February 24 – 26 – Boston, MA

 March 17 – 27 – Spring break to Southeast Asia! I’ll be in Singapore, Bali, Kuching, Kuala Lumpur, and Brunei

~Second week of April and first or second week of May – San Francisco- Dates unconfirmed. Are you in SF’s tech scene? I’m looking to connect with you!

April 20 – 22 – Philadelphia, PA

May 25 – May 28 – Boston, MA for 2 weddings and my 5-year college reunion

June 1 – 3 – Boston, MA for a wedding

June 9 – in Chicago because that’s my graduation!

Mid-June – End of June – Boston, MA to wrap up my life there. Best chance for Boston people to book some shoots!

July 1 – Move to San Francisco? Move to _____?

Here’s a picture of me and my mother after having celebrated Lunar New Year in Chicago

Shang is a wedding photographer known for imagery that pops with color, personality, and energy. Shang’s favorite hangout in NYC right now is the Whole Foods Market at the corner of Bowery and E Houston
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2011 was a year of seeing dreams come true. It did not start out happy. You know how you have to hit rock bottom before you can climb up again? Spring this year was when I hit rock bottom. I won’t go into details, but I had a wake up call and told God that I knew that for as long as He continued to be faithful to me, I would do whatever I can on my end to walk towards Him. It was so hard, the path wasn’t always clear, few people knew exactly what was going on and even fewer people could relate. My focus was on developing my inner strength, and not expecting external circumstances to pull me up.

Looking back, I can not believe how much happier I am. I had several very ambitious goals for Shang Chen Photography and all of them were met. Career-wise, I made a big choice to give up one passion (photography) to make room for another (technology), and I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t find my new direction fulfilling. Personally, I’m exploring a journey with someone so unexpected, but so wonderful, and this is only our beginning. I got to travel to Barcelona (and Jamaica, San Francisco, NYC, Los Angeles, and Boston). I’ve been investing in my body and soul, I started cooking more at home and working out consistently and got a personal trainer. School-wise… I just found out last night that I made dean’s list – during a quarter where I’d traveled more, and signed on to more projects and leadership opportunities than any other quarter! I could not have seen any of this on January 1, 2011. I am living my dream life – it’s in between, it’s unresolved, but it’s so beautiful.

2012 is going to be pretty life-changing. See you then!

Shang is a wedding photographer known for imagery that pops with color, personality, and energy. Shang is super excited about moving to San Francisco in 2012
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Cooking? If you have ever eaten from my Mom’s kitchen, you’ll understand why delicious food is an important of my life. It’s been a bit of a struggle to keep up with cooking full meals without too many frozen or pre-manufactured components, because I’m usually moving around a lot between the Hyde Park campus, my downtown apartment, not to mention I travel out of town every other weekend. A new grocery store opened up near me called Mariano’s and I can’t stop raving about it! I’ve never been to a grocery store with such amazing customer service, delicious food with a variety of organic and imported options, a good selection of the traditional American brands, and all very reasonably priced! Everything looks so PRETTY. There’s a lot to be learned about branding from this grocery store, but that’s saved for another day.

I’ve been trying to curb my snacking habits (I’ve been known to inhale whole large bags of chips at a time). I know that it will not end well. Though I don’t have time to make my meals all the time, there are certain ingredients I try to keep fresh. Vegetables, garlic, onions, and eggs for example… I never buy egg beaters, canned garlic, or canned tomatoes. Now, I don’t make it a point to be organic mainly due to price sensitivity, but I will likely move towards that in the future

One way I eliminate grocery waste is that I only buy as much as I can carry. I am not staying in Chicago long enough where bulk would work out economically, nor do I own a car. I have no roommates so there is no one with whom I can share things. I’m right now very much addicted to anything with raspberry. Raspberry lemonade, fresh raspberries, raspberry iced tea… I think it’s the pink color

I believe that a lot of the health in cooking at home will depend on keeping things natural and controlled.  I like using this oil decanter because I have a lot of control over how much oil to pour every time. I use real butter, I would rather have a little of a good thing than a lot of a processed thing. My mother does preclinical cancer research, and we both believe that cancer is sped up in first-world countries due to the ingestion of manufactured molecules.

Grocery stores are designed so that you’d walk through all the aisles of manufactured food before you get to the natural stuff. I try to avoid those aisles as much as I can – the food I eat rarely comes from a box

I don’t have a lot of time to follow recipes, so I keep a stash of tried-and-true spices that I will sprinkle on my food or add to marinates to make it tastier when I’m in a hurry. Here’s a selection of my favorites: red pepper flakes, black pepper, cumin, and paprika

Do you have any rules or frequent habits when it comes to cooking for yourself?

Shang is a wedding photographer known for imagery that pops with color, personality, and energy. She is currently working on perfecting a shrimp pad thai recipe
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Can you guess which photo was taken with my smartphone?

4 months apart isn’t too bad, right?

Shang is a wedding photographer known for imagery that pops with color, personality, and energy. Using a combination of gift cards and coupons, Shang is proud of the fact that she spent less than $20 of her own money on Black Friday
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Two, he’s leaving very soon for 4 months of study abroad on the other side of the world.

Three, he knows I’ve been dying to visit Laduree.

Four, I wanted a quiet place away from Chicago where I could take a good picture of us to cherish before he’s gone.

Then he whisked me away on a whirlwind weekend in NYC, all to ourselves (he did have to survive a champagne brunch with my girlfriends from college). And he did good. Lots of fooding of course, jazz at Lincoln Center, Cloisters, hot chocolate at Mariebelle, vocal recital at Carnegie Hall, The Frick Collection, Laduree, The High Line at sunset, going to Redeemer and picking the one service where Tim Keller preached, and then, a frantic early morning flight back to Chicago as we worked on our problem sets and papers on the train to make our afternoon classes.

Shang is a wedding photographer known for imagery that pops with color, personality, and energy. Shang has a newfound admiration for super-busy long distance couples
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La Pedrera – a Gaudi-designed apartment building. The bottom photo shows the chimney stacks

Casa Battlo, another house built by Gaudi that looks like it has a dragon on the roof

Its central staircase evokes light and ocean

Gaudi’s masterpiece: La Sagrada Familia, a massive cathedral that is yet to be finished – currently they’re hoping to finish it by the centennial death of Gaudi in 2026. The two lower photos show detail from the nativity and resurrection facade

The most incredible ceiling in the world

Lots of light

We took the elevator up 50m to climb down the outside spires. Pretty cool. You know my love for photographing wedding images on staircases

We also visited Park Guell. We timed it on a beautiful day with great light for some family photos!

We ate a lot of paella. Mmm. We also had one really really great dinner the last night at Restaurant Montiel – highly recommended!

Boqueria market – where you can find dragonfruit, smoothies, ice cream, prosciutto, and more unusual foodstuffs here

On our last day we took a super-private tour with Spanish Trails – a Barcelona-area excursion company run by two Americans. It was so enjoyable – it ended up just being my family and the guide. We toured the northern coast of Barcelona called Costa Brava. It is rugged and given that it was late in the season, very quiet.. and we timed it on a day with gorgeous weather

Along the seaside of Calella de Palafrugell

This was an archaeological site of Iberian village from 2 BC

We learned how to make our pan con tomate (bread with tomato… and rubbed with garlic, olive oil, add a dash of salt. yum!)

Girona, a well-preserved medieval town along a river. This shot reminds me of a combination of the Newhavn district in Stockholm and Venice

Very well-preserved medieval city walls

A narrow passageway in the Jewish quarter. Detail of wall

Girona’s gorgeous cathedral

November 11 – 13 – New York City
November 23 – 27 – Los Angeles
Dec 21 – January 2 – Indiana
January 12 – 15 – Boston

Shang is a wedding photographer known for imagery that pops with color, personality, and energy. Shang’s next dream destinations include Cinque Terre, Italy, and Bali, Indonesia. Anyone want to fly her over for a destination wedding?
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“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever….

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

Maybe it was the realization that my heart was more than just an instrument of feeling, it was a muscle, and this muscle needed exercise. Maybe it was because I wanted to challenge myself to the one thing I’d been so lazy about for so many years. Maybe it was because I read in Inc magazine the breakdown of a startup CEO’s day and even he was able to make 30 minutes for exercise. Maybe it was because someone once wrote somewhere, “no matter what you’re doing, someone out there is running”. Regardless of the motivation, suddenly, I decided I’d start running.

So as soon as I moved back to Chicago, I put on my beat-up running sneakers and hauled my unwilling body down the stairs. I was a pathetic sight the first day. First, where do I put my keychain and iPod?  I didn’t have a fancy armband. I could barely keep running for more than 3 minutes. I had very little flexibility (I could barely touch my toes). After one song had cycled through on my iPod, I was ready to give up. Interestingly this time, I didn’t.

This is my fourth week of running now, I no longer feel like a beat up pile of mush the next day. I smile a lot more. Even with a heavy class load and countless meetings and album orders and social meet ups, I’m not stressed; I know I can do it. I now run for 20 minutes with little to no stopping (depending on traffic light patterns), and I celebrate it like a homecoming victory – I come back into my apartment and blast the radio (sorry neighbors) to my wrap-up stretches. I’m starting to fall more in love with the beauty of Chicago’s downtown scenery. I realized that like any big project, challenge, running was mental.

This is just the beginning. I’m going to push myself for farther, longer, as far as my mind and body can take me. It’s made a huge difference in how I see my life.

Oct 8 – 10 – San Francisco / Bay Area
Oct 22 – 28 – Barcelona, Spain
November 4 – 6 – Boston
Winter holidays – Indiana
January 12 – 15 – Boston

Shang is a wedding photographer known for imagery that pops with color, personality, and energy. At one point, Shang had a different Google T-shirt for each day of the week
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I write all this with much gratefulness for the experience that was gifted to me. I left my pre-professional track in piano to become a regular college student, but I will never forget the lessons being a pianist taught me. Knowing that the difference between hitting two As on opposite ends of the keyboard versus hitting an A and a G-sharp could result in more than a few raised eyebrows reminded me that details matter. My piano teacher, the venerable Marilyn Roth, often encouraged me to mentally create imagery – colors, tastes, even entire stories – for pieces I was playing. That, coupled with tactile and visual memorization, reminded me that people learn differently. I did not have the greatest physical strength nor did I play technical perfection like a Russian, but I went into each music competition emphasizing emotional interpretation. I sought to provide a performance of the piece that was genuine, did not sound like a recording, and ideally, had my emotional fingerprint upon it, and that’s how I won.

At business school we have the ability to view the resumes of all of our classmates, many of whom undoubtedly have amazing musical abilities that often do not get noticed underneath the sea of black suits and laptop bags. I still remember my HBS admissions interview. The admissions officer glanced at the wedding photography experience on my resume and asked me what I believed being an entrepreneur meant. I told her that I believed it was part science, part art. Science, because innovation is driven by technology, invention, and new thinking. Art, because no matter what, the human heart does things that the mind cannot conceive, and that even the best laid plans need to be flexible to change. She later put me on the waitlist. Oh well.

This past weekend I’ve had the pleasure of hosting one of my closest friends, Teresa (engagement session here), in Chicago for a weekend. I call it the artful weekend because we went to the Art Institute, ate at Alinea, and took an architectural boat tour of Chicago (one could say that is quite an alliterative weekend).

When it comes to art, I love works from the impressionistic era – their play with light, romantic subjects, tactile brush strokes, the artist’s emotion and mood imprinted in plain, vulnerable sight for you to see.

Though I am not the most knowledgeable of foodies, I consider Alinea one of the most exquisite – and the most expensive – meal I’ve ever eaten in my life. Many words have been written about the experience, so I won’t repeat it here. It is truly a place where you see the art – the passion of the creator – in the entire experience.

No matter who you are or what you do, don’t forget about art – in its broadest sense, in its many applications and manifestations. It brings out and expresses profound parts of the human experience that mere science and numbers can never evoke, create, or analyze. It grants meaning, and should be treasured.

Sept 23 – 25 – Boston
Oct 8 – 10 – San Francisco / Bay Area
Oct 22 – 28 – Barcelona, Spain
November 4 – 6 – Boston
Winter holidays – Indiana
January 12 – 15 – Boston

Shang is a wedding photographer known for imagery that pops with color, personality, and energy. Shang’s “defining” repertoire of her pianist days included Sonatine by Ravel and the Liszt Piano Concerto #1
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It has been such an amazing summer, it is pretty much everything I wanted it to be. I really, really appreciate first of all the support I get from my clients and fans, and my friends who have sat through so much. I could not be where I am today without you.

I stopped taking new clients* not because wedding photography didn’t make a lot of money, or because a Harvard-educated girl getting an MBA from another top business school, according to society’s standards, should be doing something more than “just an artist”. At the end of the day, if I have to work this hard, and have no one for which all this is worth it, then it doesn’t matter. I’m putting a lot of importance in developing my personal life because that’s really all we are – our relationships and interactions with other people around us.

*I stopped taking new clients a couple months ago but I still have 2012 weddings booked – hence this blog will remain active.

I think the best reaction is to be happy for me. Please do not make me feel guilty, or pressure me to consider just one more wedding. Just be happy for me. I’m learning to be happy for myself. In the last year, there were many times when I was dealt unhappy situations and hurtful people and I should have depended more on myself than on others. I believe that I am stronger than I was before and that I am in control of how I feel. I pledge to continue to find joy from within and from God. Hold me accountable to that please =) I vow to return to Chicago with a healthier, newer outlook, and will continue to be more fabulous, awesome, and giving.

A hodgepodge of all the wonderful memories this summer. As usual, majority were cellphone photos

These were my views this summer. Okay, only the top one is my view, but isn’t it spectacular? I took that one with the D700 + 35mm f/1.4. Middle image is Indiana photographed on a D50 + 50mm f/1.8, and bottom is my beloved Harvard photographed on HTC Incredible (my Droid smartphone that I LOVE)

Explanation for the top left photo – that’s my friend Karen at my birthday party. She ordered some apple cobbler or strudel thing from Finale’s and it was HUGE

Yes I have a lot of Asian friends.. Except Ethan (row 2, right), he’s like 1/8 Asian or something. We really bond over eating, these were all photos taken before, during, or after a meal on my cell phone

Bottom right photo – that’s me with the two co-founders of a startup I’ve been involved in. They are some of the most inspirational women I know and it’s been such an honor to be part of their team

I also am going to go back to long hair (happy, Mom?). It’s really uncontrollable / continues to have a mind of its own. Ah well

My super-talented intern took some photos for me. Be sure to like her on Facebook – she will be in LA next year folks!

August 31 – Return to Chicago
Sept 8 – 12 – Boston
Sept 23 – 25 – Boston
Oct 8 – 10 – San Francisco / Bay Area
Oct 22 – 28 – Barcelona, Spain
November 4 – 6 – Boston

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