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.

I follow only a handful of photography blogs. Joe McNally’s blog has got to be my favorite. I was barely months into photography when National Geographic published the first cover story shot digitally. Joe shot it. I told myself, I wanted to be like Joe one day. Eight years later, I shared a stage with him when we spoke at “Let There Be Light” at Kuala Lumpur last February. I lost several nights of sleep, frightened by the prospect of presenting before Joe! I got through that alive. Phew!

It’s Joe’s birthday today. Just dropped him an email, tweeted him and wrote on his wall. There are a few things I admire deeply about Joe which I wanna share with you:

Humility
It is scarce amongst wedding photographers. While few of us have accomplished as much as Joe photographically, most of us are way too proud and full of ourselves. I had taken Joe’s 5-day class at Santa Fe and worked with him during his visit to Malaysia. Everyone on my team was impressed by how humble and real he was.

Hunger
You would expect a photographer, approaching his 60s, who has been shooting for 30 years would take it easy. Not Joe. He is one of the most determined human being I’ve ever met. When he had a camera in his hands and ideas rattling in his brains, he was like a kid in wonderland. I saw that assisting him in his Chinatown shoot. What a pleasure to witness that.

Love
This guy is full of love for his wife, staff and friends. You can tell from the way he talks about Annie. You can see from the way he treats Drew, his crew, the models that work with him and friends around him. There is a very good chance that nailing cool shots and getting famous aren’t the most important things to him. Just seconds before I started speaking at “Let There Be Light”, Joe came over and gave me a fist bump. “Go get them, Louis.” That was HUGE for me. I’ve learned from that experience how to lend a hand to younger photographers.

So blessed to have a friend like him. I hope I can be a friend like him to my friends. Happy Birthday Joe! Thank you for inspiring me!

p/s He is touring Asia in 2011. Details to be announced soon!

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.

This is a picture from Chris & Joanne’s pre-wedding shoot…I’m using it as an illustration only

Uncle Bob is well known amongst wedding photographers. We talk about him, rub shoulders with him & cross lenses almost every week. He is usually an aspiring photographer or just a very enthusiastic friend/relative of the newly weds jostling for shooting positions so that he can share his images with the family. He carries a point-and-shoot or iPhone and of late, DSLRs and bigger lenses.

There is usually enough room for another person to take pictures. When we, the official photographers, get our pictures we don’t mind having Uncle Bob around. However if Uncle Bob jumped in front of us just as we were about to nail the groom unveiling and kissing the bride. Man, all hell broke loose. How can we be civil and reach some sort of understanding? Not sure how other photographers do it, but I wouldn’t mind sharing my approach.

Acknowledge Uncle Bob

“Hey that’s some great equipment you’ve got there! You must be real serious about photography. By the way, I’m Louis, the official photographer.” I reach out and shake his hand. I think deep down, every photographer wants to be respected and taken seriously no matter what level we are in. We all hate it when someone waltz into the room and suck the oxygen out of it with that “I am better than you” attitude. While contractually I have priority access to the best vantage points, I would rather not boss people around. I believe the bigger person should be humble enough to make the first move. 


Win Him Over

“Hey you know what. I might need your help at some point. Would you mind holding a flash for me if I needed an extra hand?” Uncle Bob would be thrilled to be on the substitute bench of the pro team. A minute ago, he was just sitting at the stands! I had actually roped in Uncle Bob to stand in as my lighting assistant. We became great pals chatting over light setups by the end of the day. 


Work It Out

“You must be really excited to get some pictures today. Me too! Just so that we both get our pictures, when the bride enters the church, I’ll be shooting from here. It’ll be great if we don’t end up blocking each other. Now if I blocked you, just tap my shoulder ok? Is it ok if I do the same to you?”

First, I don’t leave it to chances by communicating clearly and directly. He has just given me permission to tap him. Yay! Secondly, I have extended a courtesy to him, giving him permission to signal him if I am blocking him. He would reciprocate. Usually, he would say, “You are the official guy man. I don’t wanna get in your way.” In the rare occasion that Uncle Bob was mean and unreasonable, we still walk away looking magnanimous and big. 


Play The Trump Cards

If all of the above failed, I would get my clients to intervene. Probably did that twice in the last five years. 


There is no point crying over missed opportunities because we got in each other’s way. I prefer preventive measures and diplomacy. The couple will get the MC to announce prior to the ceremony that the guests are welcomed to take pictures from their seat and keep the phone on silent mode. The latter bit makes the announcement less conspicuous

In Asia, my female colleagues told me that I got more respect because I’m a 5’10” male photographer. “Uncle Bob be nice ok. These are my good friends and they are great photographers. Besides, there is no glory in picking on the ladies ok?”

If you identify yourself as an Uncle Bob, I want you to know that I want you to get the best pictures possible. I understand the joy and thrill of nailing a great shot and I want we all get it. We both want the couple to be as happy as they can be. Let’s help one another here, shall we? We are here to make pictures, not enemies