May 17 – 18 – Phoenix, AZ
May 22 – 24 – San Francisco, CA
May 25 – 28 – Boston, MA
June 1 – 3 – Boston, MA
June 9 – Graduation, Chicago, IL
June 11 – 30 – Boston, MA
June 19 – 21 – San Francisco, CA
July 1 and on – Living full-time in San Francisco, CA
July 14 – 15 – Seattle, WA
July 21 – 22 – Los Angeles, CA
August 10 – 19 – Boston, MA
September 1 – 9 – Boston, MA
October 5 – 10 – Boston, MA
October 11 – 14 – Chicago, IL

Shang is a jetsetting wedding photographer for dynamic couples. She captures imagery that pops with color, personality, and energy.
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More importantly, I went off to Philly to attend a friend’s wedding and it was quite the reunion of the Asian American sisterhood I’d co-founded and been a part of at college. At the wedding I’d also bumped in Gary and Katrina (see lower left). Gary and Katrina were my very first commissioned photoshoot, EVER, I did their engagement photos at Harvard way way way way back in the day. So far back it was before this blog. Nevertheless, I have Gary and Katrina to thank for kicking off my career in photography. Okay, those 2 photos are not cell phone photos, clearly. Lower right, that’s me and the boyfriend going macaroon hunting in Chicago. These super-giant, chewy ones are from Pierrot Gourmet inside the Peninsula Hotel. I think the cookie was very well done, but the filling does not measure up to the freshness of that of Laduree.

While in Philly, I also managed to crash the Wharton Spring Gala

Upper left: That’s me grabbing – get ready – McDonald’s before the gala! Hahaha I had landed just an hour before and I was FAMISHED. Upper right: me and my lovely host, Yi-An
Lower left: Bumped into dsquared, whose wedding in Los Angeles I attended in 2010. Lower right, me and college friends Jannie and Christina

Then it was 2 weeks of Monday classes followed by commuting to San Francisco for work on Tuesday – Friday. Clearly, food is my #1 priority

Upper left: my Macbook Pro and my Vaio PC. Upper right: Lunch with Anna at Indo Bali Cooking Street

Lower left: Dinner with my team at Osha Thai. Lower right: Getting bumped up to first class for my red-eye back, thanks Dad!

And whenever possible, I try to see this little munchkin as much as I can. She likes expensive stuff, hence her munching on my Coach bag.. haha

May 22 – 24 – San Francisco, CA
May 25 – 28 – Boston, MA
June 1 – 3 – Boston, MA
June 9 – Graduation, Chicago, IL
June 11 – 30 – Boston, MA
June 19 – 21 – San Francisco, CA
July 1 and on – Living full-time in San Francisco, CA
July 14 – 15 – Seattle, WA
July 21 – 22 – Los Angeles, CA
August 10 – 19 – Boston, MA
September 1 – 9 – Boston, MA
October 5 – 10 – Boston, MA
October 11 – 14 – Chicago, IL

Shang is a jetsetting wedding photographer for dynamic couples. She captures imagery that pops with color, personality, and energy.
hear the news first - like her work on facebook . follow her thoughts on twitter

My goal in going to business school was to facilitate an industry / career change into tech. In fact, I’m starting a bit early – I’ll be flying to San Francisco for several weeks during spring, balancing both the job part-time while finishing up my last academic quarter here at Booth. What does this mean for Shang Chen Photography? Unfortunately, this isn’t what most of you want to hear: Shang Chen Photography will continue to be on indefinite hiatus for the foreseeable future. But Shang, I still see you shooting! you say. That is true, I still have some weddings to which I committed before I started my job search, and I even have people trying to meet me in other cities for shoots when I’m traveling (I have an engagement shoot in Philly for a lovely couple from Boston), but officially, I cannot make any more promises like the kind I used to.

I’m happy though. This tech job I got is exactly what I’d like to do as my next step. The product / company is great with very interesting business challenges, the team is fast-paced and values transparency. So yes, I’ll be returning to my world of Excel models, but on top of that, I’ll be able to see my strategic recommendations operationally in action.

I praise God for how it all worked out so smoothly. I will need my weekends to see my boyfriend as we’ll be in a long distance relationship. I’ve written at length before that as much as I loved being in the wedding industry, it has negatively impacted my personal life, and going forward, I want to put the two of us above that.

Another exciting piece of news is that I made the front page of the school newspaper! Pretty darn cool. I was recently a recipient of the C200 scholarship. The C200 (Committee of 200) is an invite-only organization of amazing women leaders around the world who are pioneers in business and entrepreneurship, CEOs, presidents, the like. I am so excited to have access to this network. I just about near fainted when I found out at the luncheon that I’d been selected as a recipient

Photo by Elizabeth Oates – thank you! In the excitement (and not knowing on that day whether I’d win the scholarship), I didn’t bring a camera or ask anyone to take a picture of me.  This was one of the proudest moments of my life this year, and afterwards I was kind of sad when I realized I didn’t have a picture, until I saw the article. So thank you SO much for taking this picture

So, Bay Area / SF people, get ready, I can’t wait to catch up and meet all of you! Also, Instagram came out for Android phones, meaning I can also finally take square-cropped photos with filters. yay =)

(L-R: Brannan Street in SF. A Hipmunk luggage tag. And of course, In-N-Out)

Here is my full travel schedule for the rest of 2012. I’m really going to be racking up those miles on United…

April 20 – 22 – Philadelphia, PA
April 24 – 27 – San Francisco, CA
May 1 – 4 – San Francisco, CA
May 22 – 24 – San Francisco, CA
May 25 – 28 – Boston, MA
June 1 – 3 – Boston, MA
June 9 – Graduation, Chicago, IL
June 11 – 30 – Boston, MA
June 19 – 21 – San Francisco, CA
June 22 – 24 – Kiawah Island, SC
July 1 and on – Living full-time in San Francisco, CA
July 14 – 15 – Seattle, WA
July 21 – 22 – Los Angeles, CA
August 10 – 19 – Boston, MA
September 1 – 9 – Boston, MA
October 5 – 10 – Boston, MA
October 11 – 14 – Chicago, IL

Shang is a jetsetting wedding photographer for dynamic couples. She captures imagery that pops with color, personality, and energy.
hear the news first - like her work on facebook . follow her thoughts on twitter

We began and ended our journey in Singapore. It’s a super clean, modern country that has done a lot of things right to ensure continued growth. It is a place where I can feel it has a culture of excellence

My #1 goal was to get to the top of Marina Bay Sands (the boat-like hotel you see 2 photos above) so I could get a night panorama of Singapore

The second highlight of our trip was Bali. We stayed in east Bali and arrived late at night – Bali’s roads are usually one-lane which means a lot of traffic during the day. We hired a driver to chauffeur us around the eastern and central region of the island during one of the days, which offers a much more interesting and authentic experience than staying in the capital of Denpasar

The camera I brought on this trip was not my usual camera. It’s a consumer DSLR that many of you guys will be able to afford – a Nikon D5100 mounted with the 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G VR lens. Having shot with a professional body for so long it is definitely a challenge trying to get more out of a lesser body and I never realized how many things I took for granted with the D700.

One big issue was auto-focus – it’s just not as good as the D700 (which has 51 points). The D5100 has a respectable 11 points, but I had issues re-programming it into back-button focus mode. It’s hard to see which focal point the camera has picked. This resulted in most photos that the boyfriend took of me being blurry

Second, is dynamic range. A camera with amazing dynamic range is the best way to achieve the color that is a trademark of my work. The lack of dynamic range compared to the professional full frames means that colors appear more flat and harsh, so I had to work extra hard on these images. Again, for personal purposes, I’m happy with these photos, but professionally I wouldn’t use this camera

All the temples and palaces in Bali have an element of water. I love it

Bali is interesting is that it is an island of predominantly Hindu / indigenous / Buddhist religions. You’ll see lots of these statues and more everywhere you go

The sunset by which we had a very delicious romantic dinner in Candidasa, Bali. The ISO performance of this camera is pretty good since Nikon got its act together with the D90 and all cameras after that. Changing ISO is a beast, I had to assign a different function button to do it. Also, this camera refuses to take a photo when the lighting is low without popping up the flash, which is not what I wanted. I had to tell it to stop being so “smart” by holding down the AE-lock button to force it to take a photo

Oh Kuala Lumpur. We stayed longer than we intended in this city because we missed our flight to Kuching and the rainforests of Borneo. It was also my first time staying at a hostel that really did look like a hostel (and not like those professional hotel-like hostels you find in Europe), which took me a long time to adjust to. So we ate.. and ate.. and ate… haha. We ate throughout the trip. The food photos below are actually from all over – only the bottom right was food from a food court in Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur has some great Islamic architecture. The below two photos were taken at a train station!

Resting at the National Islamic Art museum – Kuala Lumpur has a great selection of museums

The Batu Caves – a series of caves accessible by train. One of them has a Hindu temple. You climb 272 steps to get to it

We also visited Brunei, which unfortunately ranks now as one of the most boring countries in the world according to us (and between the two of us we’ve visited a LOT of countries). We meant to visit the Temburong national park but a change in the location of the boat dock made it too hard for us to get to with our time constraint. Instead, here is Kampong Ayer, a water village

I also had the pleasure of meeting up with several friends and make new ones! Thanks Wei Ting, Joyce, Angela, and AiGhee!

To end, here are the gorgeous Petronas Towers of Kuala Lumpur lit up at night

April 3 – 5 – San Francisco, CA
April 20 – 22 – Philadelphia, PA
First week of May – San Francisco, CA
May 25 – 28 – Boston, MA
June 1 – 3 – Boston, MA
June 9 – Chicago, IL – I graduate!
Mid-to-late June – Boston, MA – a couple of spots left for lifestyle and engagement sessions
June 22 – 24 – Kiawah Island, SC
July 1 and on – San Francisco, CA

Shang is a jetsetting wedding photographer for dynamic couples. She captures imagery that pops with color, personality, and energy.
hear the news first - like her work on facebook . follow her thoughts on twitter

We’re going to wander around Singapore, Bali (specifically, Manggis and Denpasar), Kuching (it’s a good stopover to Kuala Lumpur and has great national parks), Kuala Lumpur, Brunei, before I fly back out from Singapore.

I am grinning bigger than I am this picture right now

(someone please help me convince him we should have someone else take photos of us in the spring)

Since we are doing 50% of this trip backpacker style, it was too risky and too impractical to bring my professional gear. Originally his Canon G12 was supposed to suffice, BUT it encountered some autofocus error (boo), so at the last minute, I’m borrowing my father’s Nikon D5100 mounted with the 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G VR lens, which is not bad considering I will happily shoot with any old DSLR for personal trips. The upsides include MUCH reduced size and weight  compared to my professional gear – I swear, the body + lens together still weigh less than my trusty Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8!!!  The downsides are obviously cropped sensor, a measly 11 focal points, less heavy on other stuff, and changing the ISO is still a bit of a button battle. Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to 10 days of pigging out and sightseeing. :D

Here is when you could potentially catch me in the spring!

March 15 – 27 – Southeast Asia
April 3 – 5 – San Francisco, CA
April 20 – 22 – Philadelphia, PA
First week of May – San Francisco, CA
May 25 – 28 – Boston, MA (it’s a super busy weekend though with 2 weddings and a 5-year reunion!)
June 1 – 3 – Boston, MA
June 9 – Chicago, IL – I graduate!
Mid-to-late June – Boston, MA – just a couple of spots left for lifestyle shoots!
July 1 and on – San Francisco, CA

Shang is a jetsetting wedding photographer for dynamic couples. She captures imagery that pops with color, personality, and energy.
hear the news first - like her work on facebook . follow her thoughts on twitter

Spread the love, Happy Valentine’s Day!

And to my man: I miss you, Happy Valentine’s Day! One more month!

Shang is a jetsetting wedding photographer for dynamic couples. She captures imagery that pops with color, personality, and energy.
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[Emotional return on this vendor] + [time savings compared to your next best alternative * your wage] – [vendor price] = X
If X is positive, buy

Did that sound like gibberish? Here’s the translation: at the end of the day, the couple wants to be married, with as little stress as possible, getting the most value for their investment, at the lowest cost.

(hanging with the super-fun ladies of Gracie Lou Events at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center)

Wedding planning – If you are two working adults both earning $20 an hour or higher, you can likely afford a wedding planner. Or at the very least, a day of coordinator (the name is misleading, they act more like month-of-coordinators). For most reasons given by people as to not having a wedding planner, Every Last Detail has a great blog that gives a good answer. If I ever get married, I will be hiring a wedding planner, just so I can enjoy being engaged and never get to the point of saying, “I wish I could elope”. My boyfriend and I had the silliest fight a couple months ago over how we viewed weddings and their ROI. Bottom line, we are never talking about weddings again until that time comes, we’re focusing our time on developing our relationship. Can you imagine spending your entire year of engagement getting into fights over the small details of your wedding? How much damage does that do to your relationship?

I’m not saying that you aren’t talented, or that you’re bad at logistics, I’m arguing for giving you a good mental break and giving you the most bang for your buck, that a wedding planner can be positive ROI financially, physically, and emotionally. Here’s how a wedding MBA will think about a wedding planner:

I’m using a bride and groom who are each earning a salary of $48K a year at 50-hour work weeks (because most people I talk to don’t work 40-hour weeks anymore!), 48 work weeks a year (assuming you get ~3 weeks paid vacation). That amounts to, pre-tax, $20 an hour. See what that amounts to if each of you earn even more than that.

Here are some simple calculations to show you why a wedding planner is worth it:

Take 7 days prior to your wedding off to plan full-time and run errands = 70 hours

Spend 10 hours researching your venues, then visit 5 wedding venues at 1-hour visits + 1-hour transportation time each = 20 hours

Meet with 3 photographers, 3 DJs, and 3 florists each for initial consultation  = 1 hour in meeting and 1 hour in transportation each = 18 hours

We just spent 108 hours on the wedding!! 108 hours x 2 people x $20 = $4,320. The cost of a wedding planner.

It is not unusual for a couple to take a week off before their wedding. And the above 108 hours still don’t include all the online research, emailing vendors, negotiating, reviewing contracts, calculations, and designing you have for other details. This doesn’t include the time making seating charts, folding together invitations, choosing gifts, coordinating bridesmaid dress shopping trips.

I’ve seen friends take up to 3 weeks in unpaid vacation to plan a wedding, that’s a lot of lost salary! Remember that $4,500 will get you a pretty good wedding planner in Boston, and $1,500 will probably get you started on a Day of Coordination package. Let’s not forget how much farther a wedding planner can usually take your creative vision. And how smoothly your wedding will run on the day of. Almost every wedding I’ve shot with a capable planner, I’ve called perfect, because they take care of so many of the logistics so that the couple can focus on getting married and mingling with family and friends, and I can focus on photography.

Some people argue – “oh but we spent that time planning outside of work hours”. Well, what else do you use that time for? What could your parents and friends – the people you’ll be asking to help you with wedding planning –  be doing with that time? You all could be spending that time studying or working towards a promotion (more $$$!), sleep (longer life!), care for family (more memories!), spend more time with your future spouse to develop your relationship prior to marriage (more love!). How much are wealth, health, family, and love worth to you? To your loved ones?

Be smart. Think like a wedding MBA. In many cases, a wedding planner can be a super smart decision.

(with the fabulous Emilie of Pink Orchid Weddings at a Gibbet Hill wedding last year)

Wedding photography – The couples who choose to hire me, truly value photography, because it’s one of the few things that remain, and I’m not going to take up an entire post explaining why I think my job is justified. Some people won’t care about photos, and this paragraph is not for you. For those who do care: the aim of a good photographer is to help you remember your wedding with the same positive emotions, years down the road. When I hear all these sad stories from my friends who did not invest in their photographer, I feel like something got stolen from their day. A bad photographer who messes things up, gives you spoiled memories for a lifetime. There is no way of getting that back, no amount of money can really fix it.

Go with a professional for this one, up to what you can reasonably afford. Go with the one who has the most beautiful photos, not the most amount of products (even if it means to get the one with the most beautiful photos, you have to forego albums or digital files for a year), and go with one who moves your heart.

(Yay for Brits! With Nicole and Jonathan at their State Room wedding last year)

Videography, music, floral and event design, paper design - You can pretty much apply this equation to any other fixed investment vendor, and sometimes, it might mean, you don’t care enough about this vendor to hire one. Sometimes you have to cut a vendor due to affordability, as there are a couple more thousand dollars that we can put back in your wallet.

A lot of people look at the weddings I shoot and think that I did better on a wedding that had more expensive venue, design, and decor – even though my own photography technique did not change! To the untrained eye, most people perceive a wedding as “beautiful” because of the way it looks. If (and only if) you care about the way your wedding looks, here’s a money saving tip: Go with a less expensive venue (that hopefully still includes tables and chairs), but go with high-end florals, decor, and paper design. A less expensive venue saves you on the scale of thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. The difference between DIYing design vs hiring a professional is in the hundreds to low thousands.

Below: various inspiration boards I pulled from weddings that used mainly professional design vendors:

Florist: Bumble Bee Landing

Florist: Orchids N’ Blooms

Cake: Konditor Meister; Florist: Jody Roffi; Invitations: Exclusively Weddings; Venue lighting: Boston Seaport Hotel

To date, one of my favorite bridal bouquets. Florist: Flou(-e)r

Rented linen and candelabras complimented the florals

A note about using friendors: Asking a friend or family member to do something for your wedding can sometimes work out awesome, and sometimes it can be a liability. This is part of the reason why I typically don’t shoot weddings for friends unless they are completely in sync with my style, and yes, I do charge my full rate. The risks I have to take on include the fact that I won’t enjoy my friend’s wedding, and if something goes wrong, we’ll have messed up a friendship for a long time. If a friendor isn’t a professional with no liability insurance, it might not even be allowed by a wedding venue. However, if you can swing a friendor, it could work out really well!

Above: the bride and groom used a family friend who was a professional florist for their bouquets and bouts, DIYed their centerpieces, and the bride’s mom baked the pie buffet

A note about DIY: DIY when you are GOOD at something. Otherwise, you could DYI (do yourself in… cuts on fingers, burnt mistakes, over-purchasing supplies). The time lost on the DIY may cost more than hiring a professional. However, I have seen SPECTACULAR DIY from very talented, creative brides, which I’m featuring below. I… also have seen DIY that might have been better trusted to a professional. Again, it is up to you to determine what level of appearance you’re happy with.

Below: Talented DIY examples

Did you enjoy this post? Be sure to check out other posts in the past:

1. Why most wedding budget tools are incorrect

2. The budget buster: the wedding guest

(photo of me shooting a wedding, by Amie Fedora Photography)

Let’s create a wedding budget for a $60K wedding for 100 people and 4 bridesmaids and 4 groomsmen. I pulled $60K as an assumption because you can have a wedding of that size with that budget in downtown Boston, at a pretty nice venue, with your pick of some of the better high-end vendors, but don’t get tied to this number! Don’t have a heart attack, don’t bite my head off, most people in Boston do with a lot less, but weddings are expensive especially in an expensive city like Boston, and I just picked a big number to show the power of variable pricing. (Those people who brag about $5K weddings for 100 people? Check to see if any of them were held in downtown Boston – most likely it was in some barn in the middle of nowhere – which is nice, but again, most of my audience lives in cities, and a city budget unfortunately will have to be in the tens of thousands). And some of my numbers are likely wrong, so, think about the principle of how I’m doing things. Remember, unless you’re a wedding planner or unless you work in the wedding industry, when you first put together a wedding budget, you don’t know these prices either! A lot of your wedding planning time will be spent in researching your options

1. Put down your fixed costs FIRST. This is because couples often overspend on the venue and then leave too little room for the other stuff that was supposed to be important but don’t depend on guest count. Fixed costs are harder to negotiate, that’s why you have to know what they are. These will be different based on where you’re located and how much things typically go for.

I’ve plugged in fixed costs based on the following assumptions:

- You’re going to hire me or someone like me as your photographer in the year 2012. (There are plenty of awesome photogs for a little less, I’m just saying, you want me, right? :D)
- All of the major vendors you are hiring are full-time professionals with great reputations, backup and insurance (we’ll talk about using part-time and friendors in a future post)
- You are hiring a full-service wedding planner. Most couples who are working median full-time jobs should be getting a wedding planner and I’ll explain again in a future post as to why it economically works out and gives you more bang for your buck
- Though venue rental is a fixed item, let’s leave that out for now because I want to include that into the venue item

2. Add in variable costs and multiply by the guest count or wedding party count, depending on the item. Again, I’m simply plugging in numbers that I think are representative of a $60K wedding in Boston, MA

- Catering costs are a lot more complicated than the way I’m displaying them. Often, venues can and will slap on 15% service fees and 7% admin fees, so again, I’m just assuming an all-in cost at this point, but when you actually do your venue research, read carefully for all those extra costs, they are annoying and add up (which is why I think venue pricing can get pretty absurd after a certain point). Some venues include rentals, others don’t, so I threw in another $15 on top just as a start (chiavari chairs alone often cost $6 – $7 to rent)
- I assumed that the couple would pay for hair and makeup for the 4 bridesmaids. (This doesn’t always happen, it’s a nice gift)
- My venue rental might be low. I’m assuming you’re using the same room for ceremony and reception
- For florals, I assumed a $115 bridesmaid bouquet and a $10 bout, and multiplied by a wedding party of 8. I assumed a couple of altar arrangements totaling $500. I assumed that you’ll add about 10 more bouts for other familiy members. I assumed that your tables will seat 10 each with $200 centerpieces
- For stationery and paper, I went on WeddingPaperDivas and priced out some midrange options
- I’m not as clear on costs like favors, gifts, or transportation and lodging costs, so I put in wild estimates, don’t take them at face value
- I plugged in a $6,000 overflow item. You could set it to $0 if you’d like, but you need breathing room in your budget

Now we’re at around a ~$60,000 budget. Keep breathing

The Excel works in that if you change the guest count on the top cell, it will feed through the model and you can see how your total budget will change.

3. Now it’s time to prioritize. Ask yourself, your spouse-to-be, and people who are paying for the wedding how much you can afford for the wedding (a function of your existing savings rate, your willingness to save going forward, and amount of time you have for wedding planning). Count up the people you definitely want at the wedding (don’t forget about +1s – those add up!) and ask yourself how big you want the wedding to be. Then each of you – pick your top 2 or 3 considerations. For many people at this stage, after they’ve priced out their dream venues, unless they’re made of money, they’ll realize that there are things they cannot afford.

People usually start by cutting the small stuff that don’t fall on the top priority list. For example, let’s take out the ceremony decor, decrease emergency bump to $3000, move rings down to $1000, change favors to $4 per person. Okay, that’s $5,000 back in your pocket.

$5,000 is no chump change, and these will be little changes you have to do down the road to adjust your budget, but remember how many variables there are in your costs? You will have the most power by changing your variable costs.

4. Make big changes. Let’s say you plan a wedding outside of the city of Boston – there are SO many beautiful outdoor venues, in fact, these are probably some of my favorite places to photograph. You can probably expect your food and service costs to come down by $50. Maybe your venue is made for weddings and table and chair rentals are included. Then let’s invite 80 people (10 fewer couples). Boom, that’s $10K saved. Combine that with cutting back on some non-priority things that I mentioned above, and you just saved yourself $15K and now, you’re a $45K wedding.

There is no right or wrong wedding budget. Your budget is how much you’re willing to spend. The point of this post was to show you the power of how much wedding guests and venue/food/drink costs control your wedding budget. You should plan a wedding keeping in mind your own affordability and preferences. The bottom line is, you will have to adjust your tastes accordingly. If you can’t cut the number of guests due to certain expectations, then you should either save and wait another year to have your wedding, or maybe understand that there are a lot of things you will need to cut back on. Having an Excel sheet like this with you will help you easily visualize what the relative impact items have on your budget.

The next post: How to prioritize and justify fixed budget vendors.

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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