When we decided to renovate the studio, we wanted to create a cozy, inviting space with lots of natural light and elegant furnishings. But we weren’t just thinking about the inside environment; we wanted to do something good for the outside environment, too.

That’s why on top of all the other renovations we made to our studio—literally—are 28 SunPower solar panels. They are the most efficient panels in the business, and will help us save money and cut way down on greenhouse gas emissions.

I don’t want to bore you with too many numbers, but this is pretty impressive: the panels will offset our power costs by $300 a month. Over the next twenty-five years, we’ll save a whopping $92,000.

But the environmental benefits are even more amazing. By installing those 28 solar panels, we’re saving the equivalent of driving a car 354,000 miles. We’re saving the amount of CO² produced by 3,400 trees. Imagine if a family that never recycled anything started recycling all their cans and bottles and paper. Twenty-five years later, they have saved 98,400 pounds of solid waste from ending up in landfills. That’s the equivalent of how much energy we’re saving!

With all the lights and equipment we need to use, photography shoots can suck up a lot of energy. But we believe creating a beautiful photograph shouldn’t come at the expense of the natural environment. The new solar panels help us give back to the planet while bringing our power bill down—a real win-win!

We decided to go with SunPower because they have been around for over 25 years and offer the most efficient solar panels on the planet. They’re so efficient that they even generate power on cloudy days! The panels sit low over the roof, and their sleek design makes them barely noticeable. We don’t have to put in any extra effort at all. And whenever I want to see something that will make me smile, I can just pull up the SunPower app on my iPad to see how much energy we’re saving.

Come visit our newly renovated studio to see all the improvements we’ve made, inside and out!

As we say goodbye to 2011, we also say goodbye to the headache of renovating our photography
studio. We spent 3 months dealing with the fine white dust from the drywall, the teeth-shattering jackhammering, and the noise from dawn till dusk. Renovation is super stressful, especially if, like me, you’re someone who is meticulous about the tiniest details: light, color, the shape of the tiles, design, ambiance, and on and on.

But the good news is that our studio renovation is finally complete! Champagne all around, please! Happy New Year!!!

We decided to go through the remodeling process because we wanted to be able use the studio as an elegant backdrop in photos. Renovation of this proportion usually takes 6 months, but we
completed a majority of it in just under 3 months because we are utilizing the space as a studio and can’t have such a long downtime. We had to be extremely creative in making the renovations in sections.

We did all the interior design ourselves, and we’re so please with how it turned out! The studio used to be really dark, but now light pours in from skylights and windows. Glass doors open onto the yard, creating a flow between indoor/outdoor living space.

We created more light by adding 7 new skylights, and a bunch of new windows. We also installed at least 60+ new light fixtures into the studio, most of which are LED (energy efficient and non-toxic).

The interior has a wedding theme with a glamorous, contemporary, warm and extremely sexy feel. The furniture is modern and cozy, the perfect place for couples who are getting married to get comfortable, have some wine and cheese, and chat with us about their plans.

The fireplace is elongated, see-through and set into beautifully curved tiles, bordered by wood. The other side has a large black granite surround, sitting on a sensual red wall. The see-through fireplace is fun because it’s essentially 2 fireplaces in one.

The salon also received a facelift with new light fixtures, glass French doors and new flooring.

With its beautiful lighting, flowing design, comfortable furnishings and elegant touches throughout the space, visitors tell us the new studio has the feel of a high-end lounge.

In this tough economy, consumers are being very selective about where they choose to take their business. Before they pull out their wallet, people are performing online research. The Pew Research Center survey on Internet use shows that 78% of adult Internet users look for information about a service or product they are considering buying, and 69% search for information about someone they know or might meet.

What does this mean for your business? You can bet your potential customers are carefully comparing you with your competition. If you want to capture their attention, you’ll need to find that extra thing that will separate you from the pack.

The best new way to draw in potential clients is with a video testimonial. Written testimonials, as you may have noticed, are overused and overabused. Many websites have them, and while visitors may take the time to scan the page, the information doesn’t really sink in. It’s nothing like staring into the eyes of someone who is raving about the person or company the viewer is considering. It’s an easy sell, and the best part is that you don’t need to brag about yourself.

Video testimonials are a great marketing tool to separate you from a million other competitors. We recently put one together for Terel Beppu, a real estate agent with Intero Real Estate. There are currently NO other realtors who are doing this, so it really makes him stand out from the crowd.

The video shares stories from actual clients who worked with Terel, and shows several families in the houses he helped them purchase. The impact of their statements is much greater than it would be in a block of text; you can see their faces and really tell how much they mean what they say.

The video also shows Terel in action, his demeanor, his professionalism and ethics. You get to know his personality well even before meeting him, and to see how dedicated he is to what he does. What is it like to work with Terel?

Because they can present a ton of information in just a short time in an interesting way, video testimonials are much more effective than plain old text. They are great for all kinds of businesses and products, and can even be made for dating services, showcasing a person and his or her personality.

Oh, and I should mention one more thing about the Pew survey: 71% of adults watch videos online. If you post it, they will watch.

Anyone who has ever attempted to pick out the best company picture has run into the eternal problem of group photos: there is never one that everyone likes. Someone is always blinking, making a weird face, sticking out their gut, looking in the wrong direction, sneezing, etc. Many a company photo shoot has lead to arguments, dissatisfaction, and pleas for retakes.

But thanks to technology, this problem can be a thing of the past. Nowadays, when companies book our services for group pictures, they prefer to have us take individual shots and merge them together with a little help from Photoshop.

It creates a unique look that is absolutely stunning, and has several benefits:

1. No one will be unhappy with the final result anymore. Because they were photographed individually, each person can select their best photo out of 10-30 photographs taken.
   

2. It’s easier for everyone to find the time to show up for the photo shoot. Scheduling a group of busy professionals is exponentially harder than individuals.
   

3. If a team member is added or removed from the team, there’s no need to schedule EVERYONE for another group photo. We simply book a shoot with the new person, and add them to the shot.
   

4. It’s so much easier and quicker to set up the shot, because the amount of space needed to take this type of group photo can be 10-20 times smaller than for a traditional group shot.
   

5. The same individual pictures can be inserted into various group pictures, so if someone works in more than one department, we can use the same portrait in multiple departments of a corporation!
   

6. And of course, it looks super cool. We play with the arrangement, and add in shadows and lighting techniques, so it appears that everyone was in the same place at the same time, and just magically happened to all look amazing!

The one drawback of this technique is that it costs more to take group portraits like this. However, the cost can easily be mitigated over 1-2 years with the time and cost savings of scheduling individually and not having to do retakes.

Clients often tell us they are so happy that they chose to do their company photos this way, and they will never go back. It’s easier for the employees, and everyone is happy with the results. If you want a group photo you’ll actually be proud to post on your website and hang in your office, consider trading in the traditional technique for our more modern
method.

We are very blessed to be one of Yelp’s highest ranked photographer in the bay area. Yup, with approx. 50 FIVE STARS reviews, we feel loved. However, today came an email stating that we now have a negative FAT ONE STAR review in Yelp! A one-star what?!!

We’re breaking the mold ! Making history and causing chaos in the industry. People officially now hate us on Yelp!

- Michael Soo
Sad Photographer of the Year

The past two months has been nothing but a truly humbling experience for us. We have been blogged, reviewed, voted and published. Here are some of our recent delightful encounters that made us blush to no end…

• As of today, we’ve been voted to TOP THREE of the BEST Wedding Photographer in the entire San Francisco Bay Area by San Francisco Chronicle. Help us Capture The Love become #1 !!!

• Queensberry saw our work and they love what they saw!

• Profoto, a high end international professional lighting company interviewed and blogged about us

• James Robinson, a fellow photographer found us via the Profoto Blog and went ahead to interview us

• Our work was published by both Gizmodo AND Engadget at the same time!

• We got into the front cover and numerous pages of the highly successful Nesting Newbies magazine!

• We’ve taught in several highly successful workshops in Santana Row and were requested by Smugmug to be the South Bay’s Smug Leader, proceed to give talks and organize activities for hundreds of local photographers!

We feel really blessed and we’re definitely counting our blessings and appreciate all the support and love we have gotten over the years from everyone!

(Click above to read the blog, retweet and comment)

So we are truly blessed to be blogged by Profoto. They are possibly the highest end and one of the largest lighting company for commercial and advertising photographers around the world. Their reach is quite phenomenal. We were working in Intel Developer’s Forum in Shanghai, trying to rent light for an on-stage demonstration to 10,000-20,000 attendees. We searched high and low in the metropolitan city for dependable lighting packs. The only ones that we are the Profotos.

We used to use monoblocks; however, our work on fashion, product, commercial and advertising means that the light source’s color rendition needs to be highly accurate. You really don’t want your blue dress to look magenta, do you?

Good Lighting is….definitely Priceless!

Remember the slashdot days, where a website gets completely overwhelmed when it was linked from slashdot.org. That’s where the term Slashdot Effect comes from.

This happened to our website today. Fortunately, there was no direct links to speak of. However, people still have a way of finding us via the photographs we took. Is it our style? They were, taken from the colorful shoot we did, just last week! Well, all the images from that shoot has been used in both highly publicized site, i.e. Gizmodo AND Engadget, on the same day!!!

Check out the articles itself by clicking the articles below in the Gizmodo site,

and the Engadget site,

How exciting can it be to be a product photographer, shooting say, 100 pair of shoes on a light table all day. Ok, if you have an assistant, you get to say, “Next!”. Otherwise, you’re fumbling opening boxes, taking a new pair of shoes out, propping it, stick them in a pose, take some shots, change the angles, adjust the lights, photograph some more, wrap the shoes back, stack the boxes properly, then repeat….times one hundred. Ugh! The thought of that makes me cringe!

What about photographing batteries?!? *groan* What could be worse?!

Well, what has batteries and fashion, colors, beauty have in common? Leave it to the owner of HyperMac to seed that idea, a mere 2 weeks ago. Did I go, “that sounds silly!”? No, we flew a rocket with it!!

(click on images to enlarge)

Too bad we only had one day. The idea _will_ continue with the next shoot, I guarantee it!! These were done using the Profoto D4 power pack, 5-6 light heads and the Canon 1Ds Mark III camera.

About photography lighting… my next class, Lighting for Photographers is on March 21st, 2010 and will be held in Maggiano’s in Santana Row. Both our classes, in the last 2 weeks, “Photography Made Simple” and “Model Photography Workshop” were filled to the brim. We expect this one will be as well. So, do sign up before it is filled up. Early bird (before Feb 15th) pays $20 less.

What a super fun weekend!! Over 100+ photographers attended our Photography Made Simple workshop in Maggiano’s Little Italy in Santana Row, San Jose.

Everyone loved the breakfast and lunch!

We got some great comments and emails from the attendees. Here are some great ones,

1. “Michael, the workshop exceeded my expectations. In addition to being very informative, it was also most enjoyable. From the first minute to the very end I was captivated. Thank you” – Trevor Ngo
2. “I especially liked Michael’s philosophy that to make pictures stand out, they have to be taken from the heart, and it shows in his work”…read more – Michelle Ma
3. “It was like 10 years of professional skills of composition, lighting, creative view, crop, portrait demo, to some photoshop retouching techniques packed into an injection. Voila!” …read more… – Dee Lee
4. “I want to give a huge recommendation for Michael’s photography workshops. I took Michael’s portrait and lighting workshop a few weeks ago and it was great! Whether you are just starting out or are an experienced photographer, there is much to be learned from him…”read more… – John Harrison

Here’s a shot of the back of my head, facing my class in Maggiano’s Little Italy, Santana Row, San Jose.

Now, doesn’t it reminds you of this product?