Pinging Ping

Canon's new line up!

2009-09-01T00:10:00.000-07:00

So Canon today just announced some new and pretty exciting things!

First the 7D, which sits somewhere in between 50D (which sucks) and 5D2 (which is awesome). It has 18 mp crop sensor with 8 fps. Perhaps what is most exciting about the camera is that Canon built a brand new AF and metering system - 19 cross type points! Oh and as an added bonus it has built in wireless flash control (so you can do off camera lighting without buying a master flash or expensive remote triggers!). Finally Canon is doing some really cool stuff to catch up to Nikon (this really competes well with Nikon D300 in my opinion). Check out the hands on from DP review: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0909/09090104canoneos7dpreview.asp

Canon also announced 2 new EF-S lenses, one is a potentially awesome replacement for the less-than-stella 17-85: EF-S 15-85 f/3.5-5.6 IS lens. It also announced an EF-S 18-135 IS as well: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0909/09090103canon15mm28mm18mm135mm.asp

While I can't use either of the lenses, I am very interested in the third lens they announced, a new 100mm macro (an L at that). But this one... with IS! It's the first lens with their new hybrid image stablization system that offers up to 4 stops of stablization for normal shots and 2 stops for macros. Suppose to be priced just over $1K which is about 400-500 more than the non-L 100mm macro makes it a very tempting choice. One of my biggest problems with the macro is that I always need to bring out a tripod to hand hold it since the slightest movement is magnified when doing macro work. This lens could turn out to be very interesting indeed :). So anyone want to buy my old macro lens ;)?
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0909/09090102canon100mmmacro.asp

HOME

2009-06-16T22:22:00.000-07:00

I just watched a film called HOME by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (famous for his Earth from Above series). The film combines a series of breath-taking aerial footage taken around the globe with an equally breath-taking soundtrack. With narration by Glenn Close, the movie tells a story about... us, not just "us" as in nations or ethnicity, not even about us as a species, but about all of "us" on this planet. It is about how we are different, how we are alike... and most importantly, how we are all linked (really how humans have impacted all life on Earth, negatively of course). Whether you believe in the message or not (I for one, definitely believe), it is definitely a film worth watching and listening. Just stop for a moment and think about the resources we are ~~using~~ wasting each day.

Just watching the footage makes me wonder... will beautiful sights I've captured this past year still be there next year for people to experience for themselves? How about 5 years? 10? 30 years from now? Will my kids be able to experience New Zealand the same way I did? See the glaciers? Auroras? Crystal clear lakes perfectly reflecting the snow capped mountains? Will I be able to continue to travel, see some of the sights captured in the movie for myself? Nothing is more amazing than Earth's natural beauty. I hope we can all continue to capture its magnificence as well as its beauty for generations to come.

Here is the YouTube channel for the HOME http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

Definitely worth checking it out, at the very least, enjoy the spectacular footage gathered here.

Schmap's Guide?

2009-05-08T22:46:00.000-07:00

Not sure if anyone heard of Schmap Guide... but apparently one of my photos got selected to be published there. It was a photo taken at Christchurch's cathedral square...

http://www.schmap.com/christchurch/tours_tour1/#r=none&mapview=Map&tab=Text&p=170101&topleft=-43.58039,-138.16406&bottomright=-43.58039,123.04688&i=170101_48.jpg

About time...

2009-04-24T21:34:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts... I've still been uploading photos... but been busy as heck lately. Work has gotten hectic, and life has taken a dramatic change...

Some quick updates on photos:

Finally uploaded my photo shoot with my friend Betty. This was my first "studio" attempt and basically used 2 flashes with umbrella (sometimes using 'clam' method with one above and one below, other times using more standard 45 degree angle, etc)

Big thanks to Betty for being such a great model!

I'm currently working on a wedding I did back in March... hope to post that soonish... but here are some more photos from my life...

And since it's spring... I gotta post a quick flower picture right?

From Some random shots

Ok... other than all the photo update... what I really wanted to post about is a feature that Picasaweb recently launched: instant comment notifications. Now photo owners will get notified immediately when someone leaves a comment (enabled by default) and what is even better is that when you respond, all the other commenters will know about it! So now when someone asks a question about one of your photos (or if you want to ask a question), don't be afraid to respond because now they will hear your answer! Hopefully this will really help drive conversations within Picasaweb and help you guys make friends.

Hong Kong...

2009-02-28T22:43:00.000-08:00

Just finished going through my HK photos... now I'm all done with my New Zealand + HK trip... all done with 2008. As I mentioned in my initial post about the trip, I was not particularly happy with the photos from Hong Kong. I really felt like I did not capture the feel of the city. I know Hong Kong can be both so beautiful (both in nature and in the architecture) and interesting (bustling streets etc)... I felt like I didn't capture either aspects. To make up for it, I was much more heavy handed in my post processing... I guess that is how people make up for flawed photos... heavy post... lots of saturation, etc. Except I went with lower saturation, I ended up trying to create a more consistent faded/old grungy feel to most of the photos, under exposed, desaturated etc. Also did a lot of high contrast black and white (mainly because the weather was terrible....). Oh and since it was HK, I had to take a lot of food photos, I took a photo of just about everything I ate :D.

Here are the photos from my 2 days in Hong Kong

End of a journey (New Zealand Day 7)

2009-02-24T22:45:00.000-08:00

Nearly 5 months have passed since I came back home from New Zealand... finally this week I can officially say the journey has ended. I've just uploaded Day 7 of photos from my New Zealand trip (available here: http://picasaweb.google.com/pingc315/NZTripDay7RotoruaAndAuckland?feat=directlink). The trip itself was quite an eye opening experience for me, going to New Zealand, seeing all the beautiful sights there. But it was also quite an eye opening journey from a photography perspective as well, and not just because of the scenery. I took a lot of inspiration from fellow photographers like Joe and Alex, keeping their ideas, framing, and even post processing tricks in mind as I took and then processed my own set of photos. Granted I probably took far too long to go through the thousands of photos I took, I really learned a lot and found I took some of my best photos of my short photographic journey on this brief New Zealand trip.

Day 7 was an interesting day, my initial impression of the day was that there was nothing interesting, just lots of tourist and animal shots. But as I got to process through some of the photos, I discovered a few gems I enjoyed. Maybe they are still touristy, and while they aren't quite as grand or beautiful as some of the earlier photos they still capture fun precious moments.

A quick side note before the photos... remember how my flight had mechanical problems and had to be routed to Auckland instead of Rotorua directly? That ended up having a huge impact on the photos. We were suppose to visit Te Puia the Moari cultural center with the geothermal geysers during day 6 (afternoon) and take a boat cruise late morning of day 7. Well that all got turned upside down so we basically had to wake up extra early to catch a sunrise breakfast cruise...

While most of my sunrise shots weren't that great, I kind of liked the simplicity of this one (that and I'm a sucker for airplanes).

After the cruise, we drove over to Te Puia. When we first got there the geyser was pretty quiet, but that quickly changed as the geyser started spewing water maybe 20 or 30 feet tall. Thanks to the change in schedule, we arrived at the geyser at just the right time with the morning sun shining in the perfect direction creating a beautiful double rainbow for us.

After Te Puia, we drove on over to Agrodome for lunch and sheep shearing show (and farm tour). Got a few fun/cute animal shots that I was quite happy with.

This last photo was used as my May calendar photo titled "New born Curiosity". I rather liked using a super wide angle lens and get in close to the animals to create fun effects. This particular shot I was maybe 2 or 3 feet away... close enough that I was worried he'd lick my lens thinking it was food :p. I basically wasn't looking through the view finder for these shots and instead just held the camera out in front of the sheep and clicked away hoping it would focus and expose correctly. In this particular shot, the focus is a bit off but overall I thought it was still ok and ended up as one of my favorite shots from the day.

Finally on the way back to Auckland, the sun broke through the clouds for some dramatic "god ray" displays (in case you don't know, I'm a sucker for god rays as well ;))

I guess all in all, day 7 was a great ending to an already wonderful trip. Now that I'm all done, I can move on to my next destination... Hong Kong. :)

Photographing Norther Lights

2009-02-18T01:20:00.001-08:00

So I just got back from Alaska today, had a quick look over my aurora borealis photos and picked 2 quick ones to upload (some adjustments in Lightroom to increase contrast and bring out the green):

From aurora

This was my first time photographing auroras... so it was an interesting experience. We signed up for this aurora tour ($90 bucks a person, includes a quick dinner) so they pick you up and take you out to their little ranch just outside of Fairbanks with a clear view of the skies all around you. Cool little place really, and having a nice warm room to wait is certainly appreciated :). Unfortunately it was cloudy all night but by around 12 or so, we started noticing parts of the sky was brighter, sort of this patch of light behind the clouds. This got all the Japanese tourist around us all excited (aurora borealis watching is big deal in Japan, so there are quite a few Japanese tours in the area everyday) and they started taking photos. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I figured I should just get a test shot to see what I can get (more of a test than anything else). To my surprise, the entire sky in the photo turned out green. I felt as if I've discovered gold and quickly sprang into action, readjusting my camera trying my best to compose the frame properly (more on this later). Keep in mind that with the naked eye you could barely see the light and there certainly wasn't any color... just a light patch of clouds. The colors are only revealed with a longer shutter speed (15-30 seconds). For the next 2 hours or so, I just kept shooting, I shot anything and everything... any part of the sky that was remotely brighter than others... it seriously was like digging for treasure and just not quite sure what you'd get when the shutter closes again. Sometimes you get nothing, sometimes you get a beautiful streak of green. Auroras can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours... we were extremely lucky that on this particular night it lasted close to 4 hours total. However, we were also extremely unlucky with the weather, with the heavy clouds you really can't see any colors. You just see patches of light, some faint, some strong... every once in awhile you'll see a long ribbon of light over your head, moving, dancing (but still no color). The real kicker is that the clouds cleared at around 2:30 and then the colors really came through... BUT I was in the car on the way back to the hotel already :( (no real place to stop along the highway... not that the driver would anyways). You could clearly see the strands of light dancing in the sky, you could even see the shifts in color as well (which is rare), the locals say it is one of the best displays they've seen in years... I guess at least I got to see it.

The second photo posted here should give some idea of what it looked like with the clouds clearing. This was the last photo I took that night, and this one was totally by luck too. The driver already came to get us and I was pretty much done taking photos anyways, they all looked the same, green blob in the sky. So as I turned around to head back in, my uncle mentioned that this will be a cool aurora, he assured me I had time for 1 more photo "always time for another photo" he said, the driver will wait. It is only because of him that I turned and took this last shot which is one of the better shots and one of the only shots I have that shows some form (to the naked eye, it was still just a colorless blob in the sky). I have the best uncle in the world and glad he told me to stay for another shot :).

Overall I'm happy about how it all turned out, I guess I'm the luckiest unlucky person that night... able to experience one of the best (and longest) aurora displays but not able to capture it due to weather. Hehe, sometimes you get the shots, sometimes you don't. You just can't plan for these kinds of things I guess.

Some techie details and lessons learned...

Due to the thick cloud, framing and auto-focusing was basically impossible. I couldn't see anything through the view finder and had to use the lights from the school (see that orange lights in the trees) as a reference point and pray for the best.
Manual focus is tough without live view, keep in mind that your infinity focus point actually shifts in cold weather so just using the default infinity mark is not sufficient. This basically turned out to be a guess and check exercise for me... and using a super wide lens helps to cover up any mistakes you have (I just shifted the focus to a tad beyond infinity and locked it in manual focus mode the entire night).
Again, with the clouds, it was very difficult to pick up the lights so I pretty much had to shoot wide open at 30 secs and bump up my ISO to an unacceptable 1600 most of the time. It sucked, but noisy image better than no image...
For longer exposures, I was able to use a flash light to do some "light painting" on the foreground. For example, I was able to use the flash light to light up the cabin (basically just sweep over the cabin with the light as if you are painting with a brush) in the foreground so it will be properly exposed against the aurora.
Batteries die fast out there in below 0 degrees weather. Make sure you carry a spare (best if you can keep it in the warm room or at least in your pants pocket to keep it warm with your body heat).

So next time...

I need a better camera so I can shoot comfortably at ISO 800 if not ISO 1600. 5D Mk II anyone? :)
Rent out a faster lens. I was using EF-S 10-22 which shooting wide open gives me f/3.5. I should consider renting out EF 16-35 f/2.8 which would give me almost a full stop of light (meaning my 30 sec exposure just went down to 15) or perhaps even EF 24mm f/1.4 lens which would give me almost 2 full stops (now I can get down to around 7 sec for my exposure time).

Some other information can be found on the web (such as http://www.alaskaphotographics.com/how_to_photograph_northern_lights.shtml). Perhaps with better weather, I'd be able to compose and focus much easier (as well as use a lower ISO setting). Either way, aurora borealis is truly a thing of beauty and I'm now addicted to photographing it... I'm already planning another trip back to Fairbanks, who wants to come with me? (I'm serious, if anyone wants to come, drop me a line).

Freezing in Alaska

2009-02-14T19:29:00.001-08:00

So I haven't posted in awhile, been kind of demotivated about processing photos (just 1 more day of New Zealand and Hong Kong left, I'll post those shortly) and been busy with work. For Presidents day my mom and I decided to take a quick vacation out to Alaska... yes, freezing cold Alaska... to visit my aunt and uncle and hopefully get some photos of the northern lights. Right now I'm in a cabin outside Fairbanks waiting... things don't look so good since it is mostly cloudy tonight :(. Sigh, oh well. We'll see what happens. Haven't got too many good photos so far mostly because of the weather (cold, snowing, cloudy...). I guess we'll see what happens.

New Zealand, Day 6...

2009-01-30T01:17:00.000-08:00

Day 6 was even more bland of a day for photos, we basically spent the day traveling (partly due to airplane malfunction... boy I'm just having the greatest luck with airplanes... first typhoon delays then malfunction...). I did get a few shots that I liked at the Christchurch Botanical Gardens and a few shots in Rotorua (north island where we spent the night) that I liked. As usual, the full album is available here: http://picasaweb.google.com/pingc315/NZTripDay6Rotorua?feat=directlink

On a side note, earlier this year I was in a huge slump in terms of photography, I didn't like any of the shots I took and just felt uninspired. Two fellow photogs that I met through Picasa (who says Picasaweb is not social!) really kind of helped me get out of that slump and gave me a lot of great inspirations. I've come to really respect their comments/critiques and enjoy learning from them. The first is Joe, especially his back to nature album.

I really liked his album quite a bit, his eye for catching beautiful patterns in nature... his play of light vs shadow... the simpleness of his photos, etc. So during my walk through the botanical gardens, I couldn't help but remember his photos, how simple often equals beautiful. Feeling particularly inspired by his branch silhouette shots (those shots shooting upwards creating a shadow effect of the branches), I tried to try it myself...

While no where near as good as Joe's photos were, I rather liked the results. Just need to keep my eyes open for those simple beautiful patterns that occur naturally... This also requires me to remember to simplify my photos, cut away unnecessary elements and just focus in on the core. Thanks Joe!

The second photog is of course Alex, I was really impressed by his patterns album at first, but what really stayed with me months after first viewing it was his "have a seat" album. I just love the feels he creates with a simple photo of an empty bench. Sometimes it is loneliness, sometimes it is grandeur, sometimes it is just fun. As a result, when I saw this bench in the garden, I knew I just had to get a photo of it...

I really like the "nice Sunday afternoon in the park" feeling to it, where the bench is particularly inviting, welcoming you to come sit down for a moment, relax, forget about the world and all its troubles. Just, stop, sit back, and relax... close your eyes and breath in all that fresh air. My only regret is I didn't accept the invitation, but instead I hurried past the bench moving on in search of my next shot. Next time, I will have a seat.

Oh also notice the photo is B&W, it happens that this seemed to work well with the subject, but there is another reason why it is B&W.... The day was extremely overcast which meant no real contrast in the scene, no shadows, no depth, the green grass and tree leaves were all just muted. Instead of trying to play with saturation and brightness to try to get some "pop" back, I decided to make the photo B&W. Instead of just plain and simple B&W, I essentially made it a filtered B&W to bring out particular colors (I actually adjusted the color filter individually under Lightroom's grayscale option). In this case, the green / yellow was made much brighter to create nice contrast against the dark bench and tree trunk. So keep this in mind, the next time you end up with a bland image from an overcast day (or one with over exposed sky), consider making it B&W to conceal some of these faults and let you accentuate some other aspects of the photo.

Here is another B&W photo from the day that I really liked. The original color version really wasn't very special, everything was just brown and white (with some light green) but once I made it B&W I could really bring out the trees much better and separate it from everything.

Here is another processed version of the same scene, this time modifying Lightroom's "cold tone" present slightly:

Finally, another HDR (man... I really went nuts with HDR on this trip...)

This is a photo of the Hagglund which is a pretty cool Antarctic vehicle. With the skies just clearing and the sun just over the building... I knew I wanted to capture the typical dramatic vehicle shot with lens flare and all. So I got down low, and aimed up at the sun hoping for some interesting lens flares. The angle just makes the Hagglund look that much more powerful (shooting up at subject always conveys more respect/power, just be careful when using that technique with people as it can make their chin look wide...). The main reason I decided to make it an HDR was because I was still shooting into the sun so I didn't want to completely blow out the sky while keeping the parts of the vehicle that is in the shadow relatively well exposed.

Sorry if my day 6 photos weren't quite as exciting or beautiful as previous days. Unfortunately I think this is about it for "scenic" shots... only 1 more day of photos left for New Zealand. Now it's like a journey 4 months in the making :p but I guess it'll all be over soon. Just 1 more days worth of photos :(.

Inauguration photos from The Big Picture

2009-01-22T01:25:00.000-08:00

Some great shots of the historical moment yesterday (ok 2 days ago now) from The Big Picture:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/01/the_inauguration_of_president.html

Definitely worth checking out (and subscribing to their RSS feed if you haven't already!)

Year in review

2009-01-21T00:14:00.001-08:00

As some of you know, I am making it a habit of mine to make a calendar at the end of each year to sort of summarize my year, my experiences, and the beauty that I was blessed enough to witness. Here is a slideshow of the photos for my photo calendar this year (perhaps it is no surprise that many of the photos came from New Zealand :D):

There is of course a story behind each of these images and each caption/title. If anyone is curious, I'd be more than happy to share the story. Picking the photos was probably the easy part, coming up with a title I liked that meant something was the hard part >.<. I don't know know how many photos I ended up taking this year (file name numbering suggest maybe around 17 thousand). I really feel like I've grown a lot this year, from learning to crop and simplify my photos to HDR to reading up on strobist and using flash much more effectively... It has been a busy year and I really want to thank all those who helped me in my journey, sharing ideas, sharing photos, providing valuable critique or was just patient with me while I took my sweet time on a trip somewhere :). Special thanks to those who I pestered for helping me pick the calendar photos and write the captions :D Here are a few more photos that I really liked but wasn't quite fitting for a calendar:

From Photo Shoot at Woodbridge

From Happy New Years

From Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

From Taipei snapshots (台北隨意拍) 2007

Long Beach Aquarium

2009-01-20T01:48:00.001-08:00

A few years ago I saw a coworker post some pictures he took at Monterey Aquarium of these beautiful jellyfishes set against a a nice blue background. I was really blown away by how beautiful it was (I think the photo was this one: http://picasaweb.google.com/andrewmitchell1975/MontereyTripJune2006#4940152518086295570). Since then, I've been dreaming of capturing similar images myself but never had a chance... that is until last weekend when I finally stopped by Long Beach Aquarium for a quick afternoon photo shoot. While I never quite got that shot I wanted, I got a few other shots that I liked. Full album available here: http://picasaweb.google.com/pingc315/LongBeachAquarium?feat=directlink).

The day started off on a pretty good beat as I got this shot:

I'm really a sucker for kid silhouette against the glass staring at fish type shots. This particular shot was done in manual mode as metering became difficult but I really love how mesmerized kids are by fishes. I think I first fell in love with this type shots when I visited Sea World last June... it would have been better if the water was deeper blue but I thought this shot worked fairly well either way.

As for Jellyfish, my favorite shot might have been

I just like how it is zig-zagging through the water and how it looks like it is glowing. But perhaps the other lines are a bit distracting... It seems as if everyone's favorite jellyfish shot ended up this one:

As Joe puts it "white and clear jellys owns yellow ones". Well, I guess I can't quite argue with that logic there. But overall I found photographing these things a bit of a challenge. The jellyfish themselves were rather small and really cramped together in a small tank which made composition more difficult. On top of that the water wasn't very clean in a few of the tanks so it didn't make for attractive background... I ended up zooming in all the way to focus in on smallest clean area and pressed the lens up against the glass to reduce reflection and what not... Lucky for me, these things move slow which made it easier to track and photograph :).

This might be my favorite from the day... I was surprised at how colorful the world is under water. Unfortunately here I used my 10mm lens shooting through a curved glass so the distortions in the corners are really terrible.

I also got a few lucky shots of sea horses and sea dragons:

For the sea horses it was a bit trickier as these things moves quite fast. I had to sacrifice noise and use ISO 1600 (basically the entire day) to have a chance of keeping up with them. Shooting through glass and water also plays havoc on auto focus... just kept snapping away until I got lucky with a sharp photo here ;).

On a side note, I also updated photos from San Diego Wild Animal Park from Christmas vacation. Here the main thing I kept in mind the whole day was a lesson I learned from John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide, and that is to keep your shots eye level with the animals as much as possible. It makes the image feel more intimate and more dramatic effect compared to photographing them standing up (so you will be looking down at them).

Keeping that in mind (and also wanting to practice isolating details), here are a few photos from that day:

From San Diego Wild Animal Park

Back to Christchurch

2009-01-13T23:50:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't posted anything in awhile, but I finally got through Day 5. We spent most of day 5 on the road, the cross country/island drive from Lake Wanaka to the east back to Christchurch. We only made a few stops along the way, but we drove through some amazing landscapes in New Zealand from the barren wasteland (as seen in the final battle for Gondor in Return of the King) to the grassy plains perfect for sheep farming. But overall, Milford sound was definitely the climax of the entire trip and everything since then is just going down hill. I still felt I got a few good shots in, but mostly thanks to HDR and post processing... less thanks to the natural beauty of New Zealand like previous days.

The morning started off early for me as I got up extra early to catch sun rise but it was still pretty cloudy. After breakfast we got some time to walk around the shores of Lake Wanaka and I finally got to explore the vineyards next to where I took the star photos during the previous night. When I got to the vineyard, I was really intrigued by the numbers identifying the rows so I snapped this photo.

It was originally an HDR but I didn't like the fake look of it so I decided to desaturate the image and add a lot more warmth (yellow) to create the almost monotone image. Some minor touch up on the pole to accentuate the 43. I think I just like the perspective of it, the repeating pattern of the poles getting smaller as well as each row leading away from you leading into the background.

The next image was taken at Lake Pukaki. The weather was pretty terrible with gray bland overcast sky not giving me anything to work with. But the lake had really beautiful rocky shores along with this amazing blue water (thanks to the glaciers). In order to bring out the details in the rocks and not blow out the sky, I had to use HDR... I played a bit with the effect this time creating a more storybook fantasy feel (actually it really reminds me of those motivational posters...). I hope you don't mind me taking some liberty with the effects.

The next image is probably one of my favorites from the trip, a photo of The Church of Good Shepherd at Lake Tekapo (one of the most photographed landmarks in all of New Zealand). Again, I had to use HDR to really bring out the details as the sky was just a boring gray.

This was the exact image I wanted when I first saw the church... for some reason I just had this image in my mind, a low super wide angle shot of the church, exaggerating it a bit against the background a plain small church look even more amazing set against the cloudy/dark sky. I actually waited for close to 10 mins for all the visitors to clear the area (it is a heavily visited site, so tour bus after tour bus would drop people off). I was really fortunate that there was this small pause in people visiting the church for me to snap a few quick photos of the church, un-disturbed (needless to say people in my tour were less than happy with me as they all sat waiting in the tour bus way off in the distance there). I used this photo as the October photo in my calendar, titled "Shelter of Hope". The name was partly inspired by the local artist (Esther Hope) whose sketches were the basis for the actual church, but it is also about how this image made me feel. In many ways churches, more specifically religion/faith, provides a shelter for us against the storms and turmoil we face in life. They not only give us shelter, but strength and hope to face each day, knowing that the storm will pass and a the skies will be clear one day. This is how the image made me feel.

As usual, the full album can be found on my picasa web gallery or here: http://picasaweb.google.com/pingc315/NZTripDay5LakeWanakaToChristchurch?feat=directlink

A couple more interesting photos below:
From Lindis Pass, near where the battle for Gondor was filmed.

Of course you can't have NZ album without sheep and alpacas. SO cute!

Finally image of Christchurch Cathedral in Christchurch

Milford Sound (New Zealand Day 4)

2009-01-03T02:22:00.000-08:00

So after a short break from processing photos, I finally uploaded the photos from day 4 of my New Zealand trip a couple days ago. We got up pretty early that day (at about 5 AM) and headed out to Milford Sound for a 2 hour boat tour. This was probably the highlight of the whole New Zealand trip and offered some of the most spectacular views of the whole trip... needless to say, this makes keeping this blog post short very difficult as there are a lot of photos I really liked from that day. The full set of photos is available at: http://picasaweb.google.com/pingc315/NZTripDay4MilfordSoundAndLakeWanaka?feat=directlink.

As mentioned in earlier posts, a storm swept through the area days before we arrived, so the weather was always questionable. In addition, the only road leading up to Milford Sound had a mudslide just the day before... our tour lead had hoped it would clear up by the time we got there... Luckily for us, the weather stayed clear for most of that day and the road was cleared 30 mins prior to our arrival... I really think someone upstairs was watching over us this entire trip. Other than the poor weather on the first few days, this entire trip have been really blessed.

On our way to Milford Sound, we made a quick 10 min stop Mirror Lake (well... they say 10 mins but I stretched it to like 15 ^^;... kept everyone waiting). The weather was so beautiful that the lake was really like a mirror, perfectly reflecting the beauty in front of us. Unfortunately it was rather difficult to capture the full experience on camera due to the extreme dynamic range (the reflection and lake was in the shadows where as the actual snow capped mountains were in bright sunlight). I doubled stacked filters (2 stop graduated ND to darken the top half of the photo and a polarizer to bring out the reflection and colors) and then in post I added another graduated filter at the bottom to bump up the brightness of the shadows to create this final image.

When we got to Milford Sound, the weather was still mostly clear but there was enough clouds in the sky to make it even more interesting. It was on this boat tour that I took most of my HDRs (high dynamic range, where 3 photos of the same scene are then combined in post processing to form a single image), in fact I think I ended up with 30+ HDR shots so in total I took close to 100 images just for HDR. I tried to keep the HDR fantasy like feel down and stick to what felt natural.

Here are two shots of Milford Sound with Mitre Peak (doesn't this feel like something out of LOTR? You know the part with Frodo on the boat passing the giant statues?).

The first shot was shot in RAW and then post processed in Lightroom. I really had to brighten up the green on the mountain but it gets a tad bit noisy. The second image is an HDR with -2, 0 and +2 stops. It's not too different from the RAW shot but I get so much more detail in the clouds and the green just pops better making for a more dramatic image (in my opinion at least :)).

There are so many photos that I really liked from Milford, but this is perhaps one of my favorite from the entire trip. I used it as the August photo in my calendar, titled "Heaven's Blessings" mainly because it looks like the water is pouring down from the heavens. Additionally, this is actually not a permanent waterfall (it's called Fairy Falls), it will dry up in a few days without rainfall so in many ways, we were blessed to have the storm pass through revealing this hidden beauty within Milford Sound.

Here is another photo from Milford Sound. I really like how the cloud just wraps around the mountains... It also shows the entrance to the sound being mostly hidden, this is why the early explorers did not discover Milford Sound as no one expected it to lead to anywhere.

One final shot of Milford Sound as the boat was returning to dock.

After the boat tour, we drove straight to Lake Wananaka where we stayed for the night. Just before dinner I saw these two Paradise Ducks near by. These ducks usually live in pairs and mate for life.

Since we spent the night right along the lake shores, there was very little light pollution allowing me to get a few nice shots of the Milky Way and stars. I had to use my 50mm 1.4 wide open and a 1600 ISO to get the shutter speed fast enough to capture all this without star trails.

Only 3 days left of New Zealand photos, hopefully I'll be able to get through them quicker now :)

My favorite movie of all time...

2009-01-02T01:53:00.000-08:00

One of my new year resolutions was to take some time off and rewatch all the Miyazaki Hayao movies. I decided to get a jump start on this with my favorite movie of all time: Sen to Chihiro no Kamekakushi or Spirited Away as it is known in the west. It is just such a beautifully made movie with one of the most beautiful soundtracks ever to go along with it. I've actually forgotten how much I love this movie until I watched it again, noticing all the cute little details (the scene with the mouse imitating Sen is still the cutest...), breath taking scenery (the train ride is still my favorite scene of the entire movie) and of course the deeper messages involved. I was actually fortunate enough to attend the US premier of the movie at El Capitan in Hollywood where Miyazaki-san made an appearance himself. I remember how excited I was when I found out he was coming, I think I heard it driving to work (intern at AOL that summer) and I immediately called up all the friends I knew to buy tickets ASAP...

It is simply a must see movie, for all ages regardless if you like anime or not. Of course the ending song still gets me everytime... Itsumo nando demo (Always with me). Yumi Kimura's voice is so beautiful...

Of course the movie wouldn't be what it is without Joe Hisaishi's memorable pieces like this one:

I almost feel like I can watch this movie again right now and still enjoy ever second of it. Anyways, on to the next Ghibli movie... I'm debating between Kiki and Laputa... maybe Kiki first since I haven't seen that in forever :)

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T15:14:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a good (and safe) new years eve. Looking back at 2008, it has certainly been an interesting year... buying a house, traveling to New Zealand, growing as a photographer... thanks to all who have helped me along this long (but young) journey. I really look forward to 2009 and all the new opportunities it will bring. My number 1 new year resolution is probably to continue traveling, visit at least one new country this year. Perhaps visit a few more national parks in the US (all those national parks out in Utah and Zion etc) and maybe Alaska. Perhaps another east coast trip?

Here are my last photos taken in 2008...

From Happy New Years

Instead of partying and doing count down like normal people, I went out for a quick photo shoot as a thick fog rolled in. Visibility was probably less than 30 ft at times (maybe even 20). Perhaps a somewhat fitting end to 2008, with the future of many shrouded in doubt and uncertainty. Hopefully this fog will clear up soon and we can see a more defined (and brighter) path to the future. I wish everyone an happy and healthy 2009.

Happy Holidays

2008-12-28T03:22:00.000-08:00

As usual, my wishes arrive a few days late :). But I guess better late than never! Happy Holidays everyone, hope you had a safe and wonderful holiday season with your friends and loved ones.

From Happy Holidays

As 2008 comes to a close, I am just beginning to realize what an eventful year it has been for the world and for me personally (that probably deserves a post on its own). I've spent the past few days on a break from all things related to photos and just relaxed, doing different things - ok ok, mainly just going back to video games for a little bit :). Finally got to finish Eternal Sonata - a Japanese RPG about Chopin and this fantastic dream world he enters while on his deathbed. The game had some of the best video game music ever (not to mention a few pieces from Chopin), amazing visuals and some of the most creative character designs I've seen in awhile (oh and a very interesting battle mechanism). At first I mistook this game as something for kids with the art style, characters, and premise but I decided to give it a try based on some very positive reviews. While it's not a perfect game I loved just about every second of it... I mean just the music and visuals alone was worth the 40 some odd hours I spent on the game. I'm also starting back on Ys Origin, another Japanese RPG (one of the more recent Ys games which also has amazing music ;)).

Anyways, I did get to go out for a quick photo shoot the day after Christmas. With recent storm in Southern California, there has been a lot of snow up in the nearby mountains so my family decided to take a quick day trip out to Lake Arrowhead. After all, we wanted to experience a white Christmas too :). We got there kind of late in the afternoon and wanted to leave before nightfall since we didn't have snow chains or anything so I only got a few shots in. Here are some of my favorites from the day (full album here: http://picasaweb.google.com/pingc315/LakeArrowhead?feat=directlink)

Happy New Years everyone, hope 2009 will bring happiness and many new experiences (as well as many wonderful photos) for you!

New Zealand Day 3

2008-12-17T02:27:00.000-08:00

Sorry the long delay in between posts, a lot of stuff has been happening both at work (you know, like the launch) and outside of work. Personally I've been trying to take a short break from photography (and processing photos) so I can attend to other areas of interest and hopefully come back to photos with a lot more passion and creativity. I actually had day 3 photos almost fully processed 2 weeks ago but I got side tracked by a personal photo calendar project I was doing... Thanks to everyone who helped with that and provided valuable input.

Day 3 in New Zealand to me was one of those turning point type day where the number of potentially interesting photos grew sharply from the previous day. It was also a major turning point for the weather as the day started out completely overcast (and even slight drizzle to light rain) which completely dashed any hopes of taking a helicopter flight up to the glaciers. I was actually really looking forward to taking that helicopter, getting some aerial photos and being able to walk on the glaciers... but I guess I'll have to just setting for the view from the base. After the short visit to Fox Glacier, we drove along the west coast of the South Island before heading in land towards Queenstown (our destination for the day). Along the drive, we passed by two gorgeous lakes (Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea) and this was right about when the weather started clearing up revealing some of the "classic" New Zealand landscapes... The full album can be viewed here: http://picasaweb.google.com/pingc315/NZTripDay3GlacierAndQueenstown#

Here is a photo taken at the base of Fox Glacier... The original photo (left) was really kind of boring with the featureless overcast sky which also made the colors feel really muted. My friend Alex happened to send me a post of a technique he recently learned in Lightroom to make foggy landscapes look even more interesting (post here: http://blog.alex-kunz.de/2008/12/glow-effect-in-lightroom.html). What better way to learn a new technique than to try it out on a photo immediately? So I basically lowered the clarity of the photo overall to about -70, bumped up recovery to about 90 to try to bring back some of the blown details. This made the whole image kind of glowy bright feel which was cool, but really killed the detail on the glacier so I took the brush tool to bring back the details in the foreground (graduated filter would work just as well I think): +100 clarity, 22 sharpness, 35 saturation, 20 contrast). Finally I fiddled with the settings on the image over all by increasing the contrast and saturation a bit more but really bumped up the saturation of the blue (with a small hue shift) to emphasize the clean blue color of the glacier. While still not a great photo, it is certainly better than the original I think :).

Here is a photo from Lake Hawea, to me this really feels like "New Zealand"... the expansive blue lakes set against snow-capped mountains with a thin string of clouds. In fact, the native Maori's name for New Zealand is 'Aotearoa' which translates to 'the land of the long white cloud'. While this photo is an HDR composite of 3 images, the actual vista wasn't too different. In fact the main difference between the HDR and the non-HDR version of the image is that you see a bit more detail in the sky (and has more gray) and the lake water is a bight brighter more like turquoise rather than a darker emerald color.

After our brief stop at Lake Hawea, we stopped by the town of Cromwell to buy some fresh fruits... of course my mom and I completely ignored the fruit stand and instead started taking pictures... The places just had the largest field of Sakura (Cherry blossom) trees I've ever seen and almost made me feel like I was in Japan... BTW, in case you don't know, I'm totally obsessed about sakuras but have always struggled to take good photos of them...

I think the reason why I really like this photo is because it feels like a post card, you know one of those photos looking down a long path under the blossoming sakura trees. Just like one of those images you would find in the random "inspirational" PowerPoint you'd get in the mail.

While I didn't really need to use HDR (there is a similar non-HDR shot in the album) on this shot, I thought having the darker angrier looking cloud made the image feel a bit more dramatic. In the end, I think I just really liked the sun shining through creating the long shadows on the ground.

We arrived at Queenstown just before sunset and took the gondola up the nearby mountain for a great buffet dinner overlooking Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu. I managed to be one of the first ones up the gondola to get myself a bit more time shooting the sunset. While the sunset itself wasn't that great, the view from the top overlooking Lake Wakatipu was just amazing, offering a nice reflection of the nearby mountains basked in the warm light.

This is one of my favorite shots from the day... I just love sweeping vista... I mean you can see all of Queenstown, the mountains nearby, Lake Wakatipu and just see it extend all the way out to the horizon.

This is by far my favorite photo from the day... but there is a reason for this. In my home in Taiwan, my step mom has a laminated aerial photo of Hokkaido (at least that's what I think it is...) during twilight... I mean this image had it all, huge city with bustling city lights, large bodies of water... and this deep blue sky. For some reason that image just connected with me and I really liked the royal blue color of the image (white balance trick I believe) and the city lights against the darker water surrounding the city which really made it stand out. So when I saw this scene earlier in the day, I knew I just had to come back during twilight just after the sun has set but leaving enough ambient light for me to get some detail out of the mountains in the distance. Well, the sun set just half way through dinner so I had to just stuff myself with as much food as I could (only had time for 1 plate at the buffet and gave up on seconds or the wonderful desserts they had... I mean they had some amazing desserts) and just grabbed my tripod and ran outside. I think for this image, it was well worth giving up dinner and dessert... I ended up eating cup noodles back in the hotel room. OH well, such is the life of a photographer :).

Before getting to New Zealand, I knew I wanted to try taking more star trail shots and also try to capture the Milky Way. Day two actually was the perfect opportunity given the low light pollution of the area, but rain killed any chances of seeing stars. While Queenstown sill is a pretty large town with decent amount of light pollution, I was able to find a quiet corner along the coast of Lake Wakatipu during the walk back from dinner. I quickly set up my tripod and took a few test shots. This particular shot was taken at f/5.6 over an 8 minute exposure. I was actually really surprised you can capture that much of the star trails that clearly...

Improved Sharing, new album mode for picasaweb

2008-12-05T02:08:00.000-08:00

So on Wednesday Picasaweb launched another set of new features to the public (full post: http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2008/12/improved-sharing-international-name.html). The most noticeable was probably the new gallery layout and icons. Personally I think this new layout is much more slick instead of the old dated 90's look to the gallery page. Another major enhancement is the integration with Google Translate for all the comments. Ever since we launched the Explore page, I've noticed that picasaweb actually has a fairly large (and very international) active user base! All the people started leaving comments in their native languages and I've personally made a few friends in Europe and other parts of the world. I started to get very curious as to what some of these comments were saying. For example: http://picasaweb.google.com/antonione67/Paesaggi#5268845901768672626 has a comment: "bellissima foto...simile alla toscana , ma profondamente diversa. Ottimo inquadratura. Brava" And now thanks to Google Translate... I now know that means "beautiful picture ... similar to Tuscany, but profoundly different. Excellent shot. Brava". While the translation is rarely perfect, it does help to get the point across, not to mention some of the failed attempts are pretty darn funny :) (case in point: "可惜好像故意照他掉頭髮的樣子" => "It is a pity as he seemed to intentionally look like the hair" when I really was trying to say that it was pity that it seemed as if I was intentionally taking picture the fact that he was balding - from http://picasaweb.google.com/pingc315/NZTripDay2WestCoast#5272120541813486914). Either way, I love this feature and I hope it'll spur more comment activity and help people overcome the language barrier.

We've also just launched the new album privacy mode called "sign in required" which will really locked down the album to the people you've shared with via the "Share" button on the page. Personally I find unlisted just fine, but I guess it's perfect for those wild bachelor party pics.... er I mean photos of your sweet kids to share with the grandparents... If you share the album with a friend who does not have a Google account to login with, we'll generate a special invite for him to create an account with (or he can log into any existing account to tie the invite to him). Keep in mind that you can also add non-gmail address to your Google account on the my account page so you can add your yahoo, hotmail or whatever address all to your Google account so when people share with you, it will all just work regardless of the email they use. One extra benefit of using the share button is for us to be able to track who you've shared with but also to create customized gallery views. This means that when you go to http://picasaweb.google.com/pingc315 you will simply see ALL the albums you can view including unlisted and sign in required albums if the owner has invited you. This way if you don't have to worry if you deleted or lost the original share email... we'll remember all this for you to make it easier. Just make sure you share things with people using the "share" button or else we won't know about it... Hope you all enjoy these new features and start sharing all those photos during the holidays!

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-12-01T02:11:00.000-08:00

So here is a late "Happy Thanksgiving" post... I've been fairly busy the past couple days stuffing myself full of great food (there goes that diet I was working on...) and working through all the HDRs I took in NZ (after 80 some HDRs, I can't even tell what looks real or fake anymore). But given the economic uncertainties (by uncertainty I mean the hell hole that we are in...) and suffering in the world (think Iraq, Mumbai, China... the list goes on), I had to stop for a moment and really count my blessings. I am really thankful of so many things in my life... For one, I have my health (I mean, I've sleep-driven myself to Santa Monica on numerous occasion and survived - please don't tell my van poolers that... But really, thank you God for watching over me. This point hit even closer to home with Joe McNally's recent post.), the world's best mom that constantly watches out for me (even though I'd probably prefer she didn't), great group of friends that I can count on for support (no matter how stupid I am), a beautiful house to come back to every night, and a great job that I enjoy (yes, even on the days that I want to pull my hair out), what more can I ask for? Heck, even the Lakers are at 14 and 1...

A few weeks ago at my brother's fellowship, he asked everyone to take a moment and think of things they would complain to God about (it's ok to complain, but one should try to think positive). I thought long and hard but really could not come up with anything, sure I could complain about how busy work is, how exhausted I am coming back from Santa Monica every night, or how I'd love to meet the "right one" sometime soon (these seems to be the most common complaints people had)... but honestly, I have no right (and no reason) to complain. All these things are so minor in the grand scheme of things. I really don't know what I did to deserve the life I have. Whether you believe in Buddhist view of reincarnation (and karma) or not, I can't help but feel as if I'm wasting away the good karma that I must have built up in previous life times... that I'm not doing enough to give back to the people around me, to the world. I could be doing so much more, like my cousin and actually going out to third world countries and helping out, making a difference.

Anyways, I digress, I just want to take a moment and thank all the people that have touched my life, supported me through tough times, put up with me when I'm being unreasonable, and watched over me. And especially thank God for giving me everything that I have in life, even though I deserve none of it. Thank you all. Hope you have a great and most importantly, safe, holiday season. Happy Holidays.

New Zealand, Day 2

2008-11-24T23:38:00.001-08:00

Day two proved to be an even more interesting (and at the same time, disappointing) day than day one. Day one was spent all in Auckland (well, and the plane... and Hong Kong airport...) but to be honest, there was nothing special about Auckland... think of it like say... Irvine or San Francisco, except with lots of grass... So arguably day two was the real start of our New Zealand trip.

We got up real early... at some ungodly hour (even tho we checked into the hotel at like 1 AM the night before) just to catch the 8 AM Tranz Scenic (TranzAlpine line) train to go from the east coast (Christchurch) to the west coast of the south island. The train takes you through the beautiful country sides all the way to the gorgeous alpines of the south island. In fact, it takes you right through one of the places where they filmed Chronicles of Narnia, though I don't think I got a photo of it.... oh well. I spent most of the time on the observation car (just a shell of a car with a few railings, and a ceiling... and... really strong winds. Wind strong enough to knock you silly). By the time I got off the train, I probably looked like I've been working in the engine room shuffling coal all day and being the photo geek that I am... the first thing that I thought was NOT "oh my face.... gotta go wash all this off :(" but instead "oh my poor lens.... how am I gonna clean it!". Yeah, it's like that. Anyways, some photos from the day two album below...

From NZ Trip Day 2 - West Coast

This photo is NOT one of the photos I got from the observation car, unfortunately none of those photos really turned out all that well. This was instead taken from inside the nice, comfortable, air conditioned passenger cars.. with champagne and pâté. I really like two things in this shot, the power pole (yes I'm crazy) and the blurred sheep. I guess I like the motion blur caused by the train. And the power pole just serves as a nice anchoring point. The beautiful green grass set against the even more beautiful blue sky doesn't hurt of course. Oh, here is a bit of trivia, you see the sheet metal wrapped around the power pole? That is to prevent small animals from climbing up the pole and damaging it (specifically, possums I believe).

And the next two photos are taken at Shantytown, a old gold rush mining town that's now just a tourist destination (this is where we had lunch)...

When I saw the old antique steam train getting ready to move, I knew I had my shot. I mean, seriously, how often do you get to see steam trains this close any more (ok, it's not that uncommon, but set against this nice green grass and that perfect blue sky with clouds? It's once in a life time!). Most things are NOT meant to be photographed at eye level so I got down on my knees next to the train track and pointed my camera up. It made the small train look more impressive and helped bring in lots of that nice sky. The post processing was pretty simple. Bumped up the saturation a bit, and shifted hue towards more green (yellow -> green, and a bit more on the green hue itself). Increased contrast and lowered the luminosity on the blue to darken the sky a bit. But overall, pretty simple stuff.

When you have an antique train, in an old mining town... it is natural to take photos that have the old faded nostalgic look right :). Post processed in LR2, bumped the saturation down (I mean way down), warmed up the temperature (+59 and +27 tint). Adjusted the brightness, exposure, contrast and the like until I got enough contrast, really bright steam coming out of the train with really dark shadows everywhere else. Added a bit of vignetting for kicks. This probably is my favorite image from the day and pretty high up there on my list of favorites from the trip.

I'll start working on the photos from Day 3 soon. This is just the beginning... I haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet...

New Zealand... Day 1

2008-11-15T23:10:00.000-08:00

So I've finally gotten around to processing my NZ photos... starting with the crappiest set of NZ photos - day in Auckland. As nice of a city as Auckland is, it's just not very photogenic, at least I didn't find it very interesting. We got to Auckland in the morning after a long flight from HK/TPE. Our flight to Hong Kong was delayed by about 1 hour + another 1.5 hours of circling in the air due to typhoon passing through which meant that we completely missed our connecting flight to Auckland. We basically spent the better part of the day at Hong Kong airport. Not a great start to our trip, but at least we got to see everything we were suppose to and it all worked out in the end. Anyways, some photos from Auckland (album: http://picasaweb.google.com/pingc315/NZTripDay1Auckland#):

From NZ Trip Day 1 - Auckland

This was taken at the Mt. Eden volcano crater. Mt. Eden is the highest point in Auckland (natural one at least) which offers great view of the city. The crater was huge so I decided to swap over to using my 10-22 super wide lens. While I'm not thrilled about the tourist walking, I like having the path there to kind of make it more interesting (I do have a version without the path and tourists).

From NZ Trip Day 1 - Auckland

After Mt. Eden, we stopped by Auckland war memorial museum and the botanical garden next to it. These 2 photos were really bland originally, no colors in the sky (cloudy) and just lacked anything interesting (no colors to really jump out at you, etc). I decided to desaturated it a bit, made the over all photo warmer/reddish to give it the old sepia feel (but not actually sepia). I rather like the result, much more than the original anyways (another example of how lightroom saved my photo). Hope you like it too.

Mt. Rainier, a place of endless wonders (and dramatically different weather patterns)

2008-11-13T20:06:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the incredibly late post (or not if you don't know when I went to Mt. Rainier). But I've finally finished process all my Seattle trip photos, this includes the final batch of photos taken at Mt. Rainier (which is the first time I shot more RAW than JPEG). This is also marks the second time I've used Lightroom to process photos almost exclusively. While my poor laptop definitely cannot keep up with Lightroom, I am finally able to get through 200 photos in a reasonable amount of time (roughly half a week) which is much faster than the amount of time I spent on the portraits. This is partly because landscapes are easier to batch process, and also there are less things I can do, it's pretty standard... I mean I do want my landscape photos to still look like photos... so I kept most processing light. The biggest advantage Lightroom has over Picasa is the ability to adjust each color channels independently. For example, if I find a forest photo too "yellow", I can easily shift the yellow hue towards the green. Or if I find the sky too bright, I can easily darken just the blues in the photo. This fine-grained control allows me to have far more control over what "pops" and get rid of the distractions in a photo... I'm finally able to bring out key elements that I want in a way that Picasa could never let me do.

Anyways, back to the trip. Our second day at Mt. Rainier was dramatically different from the first day, the difference was night and day... Our first day there was mostly raining, overcast, and even snowing. But the second day the sun really came out for a beautiful sunrise and kept clear for at least the most important parts of the day (when my camera was out).

Day One:

From Mt. Rainier National Park Day 1

This is now the Not-quite-1000-dollar photo :). It was for this photo that I swapped out my 24-105 lens (for a wider 10-22 so I can get more of the stream) and then immediately after this photo... proceeded to drop said lens. The original photo is gray, colorless and dull. At the time I didn't have Lightroom so I asked for Joe's help in post processing it. He added some graduated tint, brought up the green saturation and some hue shifts to make the greens come to life. While it's not $1000 (cost of the 24-105 lens) in my mind it is certainly worth $158 (the cost of repair) :).

I like the moodiness of the photo, and the natural frame created by the trees on either side. You see the valley in the middle? Yep, that's where I dropped my lens :).

One of the few highlights of the first day... gorgeous field of wild flowers. I'm a sucker for these kinds of prairie shots, just too bad the sun didn't come out otherwise it'd look amazing :).

Day Two (sorry for the number of photos...):

From Mt. Rainier National Park day 2

First Light. We got up around 5 AM and raced towards Sunrise Camp to catch first light on Mt. Rainier. The clouds started rolling in just as we reached it but I was lucky to get off a few snaps. Unfortunately I didn't really have time to explore and find a better position so I have to live with the trees in the foreground. This shot actually reminds of me post cards from Mt. Rainier, the beautiful pink/purple morning light hitting the fresh snow on Mt. Rainier, set against a deep dark blue sky...

This is now one of my favorite pictures from the day (one of many :p). It reminds me so much of traditional Chinese brush paintings (國畫). I love how the ridges just peak above the clouds, especially that line of mist in the foreground.

This was taken along an easy hike next to Sunrise Camp. It's only about 10-15 mins away from the parking lot where I took the first light photo. If only I had know, I would have ran up here as fast as I could... Oh well (it was icy, I probably would have slipped and broke my camera or something).

One of the stories from Joe McNally's The Moment It Clicks is "Don't pack up your camera until you've left the location". This is certainly true for this shot... I was already heading back to the car (after about 30 mins photographing Mt. Rainier in the cold -- I lost feeling in my hands about 15 mins ago at this point and was basically freezing to death). About half way down, the sun suddenly broke through the clouds lighting the entire scene, the grassy field and Mt. Rainier evenly. Luckily I still had my camera out and got 4 or 5 snaps in before the sun ducked back behind thick clouds and the shot was gone. This is now my favorite shot from the entire trip. Don't pack up until you are in the car, you'll have plenty of time anyways (and much much warmer).

Growing up in Southern California certainly has it's benefits. Getting beautiful morning dew plant shots is not one of them. This was shot in a very overcast day, I popped the flash to give it more light and "pop". In post I shifted the originally yellow hue over to the green and brought out the reds to make this photo feel more peaceful and tranquil.

The above series of photos was taken at Snow Lake. Ironically we were originally going to skip Snow Lake due to limited time (and bad weather, it has been overcast the whole day since sunrise). About half way to Snow Lake is Bench Lake so the plan was to simply stop at Bench Lake and head back. Because JC and I were too busy taking photos along the way, his family and my mom walked ahead and for some reason went on to Snow Lake without waiting for us at Bench Lake (disappointing sight really). A bit confused, JC and I decided to keep going hoping to catch up to them. Another 20 mins or so later we bumped into my mom who has been to Snow lake and decided to walk back saying "Snow lake is so so, not very pretty" but JC's family is still there so we decided to continue on. As fate would have it, as soon as JC and I reached Snow Lake, the skies cleared up (really. like within 2 minutes) and it really felt like discovering paradise that is hidden in some remote location... That sense of wonder, amazement, joy... Since snow lake is hidden away in a valley, there was very little winds creating stunning reflections on its beautiful emerald surface. As if possessed, JC and I immediately picked up our camera and didn't dare take our eyes off the view finder. Click click click, shot after shot, we just couldn't take our fingers off the shutter, afraid the magic would disappear if we stopped (ok ok, we did hike around to see the different angles). I double stacked 2 filters, 1 graduated ND (to darken the sky a bit) and 1 CPL (to add more saturation to the sky and lake or to increase the strength of the reflections). Within 30 mins, the clouds rolled back in, the sun disappeared along with the emerald color... the moment has passed. Thinking back, if we had walked any faster, we would be like my mom, missing this magical moment... the beauty, the peacefulness, the tranquility at Snow Lake was the most memorable thing for me. As we were leaving, I knew I got the shot, I got what I wanted out of this entire trip, but most importantly, I was happy.

Portraits and Lightroom

2008-11-09T23:48:00.000-08:00

So recently a friend of mine finally convinced me to try out Lightroom 2.0 to post process my photos. I usually don't like to heavily process my photos just to keep things fast and simple (and real), so I used Picasa 100%. But after doing the wedding photography album and watching my friend's wedding album, I decided to give Lightroom a try. It's not so much about making your photos look fake/unrealistic as it is more about enhancing the elements that are already present in the photos and using post to draw attention to those elements. Recently I had a quick portrait session with a friend from my brother's church, so I figured I'd experiment a bit with Lightroom on those photos. Some photos I went wild with the post, some I was more conservative. Overall I just wanted to explore what I can do with Lightroom, what I like, what looks good, etc. Hope people don't mind :).

The portrait session itself was interesting as well... I haven't done portraits in a very long time, not since my previous victim (I mean model) got married and I did their engagement photo session. So I tried to get comfortable with portraits again, trying out different poses, different angles, etc it certainly helped that the model's sister was also there as an assistant holding the reflector and just helping out (she wanted to learn photography so I've been teaching her what little I know). The session started a bit late in the afternoon which meant I got a few good hours of nice light, then came golden hour which has always been a challenge for me doing portraits (i.e. making sure the skin tone looks flattering instead of really orange). I first started off with the easy shots, tight close ups using the long telephoto lens. Usually this is the easiest thing to start with as you don't have to worry about posing and background nearly as much since you just focus on the face. You just have to make sure your timing is good and she has a good smile on... then just click away! As I got a bit more comfortable, I swapped out to a 10-22 super wide for some environmental portraits which is much much more difficult as I not only have to worry about her pose, exposing for the environment, and controlling the distortion caused by the 10-22. In the end, I got a few shots that I liked, but overall I didn't think it was a great session for me, poor posing and poor interaction with the model, not enough to get her engaged and relaxed. Anyways, a big thanks to both the model and her sister. Here are some shots from the session.

From Photo Shoot at Woodbridge

Change is here.

2008-11-06T01:45:00.000-08:00

I'm sure many people were glued to the television last night, watching closely as the election results came in. Some were ecstatic, others were probably furious and disappointed. Regardless of which side you are on, no one can deny the fact that history has been made.

During the whole time of the Obama's speech, I couldn't help but wonder the types of photos people were getting, both everyday people taking snapshots their participation, and the professional journalists hired to document history. Have you noticed how the two candidates have been photographed? Or paid attention to the lighting, angle used, etc in the photos published in the news paper? Maybe I'm biased (or just don't understand how to interpret photos)... I often find McCain's photos taken from a low perspective, giving an impression of power and authority; makes him look fearsome. Obama's photos on the other hand seems to be more eye-level, more intimate/personal and emotional. Anyways, the whole time, I wondered what The Big Picture would show for this historic event... and here are their photos: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/the_next_president_of_the_unit.html. It is interesting to look at each photo, and try to figure out what the photographer is trying to convey, is it a message of hope? Is it a personal side of Obama, making him feel more like one of us? I wonder what images would have shown up of McCain won. Would it be in the same style? Same types of message?

Halloween....

2008-11-04T21:51:00.000-08:00

So Halloween just passed, and as part of the office tradition... everyone dresses up (well, it is highly encouraged) and we hold a parade with prizes and stuff. For the first time in years, I dressed up for Halloween (for those who knows me... the last time I dressed up was when I put on a suit of cardboard armor with cape and the whole deal. Oh and a 5+ ft long bastard sword made out of wood). I got dragged into this year's Halloween festivities by a few coworkers, while I wasn't able to help them with the making the costumes (mostly due to my vanpool and work schedule), I really appreciated their insistence on including me in the fun :).
I know they've put a lot of effort, heart and soul into making each outfit... here are some photos:

Yep! They made sushi costumes! Uni, Tako, Tamago, Salmon, Salmon Roe... made from pillows, and fabrics... they even made cute little wasabi hats with ginger!

Then there was me...

as the sushi chef!

Together our group won the best group costume and got a nice restaurant gift certificate as reward. It was great fun I just wish I had more time to participate in it. Oh well, maybe next year :). Happy (belated) Halloweens everyone. Hope you had a safe fun weekend.

Thank you and good bye...

2008-10-25T02:11:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day for a coworker, friend, and fellow photographer... Sarang. He is getting married next month back in India, so while it is sad to see him go ... I am very happy for him.

Thank you Sarang for all the great work you've done for us, I've really enjoyed working with you and enjoyed taking photos with you even more. You will be missed at the photo club but please keep uploading photos and sharing your life with us! Best wishes on the rest of your journey in life, may it be filled with happiness and fortune.

Random Youtube vid... Gekkou月光

2008-10-25T02:07:00.001-07:00

I've been really busy with work so haven't had time to keep processing my photos. Also picked up Lightroom 2.0 to see if I can add more "feel" to my photos... more to come soon...

I was listening to some MP3s a friend gave me while processing my photos and came across this:

月光 (Gekkou) by 鬼束千尋 (Onitsuka Chihiro)
作詞：鬼束千尋　
作曲：鬼束千尋

I am god's child
この腐敗した世界に墮とされた
How do I live on such a field?
こんなもののために生まれたんじゃない

突風に埋もれる足取り　倒れそうになるのを
この鎖が　許さない
心を開け渡したままで
貴方の感覺だけが散らばって
私はまだ上手に　片付けられずに

I am god's child
この腐敗した世界に墮とされた
How do I live on such a field?
こんなもののために生まれたんじゃない

理由をもっと　喋りつづけて
私が眠れるまで　效かない藥ばかり
ころがってるけど　ここにこえもないのに
一体何を信じらば

I am god's child
哀しい音は　背中に爪跡を付けて
I can't hang out this world
こんな思いじゃどこにも居場所なんて無い

不偷快に冷たい　壁とか
次はどれに　弱さを許す
おわりになど手を伸ばさないで
貴なら救い出して私を
せいじゃくから　時間は痛みを　加速させて行く

I am god's child
この腐敗した世界に墮とされた
How do I live on such a field?
こんなもののために生まれたんじゃない

I am god's child
哀しい音は　背中に爪跡を付けて
I can't hang out this world
こんな思いじゃどこにも居場所なんて無い

How do I live on such a field

----
Apparently it is the theme song to a J-drama called TRICK (which I must now watch.... I've heard great things about it... so I guess now would be a good time to pick it up :p). I just love how.. simple and powerful the song is. And something about her voice, it's really moving for me. Hope you enjoy.

Hidden captures... Taiko drums.

2008-10-17T23:13:00.000-07:00

So during the last few days of my stay in Taiwan, I had the chance to see a live Taiko 太鼓 (you know, those Japanese drums?) by a fairly famous Taiwanese group -U-theatre (優人神鼓). My initial set of photos were rather like snapshots... I stood there, took photos to record reality of the performance but all the photos felt detached and bleh... really crappy. There was no soul, no feeling, no connection. My friend who looked at the photo couldn't feel a single thing, almost as if I wasn't at the performance, and didn't take it in... At his urging, I decided to re-process my photos, this time trying to bring out the core of the performance. Taiko is all about power, precision, and discipline... I have to find a way to bring that out of the photos and make my viewers feel as if they were there, experiencing the ground shaking performance for themselves... I don't think I achieved the final end goal, but I do think with some post processing (all done in Picasa), I did dramatically improve each of the photos. Here are a few that I thought originally were photos to be tossed but ended up being some of my favorites...

From 誠品敦南店開幕典禮太鼓表演 Eslite bookstore reopen ceremony.

About the only thing I liked about the original photo was the guy's expression. It was stoic, even with the fasted paced drumming, he didn't flinch, no reaction, no emotion... I really wanted to capture his stern face, get a sense of the discipline involved. First, the photo was too dark I thought, too gray and not enough "color" so I deepened the shadow, increased highlights and added a bit more fill light. The increased contrast helps bring out the colors more, so one problem solved. The biggest problem with the photo was that the guy was too small, too much empty space above and to the left. So keeping my friend's advice in mind ("crop crop crop!") I decided to trim the photo down a bit to give it a much tighter framing. I threw in a sharpen layer in there for good measure since I really like his facial expression (or there lack off) so I wanted to try to bring that out a bit.

From 誠品敦南店開幕典禮太鼓表演 Eslite bookstore reopen ceremony.

I wanted to change the mood a bit more here. I first played with the shadows and highlights to make it a tad brighter, but it wasn't what I wanted. So I first applied a filtered B&W layer (I think it might have been blue or range?), I just wanted something to make his skin color stand out more from the drum. I then darkened the shadows even more to darken the over all mood of the photo (and bumped up the highlights slightly... I love high contrast B&W shots and gave better definition to his muscles), gave it a tighter crop as usual... finished it off with a sharpen and film grain for kicks. The original photo seemed to document the drummer, in ready position. But I felt the processed photo showed more emotion, as if he is contemplating something, going through the next steps of the performance in his mind.

From 誠品敦南店開幕典禮太鼓表演 Eslite bookstore reopen ceremony.

In case you haven't noticed a trend... first step... CROP CROP CROP. There was way too much dead space on the right and above, the viewer ends up having no idea what to focus on or what I intended to show. Is it the drummer pounding away, or is it that gong in the background? One day, I hope to be able to compose the shot properly from the get-go, but until that day, I will have to learn to crop my photos like mad. That actually is a very common problem I see (from looking at the recent photos widget on Picasaweb), a lot of photos have so much potential, it just needs to cut away some of the clutter to make it really shine.

From 誠品敦南店開幕典禮太鼓表演 Eslite bookstore reopen ceremony.

This photo here use to be regular landscape photo, but there were far too many distraction up to, tent, business signs, buildings, trees, etc. Just took the focus away from the main subjects... None of the regular crop sizes 4:6, 5:7, etc would have solved that problem... so I just went for a manual sized cropping and made it more like a panorama... cut away the top, and the subjects becomes clear.

Here are 3 other photos I rather like... first one is basically untouched except some shadow and highlight adjustments.

In the second photo, with the skin color, drum, and building all sort of the same color, I decided to apply a filtered B&W layer to try to separate out the colors a bit. Then just really increased the shadow and highlights so that the top would be bright would the bottom would be much darker, creating some contrast. Not sure what you think... but I thought it helped focus in on the drummer more.

I guess there could be a decent capture hidden within every image... I just need to learn to see it, and crop out the unnecessary parts. This will be an ongoing lesson for me... a tough one, but one I must learn :). Thanks to Joe for keep pushing me on this!

End of a vacation...

2008-10-12T02:51:00.000-07:00

Well, all good things must come to an end... and here is the end of my vacation and stay in Taiwan. I'm at the airport, getting ready to head back to LAX with very mixed feelings. On the one hand I do feel a bit recharged and ready to plow ahead with my project... on the other hand, I really like working from TPE and being detached from the problems of work back home, certainly simpler sometimes. I have to admit, I've given moving back here some serious thought, but right now it would probably be a bad career move (with the current economy and way things are going...).

Anyways, some photos from the National Holiday (10/10)...

From National Holiday 雙十節國慶

Fleeting Encounters

2008-10-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

Life is full of fleeting encounters... people come, people go. Some stay in your life longer than others, some you wish stayed in your life longer. I guess everything is based on 緣分... Just like there are different stars to guide you at night during different seasons, there will be different sets of people for each stage of your life. Different people will protect you, help you, guide you, and just be your companion on your journey... but as much as we want the same set of people to stay with us, people grow apart, move on, loose touch.... I guess I'm fortunate enough to have friends that I've known since I was a wee lad and still keep in touch with them.

From Taipei snapshots (台北隨意拍) 2007

Fleeting Encounters... we walk past hundreds (if not thousands) of people each day, sometimes with only a passing glance, sometimes your shoulders connect for just a split second as you squeeze past them during morning rush hour. Who are these people? If you actually stopped and said "Hi" what would happen? Would you actually become friends? With every step we take, we have an opportunity to turn a fleeting encounter into a life long relationship... will you seize the opportunity and take a chance or will you simply let that door close?

I took this shot while waiting for my friend on the way to work one morning. I almost instantly fell in love with the shot and oddly has become one of my favorite shots. I am not entirely sure why I like it... but here are some thoughts:

I like how the girl's light color jeans just jumps out from the rest of the people.
I like the nice smooth light from the MRT shining down from the top, creates nice soft shadows directly below the feet
The motion of the closing door adds a sense of urgency to the shot
Only showing the legs adds a sense of mystery to the show, who are these people? What do they look like?

I don't know, maybe you hate the shot, but for some odd reason it just connected with me :). But the real question is... will you reach out, and connect with people (me) or will you simply let this encounter pass by :)

台灣美食篇 (FOOD!)

2008-10-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

The thing that people seem to forget about Taiwan (or at least don't regularly associate with Taiwan) is the amount of great food this little island has to offer. I may be biased here, but Taiwan has some of the best food in the world, at a totally affordable price (e.g. MUCH cheaper than U.S.). You have everything from street vendor goodies to great 小吃 (literally "little eats" or snack type dishes), to full on banquets and 5+ course dinners. You can get away with a delicious street vendor meal for less than 2 or 3 bucks and be completely full... even better if you go to a night market and try all the little snacks along the way. But even the full on 5 or 6 course dinners are totally affordable at about 30 bucks a person... oh and there is all sorts of all you can eat type places (not just BBQ or hotpot, but some offering traditional dishes) for like 10 bucks (all USD). Cheap and way healthier than fast food (well, I guess that is debatable)... I love Taiwan :).

I just posted some photos from a restaurant my dad took us to, Ikki, a modern fusion interpretation of 懷石料理 (Kaiseki ryouri) that incorporates traditional Japanese dishes like sashimi with more modern and sometimes western dishes like lamb and steak. There was a total of 8 dishes (fruit + drink + dessert counts as one) for a mere $1280 NT (+ 10% service charge/tip)... this is roughly $44 USD tax tip all included. The food was great, each course carefully prepared and presented. The portions was just right for me as I was plenty full towards the end. The ambiance was great, mostly dim with black table/walls and we were fortunate enough to get our own room. And of course, the service was exceptional... all the waiters/waitress were extremely patient and greeted you with a smile. Unfortunately I didn't get many good photos from there... but trust me, the food was great (especially at that price).

Then today, a friend of mine took me to 度小月 (Tu Hsiao Yueh), a great little place for traditional Taiwanese dishes.

From Food@Taiwan 美食篇

I really loved their minced pork noodle (擔仔麵). The noodles weren't quite as "Q" (chewy) as one might expect, but it kind of melted away in your mouth which was a nice change that I really enjoyed. The minced pork was not fatty or greasy at all, yet extremely flavorful... mixed with some bean sprouts, mashed garlic, scallions and a shrimp to top it off... the flavor just explodes in your mouth. Traditionally the noodle is served with a broth (but it was hot outside so I opted for the dry noodles... I hear their broth is really good and is something I'll have to try next time).

From Food@Taiwan 美食篇

The portions were small enough for you to try the other dishes (they offer minced pork rice noodle as well as rice... the rice was somewhat forgettable tho) or snacks. Each bowl was only 50 NT or just over $1.50 USD. It is one of the best minced pork noodle I've ever had, no joke. Just when I thought it couldn't get better... the dessert really blew me away.

From Food@Taiwan 美食篇

My friend and I ordered their hand-made mochi 手工嘛吉 that is freshly prepared just for you. While I don't eat mochi that often, this might be one of the best mochi I've ever had. It was baked so that the outside would offer a bit of resistance, almost crunchy while the warm inside was soft and sticky (but not so sticky that it sticks to your teeth and chewy - it was just perfect). The outside was coated in both sesame and peanut crumbs, the 2 flavors played really well together I thought... a touch of saltiness mixed with the strong peanut sweet taste (ok I like peanuts so I'm a bit biased). The great flavoring mixed with the texture of the baked mochi when you bite into it... it was really just out of this world. So good...

There is something here for everyone, with a wide price range. Sometimes the small hole in the wall place that only the locals knows about will offer the best food (for a cheap price), while some times the popular places (either due to magazine or TV coverage) turn out to be a disappointment. Either way, there is great food to be had here, no matter the budget you have.

Back home... thoughts from New Zealand

2008-10-04T06:05:00.000-07:00

So in New Zealand alone, I have over 2000 photos to go through, this is AFTER an initial filter where I deleted several hundred of the terrible photos. I think I want to keep myself at about 200 photos per day, so I need to loose about another 2-4 hundred photos. New Zealand is every bit as beautiful as I imagined if not more... icy glaciers, tranquil emerald lakes reflecting snow capped mountains (ok not so much of this...), endless green rolling hills with sheep and cows, glowworms lighting up the cave like millions of tiny little stars... I mean I can't even begin to describe some of the sights I got to see... the kind of awe and wonder that the landscape inspires is just something you have to be there to see... I've included a few photos from the trip... there will be many many many more to come... Keep in mind I've done very little post on these photos and haven't really gotten a chance to look through all my photos to pick the best ones. These are just a few I picked out real quickly to represent my initial impression of New Zealand (which are not necessary the best photos from the trip)... In either case, I think my photography skills fall FAR FAR short of coming even remotely close to capturing the beauty that is New Zealand. I have to return to New Zealand again... hopefully by then I'll be a much better photographer and can actually capture the essence of New Zealand.... in the mean time, I hope you enjoy these few photos...

Photo taken early in the morning at Te Anau lake...

Night photo of the milky way near the shores of Lake Wanaka

Aerial photo taken on the flight from Christchurch back to North Island (long story)

Beautiful rolling hills on North Island on drive from Auckland to Matamata (aka Hobbiton)

Iconic Mitre peak at Milford Pass

Lindis Pass (on our drive from Lake Wanaka back to Christchurch). This is near where the great battle of Gondor was filmed.
These lambs were just the most adorable things ever... as the bus drives by they'd get scared and run to their mom and hide... soooo cute.

Rotorua is known for its geothermal activity and geysers...

Beautiful view of Queenstown at twilight and Lake Wakatipu.

Overall I was very pleased with New Zealand and look forward to processing all the photos (once I get through the 600 photos I took at Mt. Rainier >.<). I think I was very fortunate on the New Zealand trip (even with 2 missed connecting flights - both in Hong Kong and a diverted flight due to mechanical problems), the weather was spectacular for all but the first 2 days of the trip. A snow storm passing through the area meant new snow and gorgeous snow capped mountains as the backdrop which is more rare this time of the year. While I certainly would have preferred to drive myself on this trip so I can stop whenever I want... I don't think 9 days would be nearly enough (I would probably have to stop every 10 mins because the view is just so gorgeous). I ended up having to settle for shooting through dirty bus glass for a lot of the shots... not at all pleased but I guess it is something I'll have to live with given how much easier (and cheaper) it is to go with a tour. But yeah, the trip was just a blast and if you've never been to New Zealand... you totally need to.... in many ways it renewed my passion for photography and at the same time made me feel totally inadequate :0. I guess I have to really pick up my landscape and nature photography skills (not to mention post processing skills) :). On a side note... I took way more HDR photos than I've ever in the past... we'll see how that works out.

After New Zealand, my mom and I stopped by Hong Kong for 2 days. This is my first time to Hong Kong and I have to admit I have very mixed feelings about it. There are definitely cool sights to see in Hong Kong... as an anime fan having watched Ghost in the Shell... it made me appreciate the anime even more after seeing HK in person. I saw a few photos of jumbo jets flying low over old residential areas on the last day of flight at the old HK airport... it instantly reminded me of scenes straight out of Ghost in the Shell and just made me go "wow"... that made me really happy for some reason. Having only been to Shanghai in China... Hong Kong was somewhere in between Shanghai and Taipei for me. Parts of it were very well maintained, clean, upscale, etc but by and large a lot of areas felt runed down. Even the area in Kowloon next to the star ferry and Avenue of stars, which seemed to be hip part of town was ruined (in my opinion) by the tens if not hundreds of photographer booths asking you if you want a photo against the HK skyline at starting at $10 HKD. It just reminded me too much of Shanghai, walking along the Bund or any other touristy places where all around were just yelling out "You want photo? Just X dollars!." Just imagine row after row of "stands" with posters of random tourist (often foreign) against the view to show case what that photographer can "do" - of course all shot on perfect days when the skies were clear. Each photographer has a simple SLR, external flash and a tripod... memorize the settings and just point and shoot... instant print on a ink jet and that's easy 10 bucks. I joked with my mom that when I retire, I should come and do this, but charge only 5 bucks and offer them the digital file :p. I wouldn't mind if it was just a few stands... but row after row... I guess I hate how commercialized it is and completely ruins the "mood" of the place... I just couldn't really enjoy it. The rest of the stay in HK was dampened by a passing typhoon which pretty much made it rain all day (and a trip to the Peak a complete waste of money). As a result, most of the photos came out kind bleh... on top of that I really couldn't capture the essence of Hong Kong, whether it is the prosperous business districts, the poor slums, or even the bustling night markets and streets filled with neon signs. I just... couldn't capture the feel of HK. Anyways, here are 2 quick photos that sort of tries to capture some of that.

The entire trip was tiring, and I'm glad to be home. But it was such a great trip... I really enjoyed New Zealand and Hong Kong as well. I'll definitely have to revisit both places again. Now... to the thousands of photos I have to process... :)

Hello from the 73rd floor...

2008-09-23T15:42:00.000-07:00

So I had the opportunity to work from the new Taipei office the past couple of days... on the 73rd floor of the Taipei 101 (currently tallest building in the world)!!!! The office is amazing, the micro-kitchen is as well stocked as any 7-11 in Taiwan (it'll be enough to keep you happy for days on end...). And the view... oh my God the view... I had the good luck of visiting during a small typhoon that passed by just south of Taiwan, so the weather was mixed between beautiful clear skies and a slight drizzle... and then the subsequent rainbow(s)!

Some photos from the office...

From Google Taipei

This is the view from their cafeteria... life can be so unfair :).

From Google Taipei

Instant beef noodle soup with real beef!

From Google Taipei

Of course... my favorite childhood snacks :)

From Google Taipei

Double rainbow!

From Google Taipei

The rainbow was so close you feel like you can just reach out and touch it...

From Google Taipei

And of course... sunsets from 73rd floor can't be missed.

From Google Taipei

Of course the down side to being on the 73rd floor is... you have to WALK down in case of emergencies >.<.... I missed the memo about yesterday being the practice building evacuation / fire drill.... I was in the middle of a meeting when the fire alarm went off... so naturally I followed my coworkers and walked down the stair well... all 73 floors of it. By the time I got down to the ground floor... wow. It wasn't that hard... but you definitely feel it :). Of course we did get to walk out side on the balcony area between each section of Taipei 101... view from 60 some floors up without windows is just AMAZING (and really strong winds too...). Oh ... and now I can say for sure that there is no 44th floor (there is two 42nd floor, 42 and 42a) but there is a 4th floor... I saw it with my own eyes...:)

Reverie

2008-09-23T01:30:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder what Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Vincent Laforet can do with a Canon 5D Mk II's movie mode and a $5K budget? It has a night time helicopter flight over NYC... need I say more?

Reverie (hosted by Canon)

Smugmug also has the video hosted, with HD version available and a behind the scene movie here

A "duck"-ful day...

2008-09-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

So after a what seemed to be a short 13 hour flight, I'm now here safely in the still-way-too-hot-and-humid Taipei. Actually, it's not that bad, totally bearable unlike middle of the summer would be. Every time I come back, I'm filled with apprehension. I'm worried that I've lost my language... lost my ability to connect with people here, lost connection to my friends... All totally unfounded, but it is just a bit daunting for me to suddenly be thrown in a pure Chinese world where the "hip" culture moves faster than the latest boy band craze and new words are introduced and retired on a monthly basis it seems. Always something new when I come back, always a moment of disconnect before my brain adjusts to this new world that I call home. But as soon as my brain adjusts, I feel right at home... this is... home. When I walk out on to the streets, I feel... comfortable, I feel at ease, perhaps even more so than walking on the streets of LA or Irvine. This is the soil I grew up on... this is the air I've breathed as a kid... the same polluted smoggy, humid, suffocating air. Walking along the streets, seeing all these shops, they are all just as familiar as if I was just walked past them yesterday. In some ways, I almost feel safer walking through the heart of Taipei in the middle of the night than walking in say, Santa Monica or LA at night (Irvine doesn't count because there's not a soul out there past 10). And then when I meet up with my childhood friend, it is as if I never left. Same familiar smiles, same taunts, jokes, laughs... same warm feeling that puts me at ease. I feel connected to them in ways I can never quite experience in the US. They see a side of me that no one will see in the states, and perhaps it just means that no one there will ever know the true me deep down inside... They are truly my brothers, 我的死黨我的哥兒們. And it is in that instant that I am reminded of what my culture and my language means to me. I am without a doubt, far more Chinese than I will ever be American. In fact, if people ask, I will never hesitate to proudly answer "我是中國人 (台灣來的中國人) - I am Chinese (from Taiwan)". I feel as if I have to hold on to my language for dear life, I am worried that if I ever lost the ability to communicate in Mandarin, whether it is in writing, or in speech, that I'd stop being "Chinese"... and I'd never feel "home" again. 你董我的意識嗎? 你能諒解嗎? 在美國住的我就像一個沒有根的流浪漢, 永遠沒有一個家可以回.

Anyways, I digress. My friends decided to treat me out to Peking Duck for lunch! Partly because good Peking duck is harder to come by in Southern California (oh but they are far easier to find there than any where else in the states I think) but also because he figured I'd want to take photos of it. How absolutely thoughtful of them! Here are some photos:

This is a special Tofu dish they had there, forget the exact name but it was really good! It is tofu with shrimp eggs (that's what those little specks are).

For those of you who have never ordered fish at a Chinese restaurant... you should know that Chinese serves fish whole, with the head and fins... (eating the head often requires quite a bit of skill but can be very rewarding - the meat at the gills area is most excellent). Anyways, this particular fish is cooked with a light soy sauce with a touch of sweetness and the typical spices - ginger, scallion, chili pepper.

Here the full duck is shown to the customers before slicing it up for 2 courses (the wrap + soup).

Ah... good Peking duck served with a "tortilla", special sauce, scallion and the meat + skin of the duck. Just pile it into the tortilla and roll it up for some awesome greasy duck goodness (this particular restaurant was more oily than what I'd really want..., but not bad at all).
Anyways, through some weird twist of fate... my grandparents decided to take me out to dinner too... and guess what they wanted to treat me to... yep! You guessed it, more Peking Duck o.O||. 2 Peking Duck feast in one day... I couldn't exactly turn either of them down... so I had to eat more duck... haha. I guess that's my Peking Duck quota for the year :-p.

Sorry, I'm not particularly artistic when it comes to food photos, or decorating my food to make it look presentable :p. But rest assured it tasted great!

We also ordered some lettuce wrap for dinner... Man, it is the first day and I'm already stuffing myself full of great food! I don't even want to know how many pounds I'll gain on this trip....

Of course no day is complete without some karaoking which probably kept me awake through the afternoon... KTV - the best way to overcome jet lag haha. Ah, it's is good to be home. 我終於回家了

Capturing Faith

2008-09-19T01:11:00.000-07:00

I don't know how many of you reading this is religious, or have at least thought about what religion means to you (or the people around you). I've given this a lot of thought this past month and was "forced" to come face to face with not just what religion (Christianity) means to me, but also to those around me (especially my brother). I was asked to photograph two church (EFC Irvine - Evangelical Formosan Church of Irvine) events... first was the 1.5 Gen worship (I was going to attend anyways, but my brother asked me photograph it - I was really honored and gladly accepted). The 1.5 Gen worship is more of an informal gathering than an actual fellowship that meets every other month or so. It is geared towards people like me, those of us that are not 1st generation Chinese, nor 2nd generation... those of us that have no place to call home, no single culture to identify with but instead straddle the line, mixing best parts (I hope) of both cultures. The service is done mostly in Chinglish and consist of song/hymns in the beginning, a sermon and quick prayer session... all kept informal for the younger audience. For this, I tried to capture of a personal relationship with God, and just the power of faith for individuals... Here are some shots:

From EFC Irvine 1.5 Gen Worship

I just love the back lighting of this shot... not sure why but just has that "big stage" feel almost.

From EFC Irvine 1.5 Gen Worship

While this shot is a bit blurry... I still like it. I've known him for a long time and it's just powerful image to see him so devoted and I could almost feel the power/energy flowing through him and reaching me....

From EFC Irvine 1.5 Gen Worship

Here I started playing with the wide angle and strong back lighting to get some lens flare as well as long shadows.

From EFC Irvine 1.5 Gen Worship

Some post processing done here to really highlight the spot light on the cross (deepened the shadow and brought out the highlights). The increased contrast seems to make the image feel more dramatic.

From EFC Irvine 1.5 Gen Worship

This might be my favorite shot from the day... I just love how everyone is kneeling down in front of the cross in prayer. I also like the wide angle distortion which makes the cross look much further away than it actually is. It was another extremely powerful moment for me, made me want to put down my camera and pray with them...

From EFC Irvine 1.5 Gen Worship

The second church event was EFC Irvine's 20th anniversary this past weekend... it also happened to be my brother's ordination as minister at the church so it was a big day for everyone involved. I was really hesitant to accept the "job" at first (mainly because I wanted to enjoy my brother's big day), but my mom's who asked and I really couldn't turn him down... The church wanted some large group shots mostly... which is probably the most challenging thing I've ever done as a photographer to date. Anyways, here are some photos from the day...

Started off with some photos of the choir, various performances...

From Evangelical Formosan Church of Irvine 20th Anniversary

I wanted some shots from behind the conductors, just felt it would be more interesting making him as the main subject...

From Evangelical Formosan Church of Irvine 20th Anniversary

Some cute shots of the young kids choir...

From Evangelical Formosan Church of Irvine 20th Anniversary

Then came the big event for me, my brother's ordination...
I have to admit, when they raised the projector screen and the cross became visible... I was really moved... it was just "wow" for me. I can't quite explain the feeling I had inside... but it was different, something really strong.

From Evangelical Formosan Church of Irvine 20th Anniversary

This was the most powerful shot for me of the day... He has changed a lot... I remember back when we first moved to the states (we lived in South Pasadena back then), he was really one of the "bad" kids, joining gangs and what not. But God has really changed his life, perhaps saved him... going from gang member to a minister. I've always known how important the Church and everything is to him, but to experience it up close and personal, it was totally different... All these thoughts just hit me all at once, suddenly I got it... I understood him much better at that instant and it just moved me to see him so devoted. Like I said... looking through the lens allows one to experience things differently, on a much more intimate and personal level and this was no exception for me and perhaps that is what really touched me.

From Evangelical Formosan Church of Irvine 20th Anniversary

My brother has played a big role in the church, especially for the younger generation and has touched many lives... and today, you can add me to that long list as he has truly touched my life (the story of me and my brother warrants a whole post on its own).... For me, it was really heart warming to see him smile and be greeted by his close friends.

From Evangelical Formosan Church of Irvine 20th Anniversary

The day closed with a moving soloist that my mom claims is super handsome... I believe he works as a professional stage manager or director of some sort... anyways, he performed "How Great Thou Art!"

From Evangelical Formosan Church of Irvine 20th Anniversary

Finally, the group shots that I've been waiting for all day...

From Evangelical Formosan Church of Irvine 20th Anniversary

So the group shots were really challenging, both from lighting and actual organization perspective. Each group size was very different, one group was about 1.5 times this group size and was near impossible to fit into the frame (and I was using the 10-22mm!!!). Larger groups also meant that there was more distortion on the side as I couldn't zoom in. I was too nervous trying to get everything to work and forgot to pay attention to balancing out the two sides so some groups had way more people on one side than the other... There were other people photographing the groups so there were people running all over the foreground... It was just not very organized and partly it's my fault, partly it's miscommunication. From lighting perspective, this was even more challenging. There was a spot light, but it mainly lit the center of the frame and it was a fairly warm light source... to balance this out, I set up an umbrella on each side of the frame for some cross lighting (the left umbrella pointed to the right edge, and right one points to the left). This allowed the majority of the light to "fall off" before hitting the center and far subjects which is exactly what you want as there'll be plenty of light coming from the other umbrella. To balance the colors out I gelled each of the flash with a full CTO gel and set my camera's white balance to tungsten... this more or less evened out the colors across the entire frame. The rest was more or less experimentation... I set the flash on manual at about 1/2 power to play with and then just adjusted the shutter/aperture on the camera to balance the exposure... some shots came out better than others, some shots were ruined due to the large group and close proximity to the umbrella (so the edges got too hot or bright). I was also using the cheapo ebay (Cactus V2) triggers which is definitely less than 100% reliable (seemed to be more like 75% accuracy)... All in all, I'm relatively satisfied with the results, especially considering this is my first time doing large group portraits.

Anyways, sorry for the incredibly long post... and way too many photos. At the end of the day, I don't know if I captured people's "faith"... but I ended up with some images that had a lot of personal significance to me. On an interesting side note... quite a few people came up to me afterwards and asked what photo studio I was with ... o.O;; People are also fairly happy with the group photo results so it looks like I'll be doing a lot more church events in the future haha.

Saying goodbye to my first love...

2008-09-18T02:21:00.000-07:00

This year has been another year of change... lots of things happening in my life, lots of things changing both in my personal life and in my photography life. This Tuesday I just had to end a great 2 and a half year long relationship. It was finally time to let it go and move on. It turned out much more difficult than I thought, especially after such a long time. I still remember the first day I held her in my hands it felt so natural. The first time out... it was with fellow photographer JC and his wife Joyce in Laguna Beach... That was the first sunset together... Then there were all the trips we went on... Taiwan, Shanghai, Death Valley, and Yosemite to name a few. She has helped me grow a lot, more than I could have imagined when I first took this path but things are different now I guess. In many ways I've out grown her and needed to move on... but saying good bye is always hard.... I am sure the next guy will take very good care of her.
Here are some of the more memorable photos:

This was at the end of the first photo trip with JC at Laguna Beach. I barely knew how to use my camera, what the difference was between "Av" and "Tv" let alone understand composition, lighting and all that. Heck, I carried my camera using a Ranch 99 plastic bag... As we were heading back to the car, I had this idea of taking this photo... I really liked the little lamps along the walk way and the stairs leading home... To this day, this photo remains one of my favorite and most memorable photos.

From Some random shots

This was shot near my house... I drive past this overpass many times in my life... never thinking to stop until I got my camera... I wasn't sure what I really wanted other than a time lapse shot... I didn't even think about the power lines... All I remember was that I was really pleasantly surprised to see the colors in the sky in the final photo as in reality things were already pretty dark. This was the first time I realized photography is not about capturing what's real, but about beautifying what you see... It is about capturing the perfect image in your mind, not about capturing the most accurate image.

From Some random shots

After taking the above shot, I drove to Spectrum... I didn't understand wide angles vs. telephotos, no concept of "distortion"... or why choose landscape vs portrait orientation... I definitely didn't understand "white balance" when I took this shot... again, it was a pleasant surprise at how the colors came out. In real life I don't think the colors were so warm/gold, but I've really fallen in love with this photo (and is now hanging on one of my walls). I just love how empty and lonely it feels, and then there is the color of the lights which seems to set a different mood. Shortly after taking this shot, the security guard came and kicked me out... Oh well :).

From Some random shots

This remains one of my favorite photos taken in Taiwan. It is now framed in my living room (the frame cost more then the lens used to take the photo....). It's not a great photo, but I love looking at it... it is home to me. Maybe that's not something everyone can connect with, but that is special to me. This is my HOME, this is where I grew up... a place I use to feel embarrassed to call home because I felt it was just a mess and dirty... I soon to learned that there are many sides to Taiwan, and that it had far more beauty to offer than I could ever imagine, and now I'm proud to call it home, proud to say that is where I am from. This photo was taken the day before a typhoon and the air was clean and the weather perfect. A good friend of mine drove me out here, just south of Taipei. I am really fortunate to have such great friends who are willing to take time out of their busy schedules to humor my hobby, no words can express my gratitude to them.

From 北橫, 大溪 (Northern Taiwan mountain route)

This Tuesday... I had to say goodbye to my first "love", my first DSLR lens... the EF-S 17-85mm F/4-5.6 IS. It has been a great companion, the default walk around lens no matter where I go... Boston, NY, Taipei, Shanghai. The flexibility of its range makes it perfect for beginners to pick up and grow with... The Image Stabilization made it great for night time shots which is what got me into photography in the first place. I loved that lens... in many ways, that lens help me become who I am today but I guess all good things must come to an end. With the new 24-105 L lens, I can't justify having the 17-85 anymore... At the end of the day,I just really needed a better lens as the 17-85 was too soft and had too much color bleeding. I guess it was fate that I dropped my friend's lens so that I'd be forced to upgrade... I suppose all good things must come to an end. Now the 17-85 is with a fellow Googler, I'm sure he'll make good use of it and hopefully he'll learn as much from it as I did. Thank you for all the memories, all the doors you help open, all the special moment captured that I will never forget.

The Empire... er... Canon strikes back

2008-09-16T23:09:00.000-07:00

So the long awaited announcement for the 5D replacement came today... "Destined Evolution"

So here are the key specs for the 5D Mk II from DP Review

New 21.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor with improved EOS Integrated Cleaning System (E.I.C.S.)
New Full HD 1080 resolution movie recording
3.9 frames per second continuous shooting
High performance DIGIC 4 providing superb image quality
Maximum 310 large JPEG images in a single burst with a UDMA card
3.0” VGA (920k dots) Clear View LCD
ISO 100-6400 (expansion from 50 up to 25,600)
9 AF points + 6 Assist AF points

So... it looks pretty sexy to me :). 21 MP is great, but far beyond what I'd need... tho it'd be great for large poster sized prints (you know... like for my living room wall). The real sexy thing is the movie mode, sure Nikon came out with movie mode first on the D90... but full HD 1080 resolution movie mode... I can't wait to try it out! The higher ISO performance is also kind of exciting, but I'll have to wait to see the full review and test shots... Either way, I'm not one to pre-order, but I am certainly going to watch my spendings a lot more carefully in the up coming months.

Canon also announced a new EF 24mm f/1.4 L Mk II lens. Great for them, but not so much for me. They also announced a few point and shoot upgrades:

Canon Powershot G10 - The best point and shoot offered by Canon. 15 mp and 5x zoom (28mm wide)
Canon Powershot SX10 and SX1 - Two new compact super zoom (20X!!!) offered by Canon, with image stabilization. SX1 also has 1080p HDTV movie capture mode.... Sweet!
Canon IXUS 870 IS and 980 IS - Great super compact P&S... some new features which is always cool :).

So things have finally gotten interesting. Now we'll have to see how Pentax, Olympus and Sony will respond.

My new baby is home....

2008-09-16T01:00:00.000-07:00

For those of you who followed my rant a few weeks back... then you'd know how I borrowed a friend's EF 24-105mm F/4 L IS lens on my Washington trip and dropped it from about waist high while changing lenses. Luckily I had the lens hood on so no major damage to the actual glass. The impact did however cause the lens to "lock up" (IS and AF seems to spaz out and then goes dead) in portrait mode. Today I got "my" lens back from Canon... Apparently the lens contact was busted (which is what causes the communication error and the lens to spaz out) and they also reworked the Image Stabilizer assembly, cleaned it up, recalibrate it etc etc. All in all... it only cost $158 dollars. Yes that is right... $158 to repair my dropped L lens.... I don't know about you, but I'm EXTREMELY happy considering this L lens costs over one thousand dollars new... I was expecting like a $300 repair bill or something insane but $158... that I like :).

Oh in case you are wondering, I am keeping the lens. I bought my friend a new EF 70-200 F/4 L IS as a replacement (and he gave me 40 bucks cash to compensate for the price difference). Looks like everyone is happy. Now I just need to sell off my EF-S 17-85 F/4-5.6 IS. Any takers ;).

Hello Olympic....

2008-09-15T00:22:00.000-07:00

I just finished processing my Olympic National Park pictures from labor day weekend. We did the crazy night drive from Seattle to Port Angeles the night before, checked into the hotel at like 1:30 AM and got up the next day just after 8 AM. My mom said we were worse than tours :p.

So we got up early to drive up to Hurricane Ridge, it is one of those places that you should visit earlier in the day or else you'll be shooting into the sun and can't get any good shots. Also, from what I've read, it is only worth going when the weather is nice... this is certainly the case. It wasn't the prettiest place in Olympic National Park, nothing really special but if you like some hikes, great snow capped mountain vistas, it's worth a stop here. We did an easy 1.8 mi (single way) hike up Hurricane Hill. We didn't reach the very end, but came pretty close... Here are some photos from Hurricane Ridge:

Here is the view from Hurricane Ridge visitor center. The weather was beautiful (but cold). There were a few clouds floating around, but it was mostly clear as you can see from this image. Shot in RAW and post processed to bring out the blue, really deepen the shadows/green and brighten up the highlights to bring out the snow better.

From Olympic National Park Part 1

Also shot from the visitor center parking lot. Too bad the grass in the foreground is not green filled with flowers, otherwise it seems like something straight out of the movies. This is the type of view you just can't get out here in California... all the mountains just looks bare and desolate... all brown and rocky.

From Olympic National Park Part 1

Simple shot of a leaf... Shot in nice warm morning sun.... I deepened the shadows and brought out the highlights in Picasa (this is why the background looks almost black). I just love how simple it is... inspired by my friend Joe.

From Olympic National Park Part 1

Shot near the top of Hurricane Hill... I really like the layers of mountains in the distance. The little trail leading into the frame is kind of cute too.

From Olympic National Park Part 1

On the way back to the car, there was a nice break in the clouds that revealed beautiful blue sky... The clouds were still nice and white which provided nice contrast against the clean sky. The scattered clouds also created interesting patterns of shadow on the forest below... It was just... amazing. My photos doesn't even come close to doing the scene justice. Note that I shot in RAW to preserve as much of the dynamic range as I can. Also had double stacked filters - Circular Polarizer to increase saturation, deepen the blue sky color and a Graduated ND filter so I don't blow out the clouds and can expose the forest a little better. With double stacking filters on a wide angle lens, you really have to watch out for vignetting on the corners (anything below 15mm or so is basically useless).

From Olympic National Park Part 1

After the hike at Hurricane Ridge, we rushed over to Hoh rainforest... but we made a few quick stops along Lake Crescent...

From Olympic National Park Part 1

While the weather and everything was just perfect, the lake itself was a little too empty for it to be interesting. But the clouds were just amazing so I think that more than made up for the lake. There was a better spot to stop about half a mile earlier. It was on higher ground so it provided a much better angle to shoot the lake. Oh well, next time if you are driving from Hurricane to Hoh, stop as soon as you can along Lake Crescent, don't wait till you are right beside the lake...

When I got to Hoh rainforest, I was just blown away by it. It is simply amazing, not amazingly beautiful, just... amazing. It was so different from anything I've seen before (then again, I need to get out more), but it definitely deserved a lot of photos :)... very cool place to take a walk through.

This was only about... 5 mins into the hike and my friend JC and I were just mesmerized by it for about 15 mins... The water was so clear that it was almost as if it wasn't there... It was all just so green and peaceful.... I loved it so much... I can't even find the words to describe it.

From Hoh Rainforest and Ruby Beach

The rest of the short walk was just as interesting...

From Hoh Rainforest and Ruby Beach

We closed off the day with sunset at Ruby beach... While it isn't like beaches out here in Southern California, it was special in it's own way. It had all sorts of log debris along the shore which really made for great foreground subjects. It had small islands/sea stacks just off the coast which made for great mid-distance subjects... and it has a forest and a tide pool right along the beach for added possibilities in composition.

While this is a HDR shot (composed of 3 images at different exposure levels), I tried to keep it as "real" as possible and looks pretty close to what it actually looks like. This was practically a dream shot as soon as I saw it... I've been imagining this kind of shot for a long time now for some reason... here is what I had dreamed about getting:
1. A line of (tall) trees along the beach - check
2. Beautiful blue sky - check
3. Some beautiful white clouds rolling in from the sea - almost, this was sunset so the clouds had a nice gold touch to it
4. Pile of logs along the beach - check.
While I think I pictured a white sandy beach, the pebbles works just as well. This is probably my favorite shot from the day.

From Hoh Rainforest and Ruby Beach

Here is the non-HDR version for comparison. I touched it up a bit in Canon's DPP to bring out the blue more, but the pebbles and logs just doesn't pop out at you as much.

From Hoh Rainforest and Ruby Beach

Here is another HDR shot from another beach in Olympic National Park. Doesn't it feel like a painting from somewhere?

From Hoh Rainforest and Ruby Beach

Sorry for all the HDRs... here are a couple more. I am never a huge fan of HDR... just feels too fake. But I guess sometimes it really helps you convey the beauty that you see (or that you remember seeing). This was probably the most HDR intensive shoot I've done, most of them came out great and natural, a few I took more creative liberties with to create different effects. Overall I liked all the results and just had a great time at Ruby beach, highly recommended!

From Hoh Rainforest and Ruby Beach

I'd like to close with the following photo:

From Hoh Rainforest and Ruby Beach

While this photo doesn't seem like much... it means the world to me. I took this photo shortly after falling off one of the logs that I was trying to climb. I guess my legs were weaker than I thought from the day's hikes/walks and the weight of the camera backpack really just threw me off balance as I fell twice off the log (about 2 ft off the ground). Anyways, I lost my balance, fell backwards and hit a piece of log behind me, being a log... it had a few fist sized (or slightly larger) protrusions. I was extremely fortunate that it hit the side of my lower back, just above my waist, 2 inches higher it probably would have broken one of my ribs, an inch to the left would have caused some injury to my organs, another inch could have broken my spine. I was extremely fortunate to be able to walk away from that fall. I took this picture, while sitting down on the ground because I simply could not get up for about 5 mins or so due to the pain... I didn't care... I was just happy to be alive and gotten away with a minor sprained ankle and some bruises. I took this shot as a way to remind myself of my fortune and new found perspective (literally).... Life is way more important than any photo I could have taken... while it wasn't a particularly dangerous spot... I always need to keep that in mind :). Really have to thank God for letting me walk away with that lesson so easily/cheaply.

Chasing the moment...

2008-09-11T21:51:00.000-07:00

So I've been giving a lot of thought to why I like photography... why I love to carry that heavy piece of equipment around with me where ever I go... I thought this section from Joe McNally's book (The Moment it Clicks) summarized my feelings perfectly (not that I'm even close to experiencing what he sees/experiences):

“What you see on these pages is not about a particular place, people, time, or cause. It’s not about one type of picture or another. It’s not about sportsmen or fashion models or war or politics or the news of the day.

It’s about being a photographer.

It’s about the sheer joy of clicking the shutter…repeatedly! The sweet sound of the shutter and the explosion that occurs in your head and your heart when you make the shot. The deal is the shot, you know. You make the picture and you know something just froze solid in a shifting world. Something stabilized, for all time. You just hung your hat on a moment that otherwise would be gone forever, and now you can go back and take a look at that moment, be it amazing or ordinary, any time you want.

It’s about your eye in the camera as the light hits just right. It’s about the slight turn of your subject’s face that speaks the truth. It’s about holding your breath as you shoot. It’s about the nerves, the joy, and the terror of wondering if you got it. And then dancing about, punching holes in the air when you know you do. It’s about… the moment it clicks.” -- Joe McNally

It is exactly about that... especially that last paragraph that resonates with me. It is all about the moment that shutter clicks, nervous that you missed the shot... and jumping for joy when you capture a frame that you want... just the way you imagined it in your head. I remember my first real portrait session with a friend in Taiwan... it was at some restaurant near my house. Here are some photos from that shoot... please remember this was about a month or 2 after I got my SLR.... so they are far from good shots...

While these aren't particular good shots... there was something magical for me. It was really the first time that it "clicked" for me... The whole world around me disappeared... all I could see was my friend through the view finder. Nothing else mattered, all the distractions of the world, of life, it all went away. It was as if all my energy was focused on capturing the perfect moment and then when the shutter clicked and the screen went black... time itself stood still. I didn't even need to look at the image on the back of my camera and I knew I caught a special moment... some how I just knew it... caught her smiling, caught her looking playful, caught her looking sad. Sometimes I miss the shot, sometimes I get it... but all that mattered was for that split second, I was happy and I froze time.

Since then, I've really just fallen in love with photography... everything becomes so simple... your view of the world is completely simplified and all you see is that tiny little view of the world and nothing else. A friend once told me that it's such a shame I keep taking pictures and can't enjoy anything... While I might have been able to enjoy it the same way, but to me, it is even more special. That tiny window to the world let's me focus on it even more, all the details of the subject, whether it is a person, beautiful landscape, brilliant fireworks... I feel closer to the subject, much more connected, as if I have a personal relationship with the subject. It just feels so much more intimate... This is especially true for portraits, seeing your subject smile... it becomes the most beautiful smile in the world and your whole world just brightens up along with it... you can't help but feel happy and smile back. Same is true when shooting weddings... while I do have some regrets for not being able to pay attention to the wedding and relax... I feel so much closer to the bride and groom... and then when the shutter clicks while they are smiling... that feeling is pure magic. It's a high that you can't help but want more of... that's why I can't resist the temptation of the camera... of that mirror flap... of looking through the view finder (and I think it is the view finder that makes it magical... live view or through the LCD just won't be the same). I can't help but keep clicking that button, repeatedly, even if my entire body is sore, tired, sweating, I will keep pressing the shutter. Nothing else in the world matters, I just want to see them smile... see YOU smile.

Lately I've lost a lot of that passion, that feeling. Maybe because I've just gotten in a photography slump where my images just has no impact. Too many bland landscapes, too many images that just says "yes I was there." I'm not a naturally creative person, I don't see things the same way as some of the photog... they just get it. It might take me 10 years to do what they learned in a few months. Maybe I got a little discouraged looking at all the great photos coworkers take (I wear the photography mailing lists are full of pro photographers, not engineers). I've also recently met a few great photographers online through Picasa... they've been shooting about the same length of time, all self taught... and their image makes me FEEL. It's amazing what they do, and a bit discouraging. But then yesterday my friend sent me his blog post from awhile ago... Photography IS fun... it doesn't matter what I can capture... it doesn't matter if it's just a worthless assortment of bits on a computer hard disk... the fact is that I captured a moment in time that is special to me. It doesn't have to be special to anyone else...

The past weekend shooting at the wedding really reminded me of that magical feeling again.... Especially right before the reception when a friend was willing to pose for me. Even though we didn't have time and only posed for a few shots, it was still special...

As usual, I started extremely nervous, filled with self doubt... "She looks great, can I really capture that? Can I really capture her essence? Her personality? How do I pose her? What if she doesn't like it?" A thousand thoughts screamed through my head... but as she slowly smiled, it all went away... as if sun shining through the storm clouds, a moment of clarity. Nothing mattered anymore and I pressed the shutter button... *click*. She reminded me of that feeling again, that magical feeling of pressing the shutter, of capturing a moment... The nervousness when the view finder is black, scared that you missed her smile... and then wanting to jump up for joy, pump your fists and scream when you know you got something worth keeping, worth treasuring.

Was it a good photo? I don't know, you'll have to ask her. Did I capture something special? To me, yes... it made me happy. That moment is now forever frozen in time, a new memory is created from nothingness and I will never forget it (or at least I'll have proof of it). I guess this is what photography is about... creating something special for yourself first and foremost... if you are lucky, it'll be special to someone else. Maybe that is selfish, but that's the best I can do. In the end, I don't think I'll ever be a good photographer, but that doesn't matter. I just need to have fun... I'll keep shooting till I'm dead... I'll keep chasing for that perfect moment... the "moment it clicks."

The big day... wedding!

2008-09-10T01:18:00.000-07:00

So I was the "official" backup photog for a friend's wedding this past weekend... what an experience. I'll start with the boring stuff... my gear. I was so nervous with the request that I actually started freaking out a bit and did more planning than I would otherwise...

1. Lowepro Computrekker Plus - 6.06 lbs (I just bought this... great backpack... carries a ton... weighs a ton.)
2. Canon 20D x2 - 3.4 lbs (I borrowed an extra 20D just for this wedding...)
3. Canon EF-S 10-22mm - 0.85 lbs (This was gonna stay on one of the bodies full time. I love wide angle shots at weddings....)
4. Canon EF 50mm - 0.64 lbs (I need a fast lens that is great for portraits just in case I need in door available light or just a good portrait lens...)
5. Canon EF 100mm macro - 1.32 lbs (Brought this just in case... you never know when you need a macro lens for the ring or center piece type shots)
6. Canon EF 70-200 2.8 IS - 3.2 lbs (This is gonna be my main lens...)
7. 580 EX II flash - 0.83 lbs
8. 430 EX flash - 0.73 lbs

That's just the camera gear which comes in at about 17 lbs... plus laptop, power cord, batteries, chargers, random accessories and tripod... I was carrying 20 some odd lbs. I'm probably never doing that again.

So anyways, some select shots from the wedding:
I love this shot of the bride's dad. He looks a contemplative (or a bit sad). A thousand emotions and memories must be racing through his mind on this day. While I'm not thrilled about the guy in the background, I like the composition, especially the slight tilt. But really it just comes down to the emotion on the dad's face :).

From Christina and Oscar's wedding

This is my favorite shot of the wedding dress. Depending on the monitor you are viewing, the dress is either perfect or slightly too bright... sorry guys. In post I increased the contrast quite a bit to try to make the background fade out and the dress pop out more. It is unfortunate that I didn't control the DOF better to get the entire dress in sharp focus.

From Christina and Oscar's wedding

This is might be my favorite shot of the day I think. Using the dress as background for the wedding shoes seems to be a no brainer and standard thing to do... I of course didn't think of it until one of the brides maids told me. Thanks! I made it into a high contrast B&W image just for fun and all the distractions seems to melt away.

From Christina and Oscar's wedding

Shot of the bouquet, again using the dress as the background just makes sense (that and there are no good backgrounds in the tight hotel room that we were in). Having vibrant flowers set against the white dress seems to bring out the flowers even more which I like. Also I like the the fact that only half the bouquet is visible... no need to include the whole thing as that might be too distracting.

From Christina and Oscar's wedding

Just a fun little dance shot with some motion blur (on purpose of course :p)

From Christina and Oscar's wedding

So for the wedding itself, I concentrated on using the 70-200 and 10-22. The 70-200 allowed me to stay back and zoom in to capture the emotions on people's faces and just get close up shots. The 10-22 to me is a must have for weddings, it's just sooo much fun. I love using it as it can create really interesting perspectives and can really exaggerate the train. Some shots:

Long hall ways seem even longer with the super wide. It's great for impromptu group shots.

From Christina and Oscar's wedding

What do you do when you have a group of cool guys standing together? You use a super wide and get low to create the hero photo... I mean come on, you got a group of guys looking all cool in their suits... you gotta make it look dramatic right? Having a strong light source also seems to add a bit of drama I think. Just make sure you keep the subjects in the center so you don't get too much distortion.

From Christina and Oscar's wedding

Here is the super wide really exaggerating the dress train, making it look nice and long... Again, be careful of the distortion and try to keep the bride in the center.

From Christina and Oscar's wedding

Full album slideshow here:

Some lessons I learned...
1. Having 2 bodies with very different lenses helped tremendously. I can go from a super wide to get entire crowd in to a long telephoto and get close up shots near instantly. No more missing those special moments because you had the wrong lens!

2. Having a super wide is almost a must have I think. 24mm is not enough, you need wider. I love the fresh perspective you get from it, not to mention it does great job of exaggerating the beautiful train on the wedding dress. Also wide angle shots of people getting out of the limo or just of people partying can be really fun.

3. Be mindful of your setting... This applies both to your physical location as well as camera setting. Too often I forgot to change my setting when I go from in door (wide aperture to get all the light, shallow DOF) to out door without changing my settings. What I get are a bunch of crappy pictures where the bridge is in focus but the groom is not due to the wide aperture. Remember to step down and lower the ISO when you are outside... inside, you might have to bump up the ISO quite a bit and open up the aperture. I need to be far more careful of my settings in the future... way too sloppy.

4. Use a flash... both inside and outside. The flash outside allowed me to shoot against the sun in a number of shots and still get a half descent exposure of the main subject. Very useful as fill flash. It is even more important in doors so you don't get blurry or really dark photos. If you use a flash in doors, consider gelling your flash to match the ambient light. Slap on a CTO (color temperature orange) gel if you are shooting inside a room lit by tungsten lights so that the flash color will match the ambient light source so that it can all be corrected by camera's white balance. If you are shooting in fluorescent, use window green gel.

5. Speaking of white balance... make sure it is correct! Sometimes with all the mix lights at weddings, it can really wreck havoc with the beautiful white wedding dress or people's beautiful skin tones. Bring a gray card if you can... There are quite a few photos in my album with poor white balance so people's skins just doesn't look right... sigh.

6. Don't be afraid to shoot into the light. I've seen so many great wedding photos that were shot straight into a strong light source... it just creates interestin shadows and lines. Sometimes that over exposed feel just works real well too. Some examples from Hassas Photo blog.... He has some really great shots (take a look at all his other works). Albert Jou also has some great shots like this one.

7. Hotel room window with curtains can make really moody soft lights. I unfortunately didn't get any of shots like that... but here is an example.

8. Shots of the bride getting make up done are sometimes really beautiful images... especially in B&W :). Unfortunately I was kicked out of the make-up room (the make up person couldn't work with people in the room with her...).

9. Don't forget to zoom in all the way. Some times just shots of the bride and groom holding hands during the wedding is really powerful.

10. Don't forget about the other guests. While the bride and groom should be the main show, sometimes the most powerful images will come from the crowd, especially the parents. Keep eyeing the crowd to watch for reactions. Don't forget to get down a little so that you are at their eye level, sometimes that feels more intimate.

11. Continuous shooting is your friend. Trying to catch that magical moment is tough... just keep shooting.

12. Crop crop crop. I suck at composition and a lot of images was improved with some minor (ok ok, some photos needed major) cropping to cut out distracting lines, flares, or just dead space.

Overall, I was semi-happy with the results. Nothing really worth writing home about, no great shots that stand out but I felt I captured a few good moments and had a few emotional shots. One of my weak points is also understanding what angle is the most flattering angle for people... it is different for everyone I think and I just don't seem to understand what angle would work best... I also know I missed a lot of the key moments... no good ring exchange shots... no real good shots of them walking in or walking out. No good shot of the kiss... oh well that's why there was 2 pro photogs there :). It was still a really great experience for me... this is really the third wedding that I tried to do some serious shooting... still a long ways to go.... But considering I was having nightmares of dropped equipment, or just complete lack of inspiration and bleh images... I guess it was ok :). It's funny... when I first started photography two years ago... I told people I would NEVER EVER do weddings... too much pressure... what if you miss the magic moment?! I don't want to be responsible. Just being a friend and running around taking snap shots is perfect for me, a nice little comfort zone but I have actually thought about doing it more seriously in the future. Anyone getting married and wouldn't mind having a free back up photographer in training :p?

Start Exploring (Picasa Web)

2008-09-05T22:45:00.001-07:00

Here is a more detailed post about the new Explore page on Picasa Web: http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2008/09/start-exploring.html.

The main new features of the explore page are featured photos, recent photos, popular tags, and a where in the world game. Come check it out :)

Destined Evolution....?

2008-09-05T21:24:00.000-07:00

So Canon has started running a full teaser campaign today... The Canon USA site has a little flash movie with a moon showing the shadows of a new DSLR with the tag line... "Destined Evolution", you can see it at http://www.canon.com/moon/en/index.html. Canon Europe also has a flash ad with the tag line "The EOS story continues.... See the future of photography.... stay tuned" on their home page. I guess the rumors are true, Canon is releasing another DSLR this year... and logic would suggest that it is a 5D replacement of some sort... rumors are flying all over the place about 2 DSLRs, 7D and a 3D etc etc. I guess either way, something IS finally coming after months and months of chatter about a 5D replacement... something is finally coming... unless it is a 1D Mk IV >.<.... Either way, all this hype has gotten me excited again... but the anticipation is killing me. I guess either way I'll have a new camera... just whether it is the 50D or something else :).

Good night Seattle!

2008-09-05T01:01:00.000-07:00

So I'm finally done processing the Seattle photos from my trip over the weekend. Nothing amazing, but a couple of shots I really liked. Our first stop was Pike Place Market, which always have great photo ops, from the fish market that... throws fish to the flower shop next door that just offers so many vibrant colors to the organic veggie shop just a few more feet down. Photographing people there is always interesting too with street performers at every street corner. Here are a few of the photos I liked slightly better from Pike Place...

From Seattle trip

There is something about this photo that I really like... maybe it's the back lighting and shadows on the orange. Maybe it's the simplicity of the colors... maybe it's just because it is so simple... a bunch of circles. If you like this image too, let me know why... :)

From Seattle trip

This turned out to be one of the better food shots from this trip... ok ok I only took like 5 food photos. This photo really showed off the power of the 24-105 F/4 L lens. This was shot at f/5.6 at 1/125 secs, 45mm and it is just SHARP. At 5.6 I was able to get just the right DOF so that the entire sandwich is in focus, but everything else is nicely blurred, especially the distracting stuff in the back just turns into this nice soft out of focus background. The light was also in my favor where I had hard directional light coming straight through the windows hitting my sandwich (but very little else in the background - or it was blocked by people :p). The directional light also creates interesting shadows on the bread bringing out the textures.

After Pike Place Market we stopped by UW - University of Washington, the campus is just beautiful, especially when the weather is as nice as it was. This is my second trip to UW, but during the first trip the library really stood out to me and I just couldn't forget how beautiful it was... so this time around I had to get a photo of it...

From Seattle trip

But the best photo probably came from inside the library...

From Seattle trip

I had to use my 10mm here to fit everything I wanted, but also I wanted the exaggerated perspective offered by the super wide. I dialed in a + 2/3 EV while using matrix metering to brighten the scene up a bit. Finally, I had to play around with the white balance a little to get this warm golden feel to it... originally it was a dull gray color, but with slight change in WB completely changes the mood I think.

The best shots of the day came at night... while we missed twilight due to some complications (including getting lost... stupid 1-way streets...). Here are a couple of shots of the Seattle skyline from Queen Anne. While the sky was mostly clear, there were definitely enough clouds to be light up by the bright city lights. I had a few shots where the entire sky was orange which looked kinda cool... but in the end I think this cleaner look is better. If the clouds do become a problem (as in the wide angle / panorama shot), turning the photo B&W always solves the problem. I bumped up the shadow and highlights a little to increase the contrast and make the Space Needle stand out even more.

From Seattle trip

The pictures were taken just above Kerry Park, just off W. Highland Dr and Queen Anne North. We had to point at pictures and ask a couple of locals before figuring out how to get there. Note that Queen Anne is actually a 1 way street near the Space Needle, so we had to go up 1st Ave, turning left at Roy St, then right at Queen Anne to drive up. Here is the map for your convenience:

View Larger Map

This is really a must stop for any photographers visiting Seattle... on a clear day you can see Mount St. Helen in the back making it the perfect post card photo of Seattle. Next time I visit Seattle, I have to make sure I get here before sunset to get some twilight photos :). Overall, Seattle treated us very well... wonderful weather, great scenery and some good food. Thanks Seattle!

The long road...

2008-09-03T00:53:00.000-07:00

This long road we've been walking down finally comes to a close... today marks the official launch of Picasa Web Albums and Picasa 3.0. It's the biggest update to both the client and the web site since initial launch of the product just over two years ago. The main updates to the client include:

Much improved collage and movie maker to give you more choices and complete creative freedom
New text tool to let you add text in all sorts of cool ways/fonts/colors
New touch up tool to fix distracting blemishes (now you can fix up your photos like a pro!)
New integrated photo viewer, a lightweight tool that lets you view photos, slide show, that is directly integrated into Windows
Sync with Picasa Web Albums, now whatever changes you make locally will get sent up online automatically!

Unfortunately, Picasa 3 is only available for English (U.S.) users at this time, but it's pretty cool stuff and worth checking out! You can try out the new version at http://picasa.google.com/intl/en/.

Picasa Web also launched it's new version which includes several key new features:

Facial recognition aka 'name tags.' You can easily tag the people in your photos with a name and create custom slide shows containing those people. Want to find all the pictures of your grandma and share that slide show with her on her birthday? Sure no problem! Just opt into the name tag feature on the settings page, tag all the photos with grandma in it and just make sure those name tags are public (can be changed from settings page as well as on individual album level). This is available in English only right now.
Creative commons
E-mail upload, now you can upload photos from your mobile device or even set up forwarding filters in Gmail so all the photo attachment you receive automatically gets uploaded to Picasa Web.
Explore page, which lets you browse the wonderful community within Picasa web from looking at featured photos, popular tags, recently uploaded public photos from around the world as well as play a quick game of guessing where the photos were taken ('Where in the World').

Come check out all the new features!

Insurance... it's good for you.

2008-08-31T20:49:00.000-07:00

So... I'm in Washington now... Mt. Rainier National Park to be exact. Seattle and Olympic national park both treated us to wonderful weather and spectacular scenes... But it's been a tough trip so far. Half of the people I'm traveling with are sick... we are sleeping about 5 hours a night here... The other driver got a ticket for speeding (I swear the park ranger was BSing about how fast we were going... I fell... TWICE (while trying to step up onto a piece of log). The first time I fell I got lucky and just hurt my bottom a bit... my camera bag broke my fall (not sure if anything in there broke yet...). Then I stood up... and fell AGAIN but this time sprained my angle and slammed my back against another piece of log that had a round protruding part... I guess I got lucky because it would have been really bad if I hit my spine or head against it... or even rib cage... lucky enough I missed my spine by about 2 inches and it just hit the side of my lower back. I hit it pretty hard... really kept me down for a few minutes... To make it worse... I dropped my friend's lens that was borrowing today... I was changing lenses... it slipped... I bobbled it... it fell... It was new when he lent it to me... and now it is semi-broken. Oh btw, did I mention that the lens is the $1000 Canon EF 24-105 mm F/4 L lens? yeah... so now I owe him a new L lens.... a nice pricey L lens.... I insure all my equipment... but he was new in SLR world so he doesn't... F**** This is why you buy insurance... cuz shit happens... This has just been a terrible week... First the 4 car chain collision that I caused... now a dropped lens... I think I should stay off the road and avoid touching expensive things....

Assignment 4: Taste

2008-08-29T01:02:00.000-07:00

The 4th photo club assignment was taste... yes, taste. This included everything from food photos to people's emotion/reactions to food, basically anything that could represent taste. The shot I really wanted was to get someone (preferably a girl) to eat some ice cream. I wanted to compose the shot just showing the lower part of her face (chin/jaw) and have the spoon in her mouth, all against a blown out bright white background (well ok maybe some color, but I wanted strong back lighting). You know, the typical "hmmmm that was delicious" look to it where you hold spoon in your mouth, enjoying every second of that wonderful sweet flavor. Thats what I wanted... but I never got a chance to try to execute so I had to settle for plain food photos. Oh well.

I ended up settling for some hot dog shots from work...

Just a plain shot, I wanted to make sure I got the action of putting the mustard on the hot dog... hey this is TASTE after all :). It might have been better to get the whole hot dog in focus but at the same time I wanted some blurred background so I just settled for making sure the ketchup and mustard was in focus. I also really like the red + yellow contrast... overall the white balance is off by a little bit which kind of sucks (see the that yellowish tint?). Finally, for this shot, I had to make sure the hot dog wasn't centered... I felt that would have been too plain and boring; besides that paper is almost just as interesting as the hot dog!

During the course of the assignment, I was also lucky enough to fly up to the main campus up in Mountain View with all the great cafes... I happened to stay in Building 47 where Pintxo 47, one of the coolest cafes with small tapas styled plates, is located. These little dishes of delight made it the perfect food photography subject...

I haven't had a whole lot of experience shooting food... Not really good at food photography or really know what I'm talking about... but a few things that I personally watch out for are:

Make sure you have the correct white balance. There is nothing like a yellow (or pale blue) tint on your food photos to destroy your appetite. Make sure that white is actually white... if that fish is white, please don't make it look yellow or orange (yes, I'm guilty of making that mistake...), it just doesn't look right.
Don't under expose... I think it is almost always better to OVER expose than to under or expose just right. So error on the side of making things too bright... there is nothing more disgusting than a dark looking photo of red meat... it just makes it look dull, dry, heavy, greasy... But if you brighten it up, it will just look that much fresher, juicier... tastier.
Keep the background simple. As with everything else... simplify simplify simplify. The food is the main subject, avoid clutter from the table (i.e. clashing cups, bowls, utensils, etc). While these items could be used to set a context for the food (i.e. wine pairing), make sure you focus on the right things otherwise the viewer's eyes will simply wander around.
White plates help... I personally tend to find white plate settings best... white plates + slight over exposure just creates that light fresh feeling. White probably also brings out the colors of the food the best... but again, this is just a personal taste
Tilted angles... for some reason, I love my food shots tilted slightly. Angle (eye level? 45 degree looking down? completely top down?) and composition is very important and is something I need to work on, but I find that I always like these tilted photos the best... maybe because they remind of me magazine food photos :p
Use lights to bring out the texture... I tend to like a bit of back lighting on food photos (maybe even some rim light). But lighting is definitely something I need to master... when to use a strong directional light, when to use a soft light... I also tend to avoid using flashes directly as that will usually cast a pale blue light...

Anyways, those are just some quick thoughts about food pictures... also, make sure you take the picture while the food is fresh and freshly prepared... People have suggested using a spray bottle of water (or oil) to 'freshen' up the food like how you'd spray the flowers to make it look more lively. Finally... desserts are usually easier to photograph as chefs tend to make it look pretty no matter where you go... I had a lot of fun doing this assignment, but not nearly as much fun as I had enjoying all that food afterwards :)

Seattle... here I come

2008-08-29T00:03:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'm starting on my labor day weekend photo trip to Seattle. We'll be spending Friday in Seattle, driving out to Port Angeles at night so we can hit up Olympic National Park on Saturday. We'll spend Sunday and Monday at Mt. Rainier hiking and taking in the vistas... I'm praying for good weather... but in Seattle that may be a little tough :). I'm hoping this will be interesting and inspiring photo trip. I've heard so many great things about Olympic National Park and Mt. Rainier... Too bad Canon didn't release anything interesting in time for me to buy... I did borrow my friend's EF 70-105 f/4 IS L lens... I wonder if I'll fall in love with that lens and buy it for myself as an upgrade to my 17-85 :).

Nikon: 2 - Canon: 0

2008-08-27T01:00:00.000-07:00

So uh.... as the title would suggest... Nikon is wiping the floor with Canon's non-creative asses. Sorry for the harsh language, but Nikon has not only surpassed Canon in just about every way possible, but made them look REALLY silly while doing it... as a friend put it... "man, nikon's totally slapping canon silly right now it's not even a fair fight... it's like michael phelps vs george lucas in 100m butterfly".

Keep in mind both my friend and I are Canon shooters... at least for now. Late August is usually a very exciting time for photographers as this is the pre-Photokina announcement season where all the big companies come out with some of their best stuff (the other hot season is around December for the PMA show). I've been waiting and waiting for a breakthrough by Canon. I wasn't just looking for a Canon 5D MK II (or whatever name it is given), but I was hoping for something revolutionary. Some signs of life to show that Canon's huge R&D department isn't just show... that they are good for something. Clearly, I was wrong.

This week Canon announced their newest camera... Canon 50D... yes folks, no full frame 5D replacement in sight yet... To give them credit, the 50D is a large upgrade from 40D (at least technically speaking). The key specs seems to be 15.1mp (up from 10.1), ISO 100-3200 (with 12800 as expansion) which is up from 1600 with 3200 as expansion. This alone is pretty impressive, a large increase in pixel density without increasing sensor size AND dramatically lowering the noise all at the same time? Sounds great! I can't wait to see some of the test shots. The 50D also includes a few interesting features like ability to adjust the focus for all lenses (or enter lens specific adjustments), improved live view, peripheral lighting adjustment, and a much better 3.0" LCD. Oh and of course this is the first camera with the brand new DIGIC IV image processor with new menu layout and stuff... all pretty cool stuff. Initial hands on impression available at http://www.dpreview.com/previews/canoneos50d/. Also announced is a new EF-S lens, 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens. I'm weary of the image quality of super zooms like these... especially at about 600 without USM... anyways, you can read more about it at http://www.dpreview.com/news/0808/08082604canonef-s_18-200mm.asp.

So... it's not THAT bad, it's just not ground breaking, nothing special, more or less natural progression from the previous generation. Typical safe move. Now Nikon on the other hand has really been tearing up a store in the DSLR world... first D300 and D3, then D700, and now the latest... D90 (replacement for the D80). Now I don't know a whole lot about Nikon and their cameras... but I don't need to know much to appreciate the D90. Apparently Nikon has managed to release the first ever DSLR with video mode... yes VIDEO MODE. The D90 is capable of recording HD video (1280x720) at 24 fps... I mean wasn't that the biggest reason people liked point and shoots? That they can take pictures AND videos at the same time? Well guess what... now you can do that with DSLRs and do it 10x better. Imagine recording a video with a fisheye lens... or a 50mm 1.4 with super shallow DOF, or a 80-200mm VR lens... my goodness. Nikon has really changed the market with this one I think... Hands on preview available at http://www.dpreview.com/previews/nikond90/... I don't see how Canon can catch up (in the near future at least), Nikon has just been revolutionizing the market one camera level at a time....

Olympics - fin

2008-08-27T00:30:00.000-07:00

So the Olympics ended almost as spectacularly as it started. The closing ceremony was as beautiful as it was abstract and fantasy like. On top of that, it had some of my favorite Chinese singers... and that's really all I needed to make it the best ceremony EVER, yes EVER.

Here are some more photos from the Olympics from The Big Picture http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/beijing_2008_its_a_wrap.html.

I really enjoyed looking through the pictures, I thought it not really captured the grandeur of the show China put on... but it captured the very essence of the Olympics. Dreams realized, records shattered, missed opportunities, heart breaking defeat, physical perfection... it had it all. From Lolo Jone's stumble that dropped her only opportunity for gold to a mere 7th place finish, to Usain Bolt's super-human feat of finishing the 200m sprint in a mere 19.30 secs. Some of these images will stay with me (and perhaps, stay with everyone) for ever...

Olympics continued...

2008-08-22T01:25:00.000-07:00

More interesting photos from the Olympics, this time from askthephotographer.com.

Some really great moments are now captured forever by photographers. Also what is interesting is the shift from Canon to Nikon in sports photography. It use to be as you look down the line, all you seeis Canon pro bodies with the famous white L lenses. There is definitely a shift now as more and more photographers are switching to Nikon's D3 (and some to D700 I suppose)... like this photographer here. Nikon has really been kicking butt this past year and it'll be interesting to see how Canon responds...

Olympics...

2008-08-15T01:32:00.000-07:00

So... I haven't written a post in about a week. It's not that I've been busy with work (which I have been) but more like I've been watching the Olympics till the wee hours of the night every day (yes, even the women's gymnastic events). There is just something captivating about watching Michael Phelps chase for his record setting 8 gold medals, or watching the US women's beach volleyball team (Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh) smash through all opposition. I never could imagine caring about the Olympic dreams of two little girl (Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin -- my goodness, I actually know their names!?). I cheered at every perfect jump or landing, and boo'ed at what seemed to be unfair or questionable scores... yeah... weird. Anyways, The Big Picture put up a few really amazing captures from the Olympics

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/womens_olympic_fencing.html
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/2008_olympics_opening_ceremony.html

Hope everyone else is enjoying the Olympics :)

Photo Club assignment 3

2008-08-07T01:40:00.000-07:00

So this week was when the 3rd assignment from the photo club was due. This time the assignment was all about exposure control. We had to take 9 shots:

White white object (meaning make sure it comes out white, instead of some murky gray which the camera tries very hard to do)
Black black object
Back lit silhouette (don't you just love those silhouette sunset pictures?)
Back lit properly exposed
Camera motion (where the camera moves but subject more or less remains stationary)
Subject motion
Stop Action shot
Bright object at night (yes, this is hard to meter for....)
Moving lights

I've already shot roughly 4000 photos the past 2 months... so I decided to take it easy for this assignment and reuse shots I took from the Glow event and the picnic in Long Beach for stop action shots. However, I did take 4 shots specifically for this assignment, two of which I really liked.

From SMO Photo Club

This is my photo for black black object. I simply placed the flash on a white sheet of paper with white poster board as background. Simple desk lamp to light the flash from the side. I used a gray card for the white balance since it is important for the white background to actually look white :). For metering, I followed the basic rules, used partial metering (so it only looks at the center 9%) and since that's basically all black I dialed in -2 EV. This made the black look actually black and the white part actually white and overall exposed pretty close to correct I think. I wanted to go for a simple clean product shot and I hope I came close. The blue tint you see in the flash is actually natural light but shifted blue due to the white balance. That was a nice little unexpected bonus for me ;). I do wish I stopped the aperture down more so I can get the entire flash head in focus, but I was running out of light as is and could barely hand hold (tho I guess I could have gotten out a tripod). Again, overall I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. Nice simple and clean, with a tad bit of wide angle distortions :).

From SMO Photo Club

This was my properly exposed shot for a back lit object. I simply put the flower bowl and candle down on the white poster board in front of my window with it's veil/blinds drawn. It was getting pretty late so I was worried that I wouldn't be able to blow it out completely but fortunately for me exposing for the object was just enough to blow the background out creating a sea of white everywhere. Again I just used partial metering and this time did about a +1/3 to 2/3 EV (mostly trial and error). This might be my favorite shot from all my recent photos. I just love the simple white feel to it... like its in a studio or clean room. The flower also went well with the candle which was a new house warming gift. The glass bowl around the flower really made it work since it created interesting reflections and lets the light through. The shadows casted was also cook so I made sure I included that in the composition. Overall, I just like the picture... keeping it simple. As a friend recently reminded me... "less is more." Trying to make every day simple objects look interesting is perhaps one of the best photography exercises available.

The rest of the photos didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. They are available here.

Event Photography

2008-08-05T00:07:00.000-07:00

Last week I did two sessions of event photography... one was a coworker's baby shower in the office and the next day was the office picnic out in Long Beach. I didn't get many good photos (maybe not even one) but I figured I'd at least jot down some thoughts on both lens selection, shooting style and results. It's rare that I get to practice event photography, it's always a challenge for me so I always really look forward to it and hope to break through one of these days. Maybe the hardest part about event photography is striking the balance between being a participant and enjoying yourself vs. actually trying to capture all the fun moments which is always harder than it seems. There are no retakes, you miss a shot... that's it. Gone. Lost forever in the long list of regrets that I have as a photographer. You don't get much control over lighting (well maybe you can pop on a flash or set a remote trigger flash out in the corner), but for the most part, everything is out of my control and I just have to pray I click that little black button at the right time. First, quick list of the lenses I normally carry with me:

EF 50mm f/1.4 - Great fast prime. Pros: decently sharp and just lets in a ton of light for those low light situations. Cons: Slow to focus, razor thing DOF at larger apertures... you better hope you focus is spot on or else....
EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro - Super sharp macro lens. Pros: Super sharp, beautiful bokeh, nice portrait lens. Cons: Even slower to focus, hard to hand hold in low light, too long for indoor.
EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5 - 4.5 - One of my favorite lens. Super wides are just SO much fun to play with. Great for all sorts of things including portraits believe it or not... just be careful who you use it on :).
EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS - My general purpose walk around lens. Pros: Great zoom range, has IS which always helps... Cons: it is slow and not terribly sharp.
EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS - The white cannon.... need I say more? I'm convinced it can double as a self defense weapon.... or was that it's primary function and the fact you can take pictures with it just a bonus feature....

So anyways, the first event was my friend's baby shower at work. I knew it was just going to be indoors with available light (well, again, I could bring my flash but in general I'd rather shoot available light). Since I haven't used my 50mm in a long time, I decided to put on the 50 and only the 50... left everything else back at home. This is probably the lightest I've ever traveled :). Shooting with the 50 only posed interesting challenges, I basically had to relearn to "zoom with your feet". The 50 was also a bit long for group shots so trying to fit more than 2 people together meant that they had to be on the other half of the room. Also, with the available light, I had to shoot at ISO 800, and keep the aperture at roughly 2.0 to even have a shot of hand holding it.... I wished for just that much more light but oh well. Since the album contains lots of photos of manly guys playing funny baby shower games, I've made the album private and only upload innocent photos ;). The first shot is a close up of the tiara my friend got... it demonstrates the razor thin DOF for the 50mm... at least I got the entire "mother" to be more or less in focus. The second shot is from another coworker holding his "baby" balloon. I figured the post and composition is similar to standard maternity shots and was fun to have a guy as the subject.

This might be my favorite shot from the day. I just like the passing off feel. I also love the cropped composition so you don't see any faces, you just see the hands handing off the cute bear and it's simple yet it works (at least for me).

The next day was the company picnic out in Long Beach... again, I wanted to travel light so I dropped my 2 primes (plenty of light, no need for a super fast lens). I also left the 17-85 at home... it's a nice focal range, but just too plain, nothing really interesting about it. I brought the 10-22 as backup for potentially interesting shots, but I really wanted to use the 70-200 all day (which I pretty much did). The 70-200 was the perfect zoom range for a day at the beach, it is wide enough for me to still get some "landscape" type photos (and actually works better than my wide angle) while it also allows me to zoom in to get some nice candid portraits from some distance away. The fact that it is an L lens and weather sealed was also a factor for me to bring it out to the beach. The shots I had in mind were kids and action shots (of volleyball). There was also a harbor cruise so I figured 70-200 would be perfect for any type of shots I might get from the middle of the harbor. Here are some resulting shots:

From Summer picnic...

Nice and simple stop action shots of two girls participating in the tug of war. I was lucky in capturing the moment just as the girl in front turns and starts to really tug on the rope. I just love the innocent smiles on kids' faces.

Something about this shot just worked for me. I like the fact that you don't see his full body and it just lets you focus in on his right shoulder and all the sand on his back.

One of the better shots from the harbor tour. If only the sky wasn't so smoggy.... Overall, I thought it was a poor photograph outing for me with limited stuff I can shoot and just limited creativity on my part. I might have had much better luck not going on the boat tour and instead staying at the beach area to photograph more volleyball action or kids running around with water guns :).

Glow

2008-07-27T00:16:00.000-07:00

So last weekend was the Santa Monica Glow event (http://www.smgov.net/smarts/glow/). I thought I was going to some cool large scale glowing art exhibit. Lots of large colorful lights in all sorts of shapes and sizes... Lot's of cool technology art pieces etc. Well... it did have lots of cool technology stuff, but it was really just an all night long party. The bars were packed with people all through the night. More people were going down to the pier at 1 AM than there was at 7 PM (or any other hour of the day... there were people dressed up in all sorts of strange costumes (one guy wore a glowing ram horns on his head... other people just had glowing jackets and stuff). There were club music with DJs, dance floors, live performances, etc... just one big party.

Since I was expecting interesting cool large sculpture type art work, I originally had on my 10-22mm to get interesting distortions, crowd type shots, etc. 10-22 is such a fun lens and I figured it'll be bright enough with all the lights so it should be easily hand-holdable at 1/16secs. I don't even think I brought my 17-85, or if I did I had no intention of using it. As it turned out... 10-22 probably wasn't the best lens for the situation, I got a few shots in that I liked, but overall the scale of the art pieces were far too small to use the 10-22. The wide coverage also meant metering was much more difficult, only a small portion of the frame was brightly lit by the lights. Here are a few shots that I liked more from my 10-22:

I was walking down the pier boardwalk when I noticed a line of people sitting down on the wooden beam, eating, resting etc. I just thought to myself... "wow, that's kinda cool, there must be a great photo hidden in here somewhere". I had my 10-22 on my tripod at the time, I knew I wanted the camera to be super close to to the ground so you get the extortion and make the people seem a little further away and just stretched out going into the center of the frame. So instinctively I just put the tripod down on the ground, and pressed the shutter button. I didn't frame it (it was too low to the ground for me to see through the view finder without getting down on the ground myself). I figured I'd take a test shot, see how it looks and adjust... little did I know, as soon as the shutter closed, the LCD shut off and my camera just stopped... out of batteries! One of the girls sitting down must have noticed me and turned around to look to see what I was doing. I didn't want to freak them out or anything, so I just picked up the tripod and kept moving... praying that the last shot made it onto the card and was actually ok (i.e. all the girls were actually in the frame). Lucky for me, it turned out mostly fine. There were some random people walking around on the right side of the frame which was a bit distracting so my friend recommended that I crop it out (and I think it made the picture MUCH better). This photo was shot in black and white originally as I've been playing with high contrast B&W stuff and the sky was just a dull gray at the time. I thought a color shot would have just been boring and dull (probably colorless too) so I didn't bother. It turned out a bit darker than what I wanted, maybe too contrasty? Either way, given that I had exactly one shot to shoot, I'm happy with the results. Moral of the story... just because you shoot digital, don't assume you will have a second shot. Sometimes the moment passes, sometimes... you run out of battery. Learning to see the opportunity and act on it quickly is still just as important as ever.

Took this shot on the ferris wheel as it was circling down. I set the camera on Tv at 1/2 secs (well below hand-hold speed but I wanted the blur so I figured it was ok). I just needed to make sure I get enough forward movement to create that motion blur while everything in the gondola would be (semi) sharp which creates interesting contrast. I also got a few interesting shots here and there with the wide angle, but I quickly got frustrated with it so on several occasions I switched to my 70-200 lens which allowed me to focus in on one subject, or the more interesting part of a subject and ignore the boring black sky. With a long telephoto, I can also get nice background blurs... and when the background is just lights, it makes for a real nice dreamy image.

This was shot wide open at 2.8 at 70mm. I really wanted this shot since I wanted a close up of one of these robot marine life things with another one in the background completely blurred out to just patches of bright colors. The framing is a bit tight, but the other shots I had just didn't quite lit up the same way... in the end, I picked the color and brightness over better compensation.

I also got a few people shots that I like

The first shot is of some random stranger. I was done taking pictures so I started to just look around, absorb the atmosphere a bit more when I noticed this girl sitting across from me really getting into photographing these glow sticks in the sand. Given how dark everything was, her face was practically only illuminated by the glow of her LCD... so I got this idea to get a picture of her lit up by the LCD (and pitch black around her). I was hoping she'd smile... but this was the best shot I got of her. I wish the LCD glow was a bit warmer instead of that hard white light... oh well. The second shot is of a friend who came to Glow with me. I noticed the box of glow sticks and figured it was probably bright enough to fully illuminate a face and that'll just have this cool warm glow on the face. So I just asked my friend to get down on the sand and peer into the box... like a little kid and smile. She did exactly that and I snapped the photo. I just love her expression and the glow from the box... Anyways, overall Glow was a very interesting and challenging photo opportunity for me. While the 10-22 certainly came in handy at times, I really think that 70-200 turned out to be a much better lens choice. It was flexible and really allowed me to capture the fine details of each art piece. The 2.8 aperture also helped of course. In the end, I ended up with 1 or 2 shots that I really like, a but most of them were kind of just bleh. Oh well, just keep shooting I guess :\

Home Sweet Home

2008-07-25T01:29:00.000-07:00

For those of you who know me, I just recently moved out of my old house into a new town home that I bought a few months back (yes... it took me about 4 months to move in). Why so long? Well I took a long time to decorate the new place and but mostly it was just sheer laziness. Anyways... I've been taking photos of the new place from almost day 1 (I forgot to take pictures of it before we repainted it... just think egg shell white everywhere... eeewww). So anyways, I've been posting the pictures on Picasa Web (http://picasaweb.google.com/pingc315/StoryOfMyHouse) in reverse chronological order. It has been a real interesting experience trying to decorate a whole new place from scratch... trying to decide what the area rug should be like... then matching that with the wall color... then furniture color and style... and finally decorations to put around. Overall, I think it turned out well, granted I spent many many weekends shopping and just planning things.

I'll just call out a few pictures here from the album... all taken last weekend when I was bored.

This is the photo of my dining room with our dinnerware set on display. For the most part, I think I like the composition, I like the touch of green on the left hand side of the frame), adding that green to me adds a quite a bit to the image. I also wanted it to be back lit and just blowout the window completely. With the deep color of the dishes and the bright window, leaving the camera to meter was actually perfectly fine (at first I thought I needed to go - 1/3 EV to compensate for the deep brown of the dishes). This particular shot was actually + 1/3 because I felt I was loosing a bit too much detail in the shadows of the bowl. I wanted to keep the texture of the dishes since thats one of the main reasons why I bought them! The main thing about the composition that I'm not sure about is if the camera should have been higher or lower... this is almost level, but I wanted it to be slightly above so you get a glimpse into the bowl and everything. The other part is just framing it, i.e. how much of the place mat, silverware, the mug, and other dishes to include. This one is my favorite out of the 8 or 9 that I took.

I continued to photograph the table and the dinnerware:

Then I got the idea to play with my strobes (I brought them downstairs intending to set up the umbrella to balance the bright sunlight coming in through the windows). But instead of just setting up umbrella for fill light, I wanted to do something different.

This was one of the earlier attempts. I set the camera's white balance to tungsten, this is what turned natural sunlight blue... it just made everything look... cool (temperature). Well, if everything was blue, it wouldn't look so hot would it? So I slapped on a couple of CTO (color temperature orange) gels on the flash, 1 + 1/4 to be exact. 1 CTO will convert the flash from daylight to tungsten, but I wanted it to be more than just "white", I wanted it even warmer so I slapped on another layer (1/4). For me, this created the nice warm contrast on the bowls from the cool ambient light (and the table). Unfortunately I was still using a reflector umbrella so the light spilled just about everywhere, especially in the foreground. To help compensate for this, I took it off the umbrella and put a long rectangular cardboard box (the box for my flash, the 430 EX ironically) around it as a snoot to confine the light coming from the flash. In reality, I should probably make a real snoot and use some gaffer tape, etc etc, well that or buy one (they really aren't that expensive). For example, the HonlPhoto snoot for $25 ... really pretty cheap. You can get a nice grid spot from there for 25 bucks as well...

So anyways, Here is the shot final shot:

The light is much more restricted on the first dinnerware set (just the bowl to be exact). It does spill onto the bowl in the back but its much better than the umbrella version. One thing I do want to call out is the shadow on the right side of the frame... see how its darker? That is actually after me cropping it... I was using the cheap ebay flash triggers Cactus V2 to fire the flash remotely, apparently it's highest sync speed is only 1/200 secs and I shot at 1/250 sec, the highest sync speed of my flash. So this is what happens when your shutter speed is faster than your sync speed on Canon cameras :). Either way, I'm still totally new to this strobist stuff, just trying to experiment and see what works and what doesn't work. Any comments or critiques welcome.

Just one more picture, this one from the living room.

This is mostly ambient light, though I do have a flash going off maybe 8 feet away camera right on an umbrella. As a friend said, I could have added more fill light so there isn't all the shadow above the fireplace. Maybe instead of having the umbrella, I should have just slapped a diffuser on it and point it straight up. Another thing to try next time is to have hard bare flash coming in to create interesting shadows. Oh well, maybe next time :)

Catch the rainbow

2008-07-19T01:31:00.000-07:00

So the second assignment for the photo club has been due for a couple of days now... I finally have some extra time to stop and blog about it.... The second assignment is titled "Catch the rainbow" and is pretty much as it sounds... take 7 photos, one of each color of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). Again, no flashes, no post processing etc. I was super excited about this assignment and had thought about a lot of the photos for quite a few days (if not weeks). Here was the rough plan of attack:

Red: Originally I thought about a macro shot with extremely shallow DOF on the red 'S' in the RSX Type-S badge, but there would be too much blue so I shifted my attention to the red dashboard lights inside the car...
Orange: There is a huge orange street lamp right outside my bedroom window which shines straight across the room to a mirror. I was going to stand in front of the mirror for a pure silhouette shot with orange rim lights everywhere.
Yellow: Some shot of my favorite chocolate candy :)
Green: Originally I wanted to do maybe a shot of the Xbox's ring of green light as it boots up, but then I wanted to do something more dramatic and borrowed a friend's KG jersey....
Blue: The backshot of the police man at the farmers market. (see the farmers market album)

That left me with indigo and violet that I didn't really have any ideas for... But I soon learned that the shot in your mind... won't always match the shot you end up making :).

That's the shot of KG's jersey... I tried very hard to get this shot right... but in the end just couldn't quite get it the way I had imagined.... maybe it was never a good idea... but definitely poor execution. Here is what I wanted... I wanted the jersey standing alone in the dark closet. I wanted to use a wide angle lens to really make the closet seem much larger (and thus emptier). I wanted a single hard light shining on the jersey from above to sort of highlight his name but leave the rest of the room really dark. I was hoping this would make for a dramatic picture and as a homage to a great player.... Unfortunately after hours of trying, I just couldn't quite get it right. The composition just didn't work for me... I couldn't find a good way to compose it and honestly I ended up spending the majority of the time fidgeting with the lights... Keep in mind no flash allowed, so I worked with a desk lamp (boy have I been getting lots of mileage with that thing lately :)). I clamped it to the shelf to camera right but quickly ran into a problem... desk lamps are designed to spread light... but I wanted a focused beam of light or else everything will be equally lit and nothing will be interesting... I ended up grabbing an empty cardboard box (long rectangular one) and shoved it onto the light bulb to better control the light (see that strange shadow on the right side... thats from one of the flaps...). Unfortunately I wasn't using a tripod so I was all contorted with one hand on the cardboard "snoot" and one hand holding the camera... If I spent more time and used a tripod as well as an actual snoot, I probably could have made a better shot... but I think I was just tired of it and gave up. Suggestions on composition improvement desperately needed!

The chocolate shot (Ferror Rocher) Actually worked out much better than I had originally thought.

And set up shot:

So I knew I wanted a white-ish background to make the gold stand out and also to just have a bright "happy" picture. This is a photo of luxurious chocolate candy after all. I started out with a white cardboard that I bought from Target (like 1.99) and placed a small piece of glass on top of it to add some reflection. I just used some glass from a photo frame, nothing fancy. I wanted a really well lit, but still slightly directional light so I started out with the natural back light coming in through the blinds. This adds a bit of color and light to the candies in the back as well as some "rim light" around the candy (ok ok, it looks like its coming from above). I then took a floor lamp (one of those that shines upwards) and placed it on the table shining directly at the candy. The direct light really worked well with the gold foils and lit it up beautifully I thought, this is good. I threw in two mini-reflectors on the right hand side to help lessen the shadows and just brighten it up a bit more. The effect isn't very obvious, but it is definitely brighter than it would be without those 2 mini-reflectors. Note that a crumpled up piece of foil would have worked just as well. Since it had such a mixed lighting, I used a gray card to make sure the white balance is correct and that the gold foil will indeed turn out gold (this is very important to the shot for obvious reasons :)).

In the end, most of the planned shots didn't work. The red shot was pretty much one of the few shots that just came out the way I had imagined. The blue shot lacked the impact I wanted so I tried a second blue shot... which also failed so I ended up having to plan for a third (and 4th) blue shot.... The ornageshot also failed... a silhouette of yourself holding a camera isn't very exciting... I did keep with the orange glow from the light and ended up doing some random self portraits. Anyways, full album available (with commentaries on what I was trying) here, note it also includes shots from assignment 1.

Street photography

2008-07-12T01:28:00.000-07:00

So street photography is one of those things people see all the time, but can have a profound emotional impact (at least I always thought so). It's one of those things that I've never tried, always wanted to, just never really forced myself to do it (I've done a few random candid snap shots of strangers before). To me, street photography is just to sort of sit there (or walk if you prefer) and try to catch candid photos of interesting people mostly strangers, but I guess some people prefer to actually talk to random people, ask for permission and try to build a personal connection - this is all great just... I'm too shy to try it. This is actually way harder than it sounds...

You should probably use a long lens... you don't want to walk up to the person and just start taking pictures (again, unless you are the type that goes and asks for permission...). Since I just got my 1.4x teleconverter, I decided to give it a shot. My equipment ended up being 20D + 70-200 f/2.8 IS + 1.4x TC so effectively I had like 440mm reach... perfect.
Since I didn't ask for permission... that means you probably shouldn't sit there and snap shots of the same person for 5-10 mins... even if you are far away... people tend to notice a giant white lens pointed at you... So I tend to snap 1 or 2 shots before moving on. If I got it, great. If not, oh well. This also meant that you can't sit there and think about composition too much... I usually just shot by instinct and if I think it might be interesting, I take a quick shot and move on.

Since Santa Monica has a farmers market every Wednesdays next to our office, I decided to give it a try there (also to do my photo club assignment). I've walked past it many times and always thought there would be a lot of photo opportunities. There are just a lot of hard working everyday people there, people just trying to make a living, personable people who are more than happy to sell you their fresh produce... the type of people that would greet you warmly as if you are a friend rather than a customer. There is a lot of potential for personal stories at farmers market. Finally, this is Santa Monica... there are always homeless people and they almost always make great photography subjects due to the texture of their face and hair (this really depends on how you feel about photographing them). While I was there, I didn't think I got any usable shots. The colors didn't look right, and the exposure was off by a little bit. Composition was difficult with all the people around you... it just didn't click for me. When I got home and actually looked at the photos, I felt they were too plain. They didn't tell any stories, they didn't evoke any emotions.... they simply recorded reality. About half way through processing the photos, something just... clicked. I was processing a photo of a homeless person with a starbucks cup and decided to deepen the shadows a few notches (which really deepened the background, drown out some details in the shadows) and then bumped up the highlights ever so slightly (this to me seemed to make the subject stand out a little bit more, add more depth to the photo. Because I increased the shadow so much, everything naturally looked a lot more saturated and deeper colors which wasn't natural for a portrait so I decided to drop the saturation a few notches until it looked normal. Then I thought about dropping it even more so the colors look slightly faded out... almost worn and gave the photo a cold grim look to it. This is good since it is the exact type of feeling I wanted to convey for the person. I also noticed he had a very interesting rough beard and hair... his face was also a bit wrinkled and full of texture so I decided to try to bring that out with a layer of sharpen.

The original unaltered image	Deepened the shadow and slight increase in highlight
Desaturated it and washed out the colors	Final crop and sharpen. Also bumped up the brightness slightly

I really liked the resulting effect. It felt dark and gritty. I thought it showed off the toughness of life (and his toughness for surviving, he has that rough look after all) well so I decided to do pretty similar things for a lot of the other photos. The rest of the photos here:

I thought over all I did pretty well... granted most of it was done in post processing (all in Picasa). I am usually not a fan of post processing too much, but in this case I thought it really helped convey the emotion I wanted to capture so I don't mind too much. I just hope it doesn't look like Flickr images :p. In the end, I still don't really like street photography. It just feels weird taking photos of these people I have never met and will never meet again. Maybe next time I'll actually stop someone for a chat, ask for permissions and also just to build a more personal connection.

Where do you want to go?

2008-07-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

So July 4th weekend just passed, and of course, the most asked question was "where do you want to go?" Whether it's for photos, for fireworks, or just for a day to get away, everyone wants to go somewhere. I wanted to go to the Salton Sea... but my friend thought that would be a bad idea... too hot out there in the desert. Instead, we decided to go to Point Mugu out in Malibu, at least we get the ocean breeze there. But the question I really wanted to ask is... "where do you want to go (in photography)?"... or more precisely, where do I want to go? What is my end goal, both in every picture I take, and as a photographer in general. What do I want my pictures to convey? What kind of photographer do I want to be? Majority of my pictures lack soul... lack the "wow" factor that takes a simple shot and transforms it into something of value, into "art". Maybe it's just because I don't think about what I want to capture most of the time. I sort of walk around haphazardly taking pictures... well ok that's not true. I do stop, and think about what I want to do at a scene, but recently I've been drawing a blank. And even when I do have a shot in mind, my execution usually falls far short (more on this in the coming days). I've heard the best way to improve your (landscape) photography skill is to actually love what you are photographing, you have to have a passion for it or else your photos will come out dead. You have to feel something in order for your image to convey SOME kind of emotion and maybe lately I'm just as dead as my images.

So anyways, the July 4th trip, my family and some friends went out to Malibu for a photo ~~walk~~ hike. We first stopped at Venice for some quick shots of the canals. Noon is the worst time for photography... but sometimes things just don't go the way you planned. Here is a shot straight out of the camera:
This is not a good image by any stretch of imagination. It is poorly composed, the colors are muted and it just looks flat. Here was the original intent.... I wanted to take a photo in portrait orientation to really make the canal feel longer and add more depth to it. In composing the image, I wanted the boat to be the center of focus so I placed it about 1/3 of the way from the bottom of the frame and leave plenty of space above it... unfortunately the space above it is quite boring and even have distracting buildings and power lines. The original intent was to make the boat seem lonely in this huge long canal... just kind of free floating there, barely tied to the docks. Ping... FAIL. At first, I was very tempted to delete the image and move on, it has no redeeming qualities and its not something I'd look at again but then I thought to try something different with it. I gave it a quick focal B&W filter in Picasa so that the entire image will be black and white except the area around the boat. Since the water is pretty colorless around it, it didn't matter if the focal radius wasn't perfect, it still just looked black and white except the boat. This made it better, at least something I'm willing to keep around. The focal B&W really helps you focus in on the boat and stay there without letting your attention wander around. B&W images typically are also moodier and just have a whole new feel to it, but the composition still wasn't good. That's when my friend suggested I crop it a bit, cut out the top to get rid of the distracting lines and also crop a bit off the bottom to keep it balanced and the boat at about 1/3rd of the way. This is the final result:

Is it a good image? Not by a long shot. Is it better than the original? I'd like to think so. The crop helps a lot and makes the boat the intended subject instead of just something there. While I am not a big fan of post processing, I think in this case it really helped me achieve the photo I *wanted* to take but couldn't... in the end, it helped me achieve my goals and convey my intentions. Even so, the photo still lacks feeling.... it is still missing a soul.

The rest of the day didn't go better... the photo walk at Point Mugu turned into a full hike that none of us were really prepared for and the weather wasn't exactly the best for photography... everything was just kind of hazy and colorless. The hill/mountain was mostly dead weeds/grass which certainly didn't help to inspire me. After we got to the top, there was this small field that reminded me of the intro sequence to Gladiator so I decided to try a few portraits...

I figured since I lugged the 70-200 up to the top, I might as well use it right? So I put the 70-200 on, walked far out infront of my friend and had her walk to me as naturally as she possibly could (with a large white lens pointed at her). Lucky for me she is a great model and super easy to work with so I had nothing to worry about. I just had to kneel down so I'm closer to the ground and allow me to capture of of the sky/background behind her and zoom in all the way. I didn't really have time to frame the shot since she was walking already and as easy going as she is... she would probably kill me if I made her do the walk too many times. I just wanted the blurred foreground and background and wasn't particularly picky about anything else. I had to fix up this shot a bit in Picasa (add a bit more contrast - increased shadow, highlight, slight fill) since the original came out very bleached out (It might have been because of my polarizer being on and not properly adjusted). Anyways, this seemed close enough to what I wanted to capture so I'm satisfied (tho I think my friend did most of the heavy lifting for me).

The other picture that I kind of liked from the trip was this shot:

I used Canon's super wide EF-S 10-22 lens for this shot (at 10mm). I wanted the super wide to really make the field seem endless and just make everything a bit more dramatic. Given how hazy the day was, I put on my polarizer to darken the sky and increase saturation. People always say becareful of using a CPL with a super wide lens like the 10-22, you'll get uneven effects (as can be seen with the gradation from deep blue to very light blue sky). I didn't mind, I actually kind of like that effect, especially for this picture. It makes the overall image seem darker and moodier. I think I touched up the shadows ever so slightly in Picasa but the polarizer did most of the work for me. I hope it can convey the vastness of the field... but what kind of emotion does it really evoke? I don't know. In the end, the photo hike was mostly just hiking and less photos... the full album can be found here. I still don't know how to make images with feeling... with passion, with some emotion. In the end, the photos are just some bits representing colors without anything pulling them together to form something bigger, something more meaningful than "oh I was there".

In the end, I pose the same question as I started with... "where do you want to go?"
Where do you want the photos to take your viewers?

Looking back at AX 2008

2008-07-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

It's 4th of July again... and that can only mean one thing... the largest gathering of anime fans, otakus, and photographers in Southern California - Anime Expo. Looking back at AX 2007, I only kept 33 photos, none of them particularly good... just a collection of snapshots of people's costumes. While I certainly hope I've gotten better over the past year, the photos tells a different story. I ended up keeping 60 photos but again, most of them are just passing snapshots of people's costumes. Arguably the majority of the photos from this year's AX was actually WORSE than last years. Crappier composition (i.e. cutting parts off) and screwed up exposures. I thought overall the costumes were more interesting last year, but maybe I went on an off day. Either way, I'm not terribly happy with how I shot this year. Part of the problem is that I'm still just shooting snapshots... "hey can I take a quick picture of you?" and I rely on the cosplayers to pose themselves and I just take a quick photo, thank them and move on. I feel bad for troubling them and sometimes there is just nothing you can do with the background inside the dealer hall. It is so easy to be stuck in that mindset. But I see other photographers (there were some real good ones it seems) actually pulling them aside, posing the cosplayers, adjusting them, etc, taking their time to get a good shot. Perhaps next year I just gotta bite the bullet and force myself into that mindset or just forget about bringing my camera.

Anyways... some photos:

This was one of the earlier photos from the day that I liked. She was by herself and had enough distance from the background for me to blur it out sufficiently. I really like the natural sunlight on the left side of her body. Also I had some fill flash to just make her pop out a bit more. She was probably a professional cosplayer and knew what she was doing... either way, not a great capture, but at least not a terrible one.

Here I am in stalker mode probably about 20-30 ft away taking quick snapshots of Jyukai's Manami at their autograph session. I wasn't sure if I am actually allowed to get close to take photos since I wasn't in the long line for her autograph. I just knelt down, switched to the 100mm macro lens and fired a couple shots using my legs to stablize the camera.

Here are some good kingdom hearts cosplayers. This was after I got out of shooting inside one of the halls and had set the ISO to 1600 and forgot to dial it back down.... So a bunch of the photos were over exposed... this one is particularly noticeable since I completely blew out the windows and most details in the background. But I still kind of light the resulting effect (not something I'd ever try again but...) and how this makes their colorful costumes stand out even more from the basically white background now.

Nel Tu from Bleach. One of the better exposed photos I got. The fill flash here while barely noticeable does help a bit to light up his/her face and costume.

Here I am finally starting to get into it a bit more. After taking a standard snap of these two, I asked for another photo and decided to go low shooting up at them. With a slightly wide angle lens it makes them seem a bit taller and just more powerful (looking down at you). Just sort of commands more respect with their cool won't-take-any-bs look.

I walked past this Rukia on her cell phone (probably talking to Soul Society) and just wanted to try something. I always like those shots of someone's side/back the face is intentionally blurred out and you focus on their hands or something. I liked her gloves so I figured this would be a good opportunity to try. When I first asked she got all confused and stuck her hand out for me to photograph, I said "no no, just keep talking naturally" and she probably thought I was a psycho... but she listened anyways. I swung around beside her and started taking a few photos. I'm not entirely sure how well this turned out, there are things I like about it, but at the same time, its not as cool of an image as I had originally planned (oh it never is...). Next time I try this, I'd probably have to include less of her arm but I do kind of like the over the back/shoulder feel.

I liked this girl, she has done this before and knew exactly what to do. After posing her self she knew to look around at the different photog's thats gathering around her (there were quite a few... at least 2 Canon white L lenses too). I really liked the fact that she knew to make eye contact with each one of her photogs for a few seconds before moving on. I am not sure I like her first pose all that much, the hand angle doesn't look natural. Oh well, like I said, next time I come to AX, I should take a more active approach and be mindful of all the minor details

Someone else was doing a group shot with these two girls and a few other people. I caught the tail end of it but the other people have already left. Since she was still sitting, I asked if I can get another couple of shots in. With her dress laid out so neatly, I knew exactly what I wanted to do... do an almost top-down shot with a wide angle lens to let the distortion work in my favor and make the skirt seem larger than it actually is (exactly like what people do when doing engagement/wedding photos to make the train seem even more dramatic). Since I was probably blocking the view for at least 3 photographers behind me (who were all kneeling down to about eye level with her with a long lens), I took a couple quick snaps and jumped out of everyone's way while apologizing. I can be such an ass sometimes when photographing things... just ignoring the world around me...

This led to my friend commenting "you are so different when taking pictures... all the other guys take a long time before taking a picture but you just go in there, snap snap snap and move on" well... maybe its because I was destroying their composition by standing right in front of their main subject :p... that and if I didn't go snap snap snap and move out the way, I'm sure one of the other photographers was able to jump me and drag me away...

Full album available here. While for the most part the day was a failure for photography, I still had fun and certainly learned a lot. Just because I'm at a trade show or convention, doesn't mean the basic rules of photography doesn't apply. In fact, they are more important ever... one of my favorite photographers Albert (http://www.pbase.com/albertjou/show) takes some great photos at shows... Next year, I'll have to be more active, try to work with the cosplayers and pose them if they don't pose themselves... and most importantly, be mindful of the background...

One step closer....

2008-06-29T22:17:00.000-07:00

Over the past 2 years, I've strived to improve my photography. There was always something about landscape photos that I never got right... I could never produce a landscape photo that had any kind of... feeling it in. Not even gorgeous sunsets or sun rises out in Death Valley... I guess the photos never told a story, there was no connection. People always say you have to "feel" the environment, and love for what you are photographing to produce powerful images. While I certainly enjoyed all the beautiful vistas I've seen... I still wasn't able to quite capture the mood of the scene. This is one reason landscape photography has never been my favorite....
So a few weeks ago I was up in Mountain View for a training course and decided to go out on a photo walk with some friends after work one day. They picked Half Moon bay saying the cloud cover of the coast will provide stunning sunsets, and who can say no to that. I had my doubts as we headed out... the cloud cover looked really thick over the ocean and I figured we wouldn't see much of anything. We made a few quick stops along the way on PCH. I didn't get much out of those stops, a few so so images, but mostly I wasn't feeling very inspired. I did, however, get a nice portrait of myself by one of my friends, an heroic portrait as he calls it.

From Photo Walk at San Gregorio State Beach

We made our final stop at San Gregorio state beach, just south of Half Moon Bay. The sun was quickly descending towards the horizon by this point and we really only had about 10 mins to get ready before the "golden hour". Since both of my companions shoot RAW, I decided to start shooting RAW for some of the photos as well, figured I'd give it another try. Most of my previous RAW photos turned out well, I just didn't have the time (or desire) to do that much post processing to play around with the RAW files. Heck, how often do I get to come to Half Moon Bay to view a potentially stunning sunset? Almost never right... time to bite the bullet and shoot RAW :).

While the sun hasn't quite gotten to the horizon yet, it was behind a thick layer of clouds (but it was perfectly clear overhead) so I figured I'd change the white balance to tungsten or fluorescent to give the clear part of the sky a nice deep blue look. A lot of the beach goers have packed up and started going home when I snapped this shot

From Photo Walk at San Gregorio State Beach

This was shot in RAW so I did a little bit of post on it, making the blue stand out a bit more. I really like the story of this photo... and how lonely it feels. Just a lone silhouette along the beach, walking home. From a more technical perspective, I am not sure if I should have cropped out the log on the bottom. The original photo actually had even more space along the bottom and top and I wanted to crop it a little so its tighter and focus on the silhouette more. I didn't want to cut out the logs because I was worried the composition would become too symmetrical and too boring, but as it stands now, the log is a little distracting so maybe it would be best to cut it out but keep rule of thirds or something. I think I just didn't want to cut out the bottom because I like the color of the water reflection.

From Photo Walk at San Gregorio State Beach

This was also shot in RAW. I set the picture style to "landscape" (Canon thing) and it seemed to really add more punch to the blue. I also manually adjusted the RGB a little and added more contrast. The end result looks very post processed, almost "flickr" like I think. But at the same time, I love the darkness and the texture of the clouds, adds a bit of drama to the photo. The blue feel also makes it feel that much more surreal. I'm usually not much on post processing, but I really like the result for this photo.

From Photo Walk at San Gregorio State Beach

In addition to playing with RAW, I actually gave HDR a try. I've never been a big fan of HDR... almost thought it was "fake"... but it definitely can produce stunning images. At this point, the sunset was just so amazing... the sun was right on the horizon where the clouds were a bit thinner and made the entire horizon bright yellow/orange. The wind swept the clouds towards land creating long beautiful strands. It also thinned the clouds just enough for the sun to light up patches of the sky... the lagoon in front of me was perfectly still forming this beautiful mirror reflecting all the beauty above. It was such a serene and breath-taking view... I just thought what the heck... I have to try HDR now. The dynamic range in the scene wasn't that great, but HDR could certainly help enhance the details in both the sky and the darker reflection. I hope the end result doesn't look too fake... I honestly can't tell anymore since this is all I can remember... in my mind's eye, the sunset really just looked like that and was really THAT stunning and dramatic.

I finally felt like I'm one step closer in the search for the perfect photo... one step closer in taking photos that evoke some kind of emotional response. It is unfortunate that I used HDR to make that step, but it's all part of the learning process. As long as I don't depend on HDR, it should be fine :). The journey is just beginning and I have the rest of my life to explore photography and hopefully find that one shot I can define myself with... that one perfect shot.

Photo Club assignment 1

2008-06-24T00:19:00.000-07:00

Recently we started a photo club at work, and we decided to start handing out assignments for people to do and then come back together to discuss the photos and just have fun.

The first assignment was for us to take 12 photos of one subject (it must be smaller than a car, but larger than a breadbox). The subject must be stationary and the photographer must be the one moving around. The idea is to get people to explore different views/angles. So often people just approach a subject, snap a shot, and walk away (i.e. getting out of their car at a vista point and snap one shot assuming there is only 1 shot worth taking). Eye level (roughly 5-6 ft) is the most boring perspective and is one you should try to avoid normally (but people are lazy...). Next time you come across a subject to photograph, try above, below (as close to the ground as possible), close, far, something different, you'll be amazed at how refreshing it can be.

My subject was my favorite (and most expensive....) lens, the Canon EF 70-200 2.8 IS lens. This probably wasn't my first choice in subject, but it worked out none the less. I knew I wanted to get some close up shots of the lens, the writing on it, the different controls, etc (which I did get, but nothing amazing there). I then realized a major flaw in my subject.... it is a cylinder! No matter how I walk around it, it looks practically the same! I had to cheat a little bit and move the lens around and thats when I started having more fun...

This is probably my favorite shot from the entire set. I had this shot in mind when I first thought of using a lens as my subject but I didn't know how it'd turn out. I was really surprised that you can get it to focus so clearly in the center while blurring everything else around it so its a nice creamy background. The fact that the image was inverted was definitely a pleasant surprise... I had no idea but I guess it makes sense ;). I've only looked through this thing while its on a camera through the view finder, it is definitely a different experience to look through it through another lens :). The window screen also ended up helping the image quite a bit I think. When blurred, it adds a bit of texture and makes the center focused part just look... different. Not quite sure how to explain it :).

And finally here is the Canon "cannon". I like the distortion effect, making the lens look much bigger than it actually is (well, maybe not "much" :)). I just like the feeling of it pointing outwards... looking over the neighborhood.

Rest of the photos available here: http://picasaweb.google.com/smophotoclub/Pingc1/. I had a lot of fun doing the assignment and thought everyone else's photos turned out really well too. Now I'm excited about assignment two...

Half of photography is just luck...

2008-06-22T00:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a friend's suggestion/encouragement, I've decided to start blogging again... this time it'll focus around photos and photography in general... I don't think my photos are good enough to warrant blogging about, but I'll at least try to describe my thought process, places I've been, lessons learned and whatever else I see. If nothing else, it'll document my journey over time as I think I've changed a lot over the past 2 years when I first picked up my SLR. Hopefully I can keep this up longer instead of just forgetting about it :).

I've recently started a photo club at work in Santa Monica. We'll be doing bi-weekly assignments together and hopefully learn from each other. Some people were intimidated by the idea of a photo club thinking it'll be filled with professionals with their big SLRs, and I had to reassure them that equipment does not matter. I've seen some amazing shots taken by simple point and shoots. Personally I believe there are 3 factors that make up a good photograph:

40% is skill of the photographer... this includes basic techniques and understanding how to use your camera.
10% is the equipment... this might be a bit high, but the equipment is really an enabler in some cases, it makes certain shots that much easier to get.

The rest... 50% of it is pure luck. Sometimes, you just have to be at the right place at the right time and let mother nature do the rest.

Looking back at some of the photos I've taken the past 6 months or so... I think the majority of my photos falls in the luck category.

	Case in point: This photo is quickly becoming one of my favorite photos. I think it is more or less pure luck... we were on a trip to KenTing (southern most part of Taiwan) when we just decide to pull over at some random run down beach. At the time I knew that you can make some interesting photos with this old fish net so I intentionally tried to include it while my mom avoided it like a plague. But I had no idea how much I'd like the image until after I snapped the first shot and realized I had found something really cool and decided to snap a few more shots, trying harder to compose it but nothing beat the original shot. I've since framed this shot up on my wall now and no matter how many times I look at it, it still fills me with a sense of joy. In the end, it was pure luck that I got this photo... if we had stopped at the beach 30 mins earlier, the light wouldn't have been the same and it just wouldn't have worked... the sky was also perfect in my opinion... a bit ominous with the clouds but still clear enough for the blue to shine through. The golden light of the setting (but not yet set) sun, the empty beach, everything just came together for me.
	Of course sometimes it takes a lot of practice to get the shot just the way you want it, I guess that's why people call it painting with light. This is by far the most complex (and maybe the most technically challenging) photo I've ever taken. I'm shooting straight into the sun here which means that the foreground would be completely black if I don't use a flash. I decided to use a wide angle lens to try to exaggerate the size of the cactus and make it stand out even more. Once I got the composition more or less the way I wanted, then came the hard part: balancing ambient light with flash. Thanks to the strobist (http://strobist.blogspot.com) seminar I went to earlier this year, I knew exactly what I had to do. Normally The exposure is affected by both the shutter speed and aperture; but things are a bit different when using a flash. The amount of the flash that gets captured is purely determined by the aperture... the wider the aperture (smaller the F value) the more of the flash you'll capture along with ambient light. This means that you can increase the shutter speed to capture less ambient light without affecting the flash (well... sort of but that's a different story). After a few quick test shots in manual mode, I decided to set the shutter speed to 1/1000th of a second so that I can still get some color in the background but that it is dark enough to not draw attention away from the cactus (apparently I should have paid more attention since that sun is still too bright). At 1/1000th of a second, I had to put my flash into high speed sync mode which meant that it had less power/reach but that was fine. I was only like 2 feet away from the cactus anyways. I didn't want the light from the flash to spill too much on the foreground so I decided to point the flash (on camera flash) away and use a few business cards to act as my mini-reflector. I forget the exact flash setting but the aperture was set at f5.0 so just take a few test shots to determine the right power output for the flash. Overall, I am extremely happy with the shot and the mood that the dark background sets up. If I had to do it again, I'd definitely take the flash off the camera and use a snoot or something to direct the flash better. Oh well :).
	And finally, sometimes you DO need the equipment... Having the ability to shoot 5 frames per second meant that I got 5 or 6 shots to pick from... also having a 200mm lens also really helps with the composition :). But I think this is really a rare case. And you can definite still get good action shots with any camera, it is just a bit harder.

I'm a firm believer that the equipment does not make the photographer... you can have thousands of dollars in equipment and still take the crappiest photos (hm....) while someone with a point and shoot can still take award winning photos. As people say, it's the machine behind the camera that matters the most. People might not believe me looking at the gear that I carry around everyday... to be honest a part of me regret the path I've chosen. I definitely don't recommend people to do what I did i.e. buy 4 or 5 lens all within 3 months of buying the SLR as a complete beginner. I wish I had held off and just gone with one kit lens to really learn how to shoot photos... but like most guys... I just like to buy new toys :). In the end, I got lucky and all the lenses I bought 2 years ago I still use religiously today (some more than others) but I've definitely gotten good mileage out of each one and they've enabled me to take shots that I wouldn't have been able to otherwise. In the end, just keep shooting, a lot, and look at your photos to see which ones you liked better and try to figure out why. Digital film is free, just keep shooting, try different angles, low, high, close, far, left, right, and experiment, do something out of the box; the most boring perspective is roughly 5 or 6 ft at eye level. But most importantly, have fun! I know I certainly did the past two years.

Taipei 101

2007-09-12T00:03:00.000-07:00

So while I was working in the Taipei office, which happens to be located in Taipei 101, I wanted to take off early one day and hike up 象山, a near by mountain that offers an amazing view of Taipei 101 and the entire Taipei Basin. I've seen some AMAZING pictures taken from there (see http://www.pbase.com/albertjou/g20) which is why I'm so interested in going there to try my hand at taking some pictures. All I needed was a nice clear afternoon and a perfect sunset... Unfortunately there was a thunderstorm EVERY afternoon at about 1:30 sharp... and it'd rain until 5:30 or so which unfortunately killed any chance of me going up the mountain. My last chance was on Friday... but the forecast is the same... rain in the afternoon... Lucky for me, it stayed beautiful all afternoon so I left work a bit early, grabbed my gear and found my way up the mountain. Unfortunately the clouds rolled in as I was hiking up (perfectly clear overhead, but cloudy in the west for the sunset). While the sunset itself wasn't amazing, but it wasn't too bad :).

Days before typhoon...

2007-09-03T10:20:00.001-07:00

The days before typhoons typically results in the best weather as the clouds are swept away. I didn't want to let this opportunity to slip by so I had a friend of mine take me on a road trip into the mountains to the south of Taipei near Taoyuan... The weather was indeed spectacular with clear blue skies and scatter clouds that were pure white. It was really breath taking views but I found it really difficult to compose a good photograph to do the view justice... All the pictures I took felt flat and didn't evoke any emotions for the viewer... well, take a look:

With such beautiful weather I then dragged my friend to DaDaoCheng (大稻程) for sunset. The sunset started off great and the place was packed with photographers (people just kept coming on their mopeds one after another, each with a nice SLR and some expensive tripod among other equipment...). But as the sun actually fell below the horizon, the storm clouds gathered and soon was drizzling... Originally I really wanted to get to 象山, a popular mountain near Taipei 101 to photograph all of Taipei basin but that was too far out of the way. From pictures that I've seen, it stayed clear and beautiful for the entire sunset there. Oh well.

Finally on the day that typhoon was suppose to make landfall in southern Taiwan, I decided to sneak out in the morning for some quick photograph (really scouting) at the water museum (自來水博物館). It has become a popular place for portrait (especially engagement/wedding photos).

Back home

2007-08-30T01:22:00.000-07:00

So I've finally settled back in California... jetlag mostly adjusted. Had some time to start going through my photos so I figured I'd post them first...

First album is a collection of food photography. Some of the pictures I tried harder to make it "artistic" while others are just snapshots to remember what food I've been and what food was amazing. Really it's just a food blog since the food there is AMAZING :).

The second album is just a collection of quick snap shots around the city. Mostly at night since thats when most things are the most beautiful in Taipei (so you won't see the gray smog everywhere!). Since I already did a lot of the popular spots last year, this album is much smaller and doesn't contain as many photos that I like...

Is it time to go back?

2007-08-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

Man... I can't believe two weeks went by just like that. The last week has gone by especially fast with working at the Taipei office. It's just been work + chatting with coworkers and dinner and home. But at the same time... I guess I got quite a bit done... new hair cut (that costed over 20 dollars... but I guess thats pretty standard for hair stylist and the full treatment), I guess I like it. People say I look younger with it... to really look good I guess I gotta use a little gel or hair wax... I wonder if I'll actually try to maintain it. Eventually it'll grow long and I'll go back to my usual haircut... but at least for a few days I get to look different :0. I also picked up a new pair of glasses... it's slightly shaded gray so it looks almost like a light sunglasses. It looks darker in pictures than in real life I think... this random guy on the metro already commented that its a really nice pair of glasses. Apparently he really likes it hehe.

But man I've gained so much weight... not just from Google, but from just being in Taiwan. I think I've probably gained 3-6 lbs in two weeks... all that good food is killing me. After dinner I almost always go to a nearby night market for some shaved ice or 愛玉... maybe the ever popular mango shaved ice... That and I've been eating later than normal... At least I'm walking more... but obviously thats not enough.

So as usual I've been out taking pictures of everything I can think of... been traveling to various places outside of Taipei. Unfortunately unlike last time I didn't have time to really travel far (like go down south... I've mainly still stayed in the northern half of the island but got to revisit many places I haven't been since I was a kid which was kind of cool. I also got to meet a friend that I met on WoW (pictured left... Kenavalon from Cenarius... at least I think that was his character :)). It's been such a long time since I played WoW (oh wait, I just played when I was back in Taiwan...). But anyways, it was cool to meet him in person for the first time.

I've also finished organizing one of my albums from my trip along the northern coast of Taiwan. I got to visit 野柳 (YehLiu) which I haven't visited in around 20 years. Needless to say the place has totally changed. Luckily the iconic Queen's head is still in place... but as they say with erosion... that head could snap in the not so distant future. Anyways, here is the album:

Cousin's wedding

2007-08-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

So, 3 weeks later and I'm finally done going through my cousin's wedding photos. I think I took over 550 that day... ended up keeping about 300 (I want to cut down some more, but it's his wedding, so I'll stop there and let him pick from here on out). I spent a lot more time at this wedding trying to get the right angle and get the right shots (more so than at Peter's wedding where I was more opportunistic and took a shot whenever I thought I had the right angle). So I ran around from one side of the church to the other back and forth quite a few time... I didn't feel comfortable cutting in front of all the audience since I'm not the official photographer... instead I walked all the way around the back... quite a workout :). While I did end up with a good number of pictures that I really like, I do regret that I wasn't able to pay attention to the wedding. I heard everything that was said, laughed with everyone and everything... but I just can't remember that much of it. It's strange, I knew I was there, I knew I paid attention and heard every word... but at end of the day... it's all a blur and I only have my pictures to remember it by. Is it worth it? I don't know... on the one hand I end up with some pictures I really love (and I enjoyed taking pictures of my cousin... hopefully he'll like my pictures)... on the other hand I missed the most important moment in my cousin's life. Maybe it's a blessing that I didn't have my camera yet at my brother's wedding... maybe I should seal the camera away at future weddings that I really care about? I don't know how to find the right balance yet...

Anyways, here are the pictures from my web album:

I also realized I need better equipment, better flash (with quicker recharge speed), faster lens or 5D with much better low light performance. I had to shoot at ISO 1600 for most of the wedding and that wasn't really enough even tho the church was so brightly lit. So unfortunately I ended up with quite a few picture I had to toss because its blurry (I had to keep a few blurry ones as well...) but even then all the pictures have quite a bit of noise in them... sigh. One day I'll switch to a 5D :).

Also I finished going through the first set of photos from Taiwan (other than the Yukata photo shoot).

These were taken at 中山樓 (ChungShan Hall). IngIng's (the girl in the Yukata) parents took us there after the photo shoot.

Typhoon @ Taipei

2007-08-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

Well... the typhoon (Sepat I think its called) will make landfall tomorrow (8/18). Apparently its pretty strong typhoon (roughly category 4 hurricane in the west). Its been a couple of years since the last time I experienced a typhoon in Taiwan. I think one year I visited there were 4 or 5 typhoons one after another. 2 of the typhoons even merged together and became this dual typhoon thing... I think my dad and I even went out to 石門水庫 (ShihMen dam) to see it opening the water gates... much to my step mom's disapproval :). She thought we were nuts but my sister wanted to go too so she had to come along :). Picture below:
It's one of the crazier things I've done, driving out (roughly 40 some minutes) in typhoon weather to take pictures of a dam :). I think my dad actually ended up sleeping most of the way too, leaving only my step mom awake to keep me company as I did the driving.

But anyways the weather is always the best right before a typhoon so the past two days I've been busy traveling taking pictures. Today was no exception.... it was sunny enough outside in the morning so I grabbed my camera and went to Taipei Water Museum (where it talks about the water processing and stuff like that). It has a beautiful garden and buildings... apparently a lot of couples gets their wedding photos done there (and it is quite beautiful, I have to go back for a portrait shoot myself someday). Anyways, as I was changing filters today, my external flash fell out of my backpack to the ground! I think it mostly works... as far as I can tell anyways. The only thing that seems to be broken is the LCD (some of the characters don't display anymore... bleh :(.... I should have been more careful.

My grandma also seems quite upset with me lately... probably due to the fact that I haven't been home for a meal since... well... Sunday night (the day after I got back to Taiwan). I went down to say hi before I left this evening and she didn't even bother looking at me.. hehe. Oh well :)