J E Z A loves Hong Kong I

To track back in time, in last October, it was our 1st time attending a photography workshop with Scott Robert Lim to his World Tour- China Stop.   We first stopped by Hong Kong for the first part of the class on 10/12 for two days, we then headed to Beijing for another three days for the workshop.  Ever since then, both of our lives have been transformed drastically. It is beyond believe how much we learned from Scott Robert after this week of intensive inspirations and trainings to become better photographers and walking onto the road of excellence in life.

On the very first day we arrived Hong Kong, we kicked things off by attending this mini Meet & Greet Scott Robert Social Mixer hosted by fashion and portrait studio KISEKI Workshop , we all got to meet and greet Scott Robert himself as well as the local Photography community.  When 8:00 PM hits, first the editors Jenny, Rita and contributor Michelle from Fillens Magazine arrived; then Chloe Wan a staff writer for the DiGi Bi-Weekly magazine also came, then more photographers, makeup artists, models and photo hobbyists all showed up one by one.  We anticipate to have a mini get together for 15-20 people but we ended up having a full house of 35+ people showed up.  All of us were pleasantly surprised by the great turn out of this event for Scott’s first time speaking in Hong Kong.

Both photographers from the east and the west all had a glimpse of what is like to be to be mentor by Scott Robert from this mixer event.  Scott spent about one hour offering a mini lecture covering this important topic – the art of portraiture.  He offers numerous example of what makes an image to WOW and gave us hints and tips on how we can accomplish that. He also engaged us to do a role playing exercised as team East (the Hong Konger) vs. team West (the Westerners) to create  a photo worthy scenes which were to be captivating and storytelling (see below images from the Digi Bi-Weekly article).  Both team had a lot of fun getting to know each other and we all felt Scott’s presence and energy level transpired onto us into fun filled characters.

Sometimes I wonder why the SR community (Scott Robert and his student crew) attracts others to come see who Scott is and who we are? Why do we fly all the way from the USA, Canada, UK, Japan to Hong Kong for this workshop?  The only way to explain this is that in the SR community, we are all inspired by Scott’s work, his life skills, his thrive for excellence + our huge desires to learn and excel to the next level.  We were there to learn from Scott on how to be extraordinary in every aspect of photography and life skills.

As a newbie who just started shooting portrait since on my own birthday (4/25/09), I have been curious about what is it takes to get onto the path of photography business?  How to turn my secret wish (passion) onto a career? Attending Scott Robert’s 5-Day China Workshop, it gave me what we need to do on how to get to that level.  Knowing that our technical skills and artistic visions are not quite up to par at this point, in order to change from being Acceptable to be Good, from being Good to be Great, from Great to be Excellent, to us attending Scott’s workshop was a huge leap helping our photography skills to move forward. As we looked back at the images we’ve shot before taking Scott’s workshop, they were not worth of being looked at.  Looking at the images we’ve shot from Scott’s workshop in Hong Kong and Beijing, we WOWed ourselves of how quickly our images improved in just one week.  Now, we are more confident in what we do in photography and getting  better after each time learning from Scott’s class.  As Scott said “Inspiration takes you on a journey of greatness.” <–YES, we need to be inspired, we need to have a mentor like Scott to give us guidance to walk onto this great journey of excellence. Oh boy, we are READY!

I also want to thank the Hong Kong photography community for such a huge support for coming out to Scott’s social mixer event on 10/12/09.  All the models and makeup artists who contributed to our success of this workshop experience.  I’ve exchanged and collected a lot of business cards during one single night.  Photography is so neat, it draws people together who you thought you will never meet in life, but because our common passion and interest, we encountered each other.

If you missed Scott’s talk on 10/12, that’s too bad because you could have learned a lot from this 1 hour. See Scott’s workshop website to catch his other insights on how to be extraordinary in your photography journey.

Below images are from Chloe’s DiGi Bi-Weekly article about Scott’s social mixer event on 10/12/09.  Scroll down for full article translation.

DiGi Bi-Weekly Magazine Hong Kong
Issue 190 published on Nov 13th 2009
To Tell the Story One by One – Scott Robert Lim
Article by DiGi Reporter Chloe Wan
Translated by Zabrina Deng

A good photograph goes beyond merely displaying beauty, but also telling a good story. However, who can fully understand the philosophy behind a photograph and the photographer’s commitment behind the scene?  For a photographer who charges ten thousand U.S. dollars per wedding, what exactly is his aspiration behind the lens? It was my great pleasure to exchange views on this subject with top notch wedding photographer Scott Robert Lim.  I noticed that he is very keen on sharing his photography techniques and tips.  Students coming from different parts of the world to attend his classes are solid proofs of his exceptional talent in photography.

Key: From Outside to Inside, a Translucent Photo
This interview withScott Robert was conducted after his presentation of his workshop, thus I took the chance to secretly learn from the master as well. The entire lecture did not emphasize on the technical aspect of photography, instead it focused on what constitute to an eye-catching photograph – subject, emotion, light and shadow, environment and composition.  Although these elements might not always be under our control, a beautiful picture is in the making should we be able to pay attention to these details and utilize them. If a photo can capture one’s attention, withthe precise lights and shadow, top it of with a great sense of beauty, it would be a powerful image. If anyone wants to understand what it means by stellar and influential imageries, you can check out Scott Robert’s portfolio.  From his work, some of them reminded me of narrative photo plots from classic movies. He has the ability to show and tell a story through his images.

Emotions in Portraiture
Many professional photographers would say that in order to make a stellar portraiture, it is essential to have adequate communication with the model. Besides giving instruction verbally, body language could also help, such as demonstrating the pose you have in mind.  Yet, it is still far from ideal if we have a good pose but not catching the soul of which. Hence, Scott Robert told us that in order to have the model to pose with emotions naturally, you can tell her to think of a scenario and apply her own interpretation of the emotion to pose accordingly.  For example, if you tell a model to portray the desire to be embraced, different models would come up with different poses, which in turn would enhance the room of creativity; while with less limitation, it would be easier for the model to get involved.

Creativity Inspiration
To have the models to pose the way they desire should be fairly simple, but to create different concept each time is probably not.   Little that I know Scott Robert’s inspiration for poses came from movie and everyday life, therefore, a lot of his incredible images looked like classic scenes from the movie.  His images are powerful and persuasive at the same time. Then I started to wonder, why would he allow models to create their poses themselves? Isn’t it easier to just instruct them what to do?  Scott Robert believes not only the model would easily get involved into the emotional scene, by them grasping the emotion will allow their natural beauty to reveal.  Scott Robert thinks women are gorgeous and stunning in many different ways. Perhaps understanding the uniqueness of each woman will transform your work into a higher level of beautiful portraiture.

Never Stop Learning, Never Stop Improving
Since Scott can receive such generous amount of fees from each wedding assignment, why does he still teach? It is because he thinks everyone has the potential to create beyond standard images with persisting effort to learn.  Therefore, he truly enjoys sharing his photography and life skills to others.   On the day of this interview, all his students flown-in from other parts of the world to photograph many special places of HongKong &amp; Beijing with Scott.  His students so far enjoyed their time in HongKong as well as their cultural exchange experience with local photographers from the evening of this lecture/social mixer event.

Afterword
After the interview, I realized that a model’s emotions could be derived from the energy of the photographer who can in return capture a moving picture. One can easily feel Scott Robert’s positive energy – not only from the way he speaks, but also through his body movement. Therefore, I want to take this time to express my gratitude to Scott Robert and to Kelvin Lau who told me about Scott’s time in HongKong. Through this interview I have gained new ideas on how to create great portraiture, as well as other aspects in photography with many new appreciations.

To learn more about Scott’s workshop around the world, check here –