Wiki School Pedia

Thanks for 34 participants we had so far within this month (4 more than our initial plan). It’s never easy to register  for something that you don’t know much about. Let’s just say it’s not easy to have faith without seeing. I personally thank every one of you. We promise you, some time in April, you will see clearly why this event is so fantastic to attend. You have my words.

In this opportunity, we would also welcome and open further 10 more spaces before the early bird is completed (by March 31st). As people said, the more the merrier right?

Talking about “the more the merrier”, I thought I’d love to share what’s my thought is in this past weeks.

I heard a few people come to me telling how workshop by this and that photographers ended up disappointing because of different expectations set. The material is not worth of money because it’s more for people who just started the business but not for professionals. Workshop by wedding photographers nowadays become business trends for wedding photographers.

As mentioned in my past post, it’s darn hard to find to have someone who can teach experienced peers because you need to be a successful photography business, and also a great teacher. So in the end, workshop for wedding photography merely targets for people who just started or planning to shoot weddings. The right information is extremely important for those people.

I often asked others “How do you wish WSP to help in building a better future in wedding photography industry?”. Most people responses’ were asking for a better system for people to think twice to call themselves professional before they are really ready. So I guess people who are matured in the industry are concerned about the quality of work of  people who are not yet ready for the market and sell at bargain-priced for their service. The impact is poor client education to the couples or others about good wedding photography and certainly the market price is not healthy. Once again, people who just started their wedding photography business are always the target for everything. I feel sorry for them. They are confused, lack of direction in what to do and whom they can listen to.

There was a recent article that shocked the world of professional wedding photography last week. The article was written by one of the respected person in the world of wedding photography industry. The article offers a quick 10 steps in starting a wedding photography business (I assume photography business = professional). What was shocking was one of the steps to encourage photographers to “Spray and Pray”. It shocked me personally because I thought the word “Professional” should be accompanied by the professional knowledge, skills, tools and experiences before calling themselves one. “Spray and Pray” is the common term used among digital photographers to shoot lots and pray that some of them turns to be good or make the couple happy. I am against any idea that encourages photographers to do that. Photographers must believe that photo speaks for a thousand words. By spraying without thinking, how can words can be spoken in one frame if the photographer does not know what to shoot. For me, this type of photographers can only build a career that is waiting to fall in the future. Yes you can start your business easily by having 2-3 happy clients from your friends hoping to get some experiences but they don’t have many expectations (because they could be on the budget, they are willing to compromise). But when you are selling to complete strangers, professionals must have consistency or some works that he/she can be held responsible with.

Once again, people who wish to have a better wedding photography business is confused whom they can listen to. I am not naive that I would love to teach more to people who plans to enter photography business. But what one “I” can do, I need more “I” in the team. Thus, the Bali event could be the first workshop in Asia-Pacific designed for professional wedding photographers, not for hobbyist. The idea is to inspire the experienced ones so they can be a great foundation for teaching other people who start shooting weddings later on.

I hope to build WSP to be the place for people from different cultures, background and skills where we all can learn together. The experienced ones share to the inexperienced ones and vice versa. It’s networking at its best. Building the place where people believe that only by doing the great works, you can get hired. I’d like to share Jeremy Cowart‘s quote “The more you know technically, the more you can achieve creatively.”

Being a wedding photographer is one of the best decisions I ever made. I am living my life to the fullest. I love others to taste the same. I still believe the more the merrier. That’s what I hope WSP is built for, to accommodate and provide good quality teaching.

Anyway, I am so excited to have this event going. It’s what I have been dreaming for, having someone like Sergio who has inspired and taught so many photographers out there to be a better photographers.

Sergio just booked his flight last week. His participation in this event involves 40 hours+ flight to be in Bali during his busy period of shooting weddings. I can’t thank him enough to believe in my vision. Don’t miss out to learn from the best. One of his sessions which I think could be useful for everyone is how he openly share his thoughts about your works (Critique session). I heard a lot of good feedback from his past session. So from now on, the participants can start collecting works to be critiqued during the seminar session. It will be full on and helpful, I promise.

Also, let’s networking at its best. We can’t make a better place by only having one person in the group. We need more people to come together to change the course of wedding photography to be appreciated better.

Remember guys, One week to go! We’d love to see that you too, can share to others www.bali2012.wikischoolpedia.com

 

I remember when I was kid that I glued in front of TV all the time. There were so many happy moments. I don’t think most kids now enjoy much TV more than their facebook status now. I guess it’s not entirely their faults. I don’t watch TV anymore as much as I like to.

Most of today’s TV programs, in my humble opinion, are complete rubbish. They are definitely lack of thoughts, too commercial and too direct. Reality TV is one of what I am referring to. They’re like ‘I create anything that has audience even though the materials are complete crap’. That’s exactly how I feel. They think about getting revenue at the most important priority, just for entertainment. I miss my Macgyver

I guess now you can refer to your profession as wedding professionals. Getting booked is sometimes the only reason you are working as the wedding professional. Like some says ‘wedding is where the money is’. I guess the quote ‘Be a trendsetter, not a follower’ becomes popular nowadays to remind people like them. Well, I’ll be very naive if I said that I don’t need booking, because I do. That’s how my family survives. Trust me, I am not so original because most of my works are the results of inspirations from somewhere. But I definitely shoot for myself, not for clients. By doing so, I am happy and of course my clients are happy. I know wsp never about me, but it’s my dream to have wsp to breed the better me. I hope all of you get my drift that if we start shooting to get clients only or to get booked, then it will be just similar concept of reality TV that’s lack of the word ‘classic’ or ‘timeless’.

Anyway, topics of creativity may need a different post in the future. I am not sure whether you guys have watched the below clip from ‘Korean got talent’. If you haven’t, please watch it so you know what I am talking about.

For me, This is what the reality TV at its best. That’s what reality TV wins over the traditional TV programs.

A lot of people ask me the direction or vision of where WSP wants to go. Here is my answer below:

I name wsp with ‘s’ stands for ‘school’ with reasons.

I believe everyone must have some process to succeed (that’s what school should give their students the process), like this korean dude. Obviously he learnt a lot from his difficult and good times from the process, that’s why he could finally realise that he had the talent. And ‘Korean got talent’ or any other of reality TV programs provide the bridge for the world to see this inspiring world. It’s the same story like Susan Boyle and so on.

We want to achieve what reality TV achieve for wedding professionals.

 That’s what I want to build wsp for. We want to achieve what reality TV achieve for wedding professionals. wsp provides a media for others to go through such process to unleash the hidden talent to become better artists and professionals and of course give the opportunity to shine too to the world.

I guess now your big questions are ‘how?’. Well, we are working on it, stay tuned!. But if you have some idea, let’s not be hesitate to msg me (wiki@wikilee.com) because the more idea may be the better it is.

That’s my vision of wsp – ‘Learn, Inspire, Creative”.

 

Today is the eve of my first 3-days workshop for wedding photography in Sydney, Australia.

I’ve been talking in different backyards (internationally) but this time is finally in my home backyard (literally ). I thank God for the opportunity for me to share with others. I hope my workshop may assist others to be a better photographer than I am.

Here is our studio of where we are going to host the workshop:

After several hours spent to prepare of what I’ll be  talking in 3 days, a lot of people may not realise that not all photographers are born to talk. We, photographers, are looking and pressing our shutters mostly with instinct. Thus, how we are trying to tell others the way our mind works is darn hard.

Seth Godin, my favourite author, mentioned there are two types of schools. On his post, he mentioned the best teaching is when the students are challenged to learn to see and to solve the problems. But it’s definitely difficult task  knowing everyone has different background. It’s getting easy for the teachers to tell them to learn techniques that limit the creativity, decision-making and problem-solving skill from the students.

I pray God that I am not tempted to tell others to be like me. Everyone is unique.

When making decision to start Wiki School Pedia, I need to sort out my readiness to commit/sacrifice my hours outside my wedding projects. I know it’s not going to be easy.

And what about costs? or Do I get enough support? Can this idea be accepted? What others think about this website? Will they accept my genuine offer?

Since I started my career, I have been teaching several people. Most of my students have become full fledged professional photographers in such short time, with little knowledge in weddings. But in my mind, am I qualified enough or confident enough to inspire others after all that?

I saw so many educational blog run by someone who’s an award winning photographer. But what about me? I never compete. I never participate in any association of wedding photography.

But teaching has always been my calling. It’s been in my blood to inspire others. It really makes my day when someone emailing me out of the blue to say “thank you for the inspiration”. That’s what I hope to get from Wiki School Pedia.

I waited for some callings that really assured me to do this. In the end, I keep remembering what my priest used to say “Faith comes first before you know what’s gonna happen”.

Also, lately, I read from Seth Godin’s blog ,reminding me “No need to wait for someone in cubicle halfway across the country to decide if you’re worthy”.

Wiki School Pedia is not a photography association to find the best photographers. But Wiki School Pedia is an education blog dedicated for wedding photographers for all of us to learn from others’ work, journey and also struggles.

Wish us luck!

The past 10 days were probably one of the most frustrating days in 2010. The websites including all email services were down for more than 4 days because the server where I hosted was dead. All files were back-dated to the last backup a couple weeks ago. I guess it was such a bad luck for me considering in about the same period after the last backup, I had recently launched websites including this blog. So potentially it’s difficult to recover some information such as changes, likes or comments that have been entered in these websites.

Until today, I couldn’t think of any reason why I could have been so wrong in my judgment to choose that webhosting company. That company had the best rating and the best review/recommendation from peers. So I wouldn’t do it differently if I could turn back time as a customer. I just picked based on the review and recommendation from others.

The real frustration came not from the downtime of the websites but really from their lack of communication or slow response or lies throughout the downtime period. I emailed them several times, most of the time it took them almost 24 hours to respond. I kept ringing them to find out what happened, nobody knew the real situation and of course kept promising that someone would be in contact with me personally.

Relating the above incident to my profession as a wedding photographer, I learned that even though we were mostly booked because our clients heard a good review about us, we definitely couldn’t take it for granted that we could fail too. I am sure the review about the webhosting was true, they were good and reliable company. It’s just a matter of bad-luck I say. So if I can put it myself in their shoes, I’d definitely communicate and be responsible by updating the relevant clients so they knew that they were in good hands. Rather than keep saying “We sincerely apologise for what happens” but the action does not reflect their sincere effort to put me out of misery.

I still remember in my early career as a wedding photographer, I had a really really traumatic experience where I lost the whole images of preparation and photo locations from a wedding. As a typical photographer who just started the business, I didn’t have enough memory to shoot for the whole day, so I transferred the files to portable HDD. The HDD fell out from my camera bag in the park during the photo location. I kid you not, that was my worst experience as a wedding photographer. But I informed the couple straightaway with the hope that I could replicate some of the details or some other moments if possible while still trying to find the missing HDD. The couple could easily realised that was a pure accident and that I was being professional about it to try to complete the job – they were completely fine with it.  The good news is, after a few days effort in trying to search all possible places, I finally found it in the lost & found section. It’s all good for me. In return for the shock news I gave them, I threw a family session for the couple since I knew their family flew from overseas for the wedding. I knew the fact that I was blessed to have that couple but I think if I didn’t come clean with them, I would not be the same photographer I am today.

I hope you know promises and integrity are the most important words to keep in service business like ours.

Note: All comments and likes that this websites received were all gone. So If you want to look at the previous posts again, that will be good