YouTube. Big thank you to NTV7 for the opportunity. What an honor that you find wedding photography newsworthy.

“Hey mum, I was on TV!”

Oh man! I am so stoked to receive this package from AIPP yesterday. Took part in the recent Australia Professional Photography Awards (APPA) and I was anxious to find out the results. Slit the envelop and out came three silver corners and a letter. I was awarded two Silver Awards and a Silver Distinction. According to my Aussie pal & Master Photographer II, David Williams that’s a “damn fine effort, great score and great recognition.” What an amazing year it has been for us at Louis Pang Studio! We were so excited about it than we put our upcoming Inspire+ seminar on sale for RM99 for 3 hours! Hope you didn’t miss it!

I love this print. Thought I would do well but it scored 75. I am really curious to find out how I can improve here.

“Peace” scored 80 here, Silver Award. View it on APPA gallery.

“Vineyard” scored 80 here as well, Silver Award. It scored 85 in WPPI. View it on APPA gallery.

“Gorgeous” scored 85 and earned a Silver Distinction which according to AIPP means “Superior Execution. Very high standard of professional practice with superior visual communication, interpretation or emotion.” View it on APPA gallery.

The APPA is slightly different from the WPPI print competition. Each member is allowed to submit up to four prints. We sent in four. This is how AIPP rank the prints:

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about print competitions lately. I am by no means an expert in this field…just sharing my experience judging at WPPI Accolades of Excellence Print Competition & talking to several reputable judges. Print competitions motivate me to excel as an artist and craftsman. I compete regularly at WPPI and recently at AIPP for several reasons.

#1 It’s not about my clients/fans
It’s solely for my artistry and development. I could stop at “As long as my clients love my work, I don’t care what other people say.” It’s not about how many “Very Cool!” or “AWESOME” shout outs we get on flickr or Facebook. That is not enough for me. A great print competition sets us up against our industry harshest critics and trying to impress them. I want to know what my fellow professional colleagues around the world think about my work. If it sucked, tell me how I can improve. If it was good, I want to be better.

#2 It’s about benchmarking
Yes, art is subjective. One man’s poison is another man’s food. I had same prints scored 10 points apart by different set of judges. It is easy to discount the judging process just because it is subjective. Remember, the same judging process have recognized masters like Jerry Ghionis, Yervant, Marcus Bell, Jennifer Hudson, Bambi Cantrell. When we submit ourselves to the same process, we are benchmarking ourselves against these masters.

#3 It’s about who you wanna emulate
Why WPPI & AIPP only, Louis? There are several other professional bodies out there. I have limited amount of time and resources for print competitions so I have to pick and choose. That makes my decision easy. I want to compete with the best. I admire the work of Australian and American photographers (probably with slight bias for the Aussies). If you are a football player, you want to play in the biggest tournaments like World Cup or Champions League because the best players play there! So it’s WPPI and AIPP for me.

Your path & preference can be different. Regardless, don’t shy away from a good challenge. It can only make us better. I am going to work hard to earn AIPP’s Master of Photography accreditation.