brianglee PHOTOGRAPHY

Wedding - Belinda and Carl Teaser

2011-07-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I had the pleasure of documenting Belinda and Carl's wedding. Belinda and I actually went to high school together and worked on the school yearbook. That's actually the place where I first developed a love for photography. Back then, we still used film and developed our own film in the school darkroom. Good times... So now it was an honor to see Belinda and Carl so happy and in love, here are just a couple of images from this weekend. More to come, Congratulations Belinda and Carl!

How did I light this?

2011-04-06T15:39:00.000-07:00

I was playing around with some stuff and testing some tethered shooting and came up with this image. The light source actually surprised me a bit, can you tell what's lighting my face? I'll give you a hint, look into my eyes... The answer, after the jump

(On a side note, I sincerely apologize for subjecting you to such a close up view of my face. I just wanted to get as close as I could to a pair of eyes. And at 2am, my eyes were the only ones that were open)

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Which is better?

2011-02-17T14:36:00.000-08:00

I'm experimenting with a little post processing. Which do you like more?

A?

or B?

--------------------------

Addendum - Or C? Made some adjustments after some comments were made

Patara + John = Patarohn - Engagement Bloopers

2010-12-31T04:17:00.000-08:00

There are times that being a photographer just makes me LOL. There were a couple pics during this photo shoot that did that for me. To set these up, we were taking some engagement shots in the middle of the street on a bustling University Ave in Palo Alto. Patara and John waited for the lights to turn green and walked out to the middle of the crosswalk and posed, Jason was right next to them with a flash connected to my off camera flash(he actually walked further into the street closer to moving traffic). I was in the other crosswalk on the other side of the street with my camera. In the time it took for the lights to change, I was able to fire off a few frames each time we crossed. Here's what I caught in a couple of those frames:

Wave HI to the strangers in the middle of the street!

Homeboy's diggin' for gold! I wonder if he found any?

Let this be a lesson to all of you. Whenever you see a group of people who look like they're on a photoshoot around you, please refrain from picking your nose.

2010 Family Christmas

2010-12-27T14:12:00.000-08:00

This year was pretty insane. One of the larger family gatherings we've had in a while. Tons of food, lots of people(41 to be exact, 41!!!), and more kids. The child demographic is growing, last year we had 3 kids and this year we had two more newborns(yay!). Throw in the traditional Christmas Mah-Jong table and Christmas in our family is pretty much complete. Hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas!

Patara + John = Patarohn - Engagement Palo Alto

2010-12-23T13:09:00.000-08:00

So my old roommate John called me up for an engagement session before they went off to Thailand to celebrate their engagement/wedding with Patara’s side of the family. They didn’t have a preference on location so we met up in Palo Alto. We raced around Stanford University chasing sunlight and avoiding rain. In all, I think our shooting time was less than an hour. So we were a bit rushed, but I was pretty happy with our images.

The last shot we took with Christmas lights lining University Ave was something I had in my head for a loooong time now. It was inspired by another San Francisco photographer, Dustin Diaz. I LOVE the lighting in his images. It took a few tries to get it right. We got honked at a few times, but once people saw what we were up to they were pretty patient with a couple of crazy photographers running around the intersection.

Special thanks to Jason Ku for helping out on this shoot(and for not getting run over).

Teaser! Patara + John = Patrohn

2010-12-15T21:35:00.000-08:00

John and I used to be roommates when I used to work down in San Jose. In fact, he practically let me live at his house for free. We used to bowl for fun every week at Fourth Street Bowl because they had some steep discounts on Monday nights. One night, Patara came out to bowl with us and I just remember laughing all night long. John’s a really laid back kinda guy and Patara seemed like such a bundle of “happy”, from the beginning they complimented each other SO well. When I found out they were engaged, I couldn’t have been happier for them!

They’re heading out to Thailand to celebrate their engagement with Patara’s extended family and wanted to take some pictures with them. I was honored when they asked me for a quick mini-E-Session. We goofed off a bit like we always did and raced against the sun, but I was pleased with the images we got. Here’s a little teaser, more to come later:

Special thanks to Jason for helping me out on this shoot

Cindy and Rob - September 11, 2010

2010-10-27T23:29:00.000-07:00

I love Cindy and Rob. I first met Cindy a little over three years ago. We bonded over some difficulties in our lives. She is like a sister to me and so it made me especially excited to finally see Cindy SO happy.

Going back 3 years or so, she was a real estate agent transitioning to a new career as a paralegal and he was a student in dental school, about to graduate. Cindy had a friend also in dental school and met Rob at a party. Rob was instantly drawn to Cindy. Cindy was...a little terrified, rumor has it she hid in the bathroom for a while, =). But Rob persisted and the two fell in love. Fast forward three years, Cindy is now in her first year of law school and Rob is now a practicing Dentist. Through these years, Cindy and Rob have worked through all their transitions and have grown closer together. On a personal note, I’ve never seen Cindy happier. So when they announced their engagement and asked if I would be their wedding photographer, I was super excited for them and truly honored to be the one to document their special day.

Here’s their slideshow in HD(720p), enjoy:

Cindy and Rob Wedding from Brian Lee on Vimeo.

CREDITS

Music:

Jack Johnson - Turn Your Love

Relient K - The Best Thing

Special thanks to Jason Ku for shooting still images and video

Gellin’ again

2010-09-18T16:31:00.000-07:00

I’m on this light balancing kick recently. I’ve created softer light via shoot-through umbrella, played with putting different colored gels on my strobes for different effects. But I had never gel’d a strobe to shoot through an umbrella. I wanted to see if a gel’d light would lose any of its color, or what would happen. So just to compare, here’s a straight up strobe shot through an umbrella(located in frame, camera left).

Now here’s the same shot but with a 1/2 CTO gel(NOTE: I goofed a bit on this, I actually thought it was a full CTO gel, didn’t realize it was a 1/2 ‘til the next day):

As you can see, the light is definitely warmer even with the 1/2 CTO. One thing to note is that the gel ate up some light so I had to make some adjustments to make sure my exposure was correct. In this case, I adjusted my aperture two stops. Now to apply this out in the field during an actual photoshoot! I have an idea in mind... and it involves tiki torches lit with fire! =)

Breakfast of Champions

2010-09-10T13:48:00.000-07:00

So I'm in a weight loss bet with six other guys. Whomever can lose the most weight, by percentage, by November 1st. On November 1st, we're all weighing in and going to eat a fat bowl of pho at Pho Garden in SF.

Anyway, here's what I ate for breakfast: Oatmeal with egg white, granola(with dried berries), raw almond slices, and a banana on the side. =) I actually love eating like this.

I wanna win this bet!

Running Stairs...

2010-09-09T18:11:00.000-07:00

I had seen these stairs before. I remember thinking it would be a killer workout to run up these stairs. I remember looking a them and thinking it would really suck to run up these stairs. I remember walking my dogs past these stairs and thinking there'd be no way for me to run up them. Then I got to thinking about other stuff going on in my life. Goals I have yet to reach, things I've always wanted to do but haven't, obstacles that get in the way of those goals. Sometimes all I see are the obstacles that get in the way. Whenever I think this way I think of a little piece of scripture that says "Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 3:13-14. It helps remind me of what I'm striving for.

So I went and ran those stairs. I ran them until my legs felt like jello, which didn't take very long. I had accomplished something I always had in my mind that I'd do one day. I got my milkshake(that's another story). I know, its just a set of stairs. Not a big deal, but it was just something I had always wanted to do but never took the time to do.

A few things that ran through my mind while I was running. The first is that it doesn't as bad as it looks, once I took that first step and kept stepping it was much less daunting than standing at the bottom and looking at the stairs. The second, it was 2:00 pm and I still hadn't eaten anything that day so after I ran the stairs a handful of times, I was getting light headed and nauseous. I made a mental note to not do those stairs again on an empty stomach. And finally, the view seems so much nicer from the top afterwards. The stairs don't seem as bad from the top.

We're mic'd!

2010-09-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

So I was at the WPPI Roadshow a few weeks ago and it was a great time. One of the inspiring moments was a talk by Lawrence Chan of Tofurious and the emergence of "Fusion" Photography. Still not sure what it's all about, but I guess thats the fun thing about things that are up and coming. Inspired by that, I went out and bought a "shotgun" mic from a local store. Here is the Sennheiser MKE400. MSRP $199. I want to use it this coming weekend for a wedding, but will do some tests and things in these couple days leading up to the wedding.

Playing with the new gear while enjoying a little froyo.

It's actually a LOT smaller than I thought it was going to be.

Creme brûlée

2010-09-07T11:34:00.001-07:00

Creme brûlée
Originally uploaded by bglee818

I have a ton of food in the fridge. A ton. I had a bunch of eggs, so I decided to make some creme brulee. I love, love, love desserts. Here's a simple but oh-so-good dessert that always seem to impress people. Actually, more than the taste of it, I think its people are more impressed by the blowtorch I use to caramelize the sugar on top... The two on the right are just with vanilla custard. The two on the right, I just did a little experiment and added some coffee. I think I made it a little too strong, it'll be better next time.

OCF 9 - Basketball Composite

2010-07-14T03:22:00.000-07:00

So, I wanted to do a couple things this time around. First, I wanted to continue this little series on sports portraits and decided to try basketball. I was hoping to do this while there was still some daylight out, but by the time we got everyone together and took a little video, all ambient light was pretty much gone. Going into the shoot, I envisioned taking a sequence of Chester driving to the rim and dunking. Then taking each image and compositing it together into one image. The second thing I wanted to do was test out my two new LP160 flashes. Check it, this was a sequence of 11 images put together:

The Talent - Chester Lui
Photogs - Myron Yeung, Jason Ku, and Brian Lee

The setup:

Canon 5D MarkII, 17-40mm F/4L@17mm, ISO 2000, F/5, 1/100.
LP160 @ 1/64 camera left, hand-held(by Mryon) and tracking Chester
LP160 @1/64 camera right, hand-held(by Jason) and tracking Chester
Flashes triggered with Paul C. Buff Alienbee Cybersyncs

This was super fun. We can do it better, but for the first time I'm not complaining with the results. Hope you like!

OCF8 - Behind The Scenes Video

2010-07-06T02:18:00.000-07:00

I know we're a little nerdy. But we love this stuff!

20100615 - High Speed Flash Photography Behind the Scenes from Brian Lee on Vimeo.

OCF 9 - Tennis Action!

2010-06-30T12:01:00.000-07:00

So we decided to pull drag our lighting gear one of the local tennis courts to play around. Myron, Jason, and I showed up around 8pm to start setting up our lights. For talent, Burgess and Judy were gracious enough to be models for us that night. The nice part was that we had two courts all to ourselves in a fenced in area so we had some privacy and some security knowing all our gear was enclosed in one area. We actually used both courts one to shoot, while we set-up on the other, and back and forth. That is until someone came to play tennis...

Anyway, while doing some setup, I thought it'd be a good chance to get another OCF self portrait in. I almost look like I can play, huh? As far as strobist info:

-one SB24 camera left with 1/2 CTO gel

-one 580EXII camera right, bare flash

-Sun for a little back light, but was already set by the time we got everything set up

This was just a test shot for images we came up with later that evening:

OCF - Week 8 Ghetto High Speed Flash Photography - Behind the Scene

2010-06-19T16:27:00.000-07:00

Now that I’ve had a couple days to digest what Myron, Jason, and I did this week I wanted to jot down a few things that came to mind. Lessons learned:

-Preparation is KEY - I think we took about an hour to setup, maybe a little more. Shot for probably 45 minutes to an hour, then took about 45 minutes to clean up. In addition, we had talked about it a few times the week or two prior to wrap our heads around the idea and how best to capture the image. We knew where we wanted all our lights, reflectors, and camera setup. We had some minor adjustments, but that will almost always be the case.

-Having said that, I wished we improvised a little more. Myron took some at different angles from different positions. We gel’d some of the strobes in different colors. If there’s an area I’d like to work on is being a little more creative with the materials and situation at hand. Although, I'm pretty happy with the results, I always can't help but think we could've done more.

-On the technical side - Don’t get me wrong, I love my camera. I think its a fantastic piece of photography machinery. But here’s what happened when I shot with a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second.

See the black band at the bottom of the image? What the heck??? For those of you wondering what that is, the shutter closed before the light could get in. Myron’s D300 sync’d just fine at 1/250th. I didn’t notice it while we were shooting(it was dark out). Although Pocket Wizards and other flash triggers say the max sync speed is 1/250, I think the 5DMk2 handles is better at 1/200. As a side note, editoral photographer Zack Arias says he goes all the way down to 1/60th to make sure he doesn’t get any banding with his 5DMk2. Sheesh...

Here are some other images from our high speed flash photography shoot:

Another good one shot by Myron

Shot of the setup. You can barely seen them, but there at two black lightstands on either side of me with SB24's at 1/16th power on each. We stuck some gobo's on them to prevent flare. That bigh silver stand you see is "The Beast", Myron's avenger stand. There's a make-shift boom with another SB-24 flash hanging off it for some hairlight. Just in front of me is a large white reflector disc. I was shining a flashlight on myself to assist with the focus in the dark.

Here we tried it while putting red gel's on the two side lights.

Now again, with all strobes with red gels. Spookier, huh? Almost sinister, huh?

We didn't like the all red gel look, so we tried putting a blue gel on the hairlight. It's a different look. This is where the hairlight starting giving out on us.

Quite literally, a shot from behind the scene. Here you can more clearly see the two gobo'd strobes on either side and the reflector in front.

And since Myron's a Nikon user, I'm just putting this up because he's shooting with my 5DMk2. Yes, I'm wearing a rain jacket and yes I'm wearing my snowboard pants for this.

Now what should we do next time???

OCF Day (I have no idea) - Ghetto High Speed Flash Photography – Take 1

2010-06-18T02:17:00.000-07:00

First off, my apologies for being away for so long. I just haven’t been as diligent with this project. Trying to get back on track. I have a list of excuses, but I’ll spare you from listening to me whine.

So, I was talking with my buddy Myron about different images we’d like to capture. Partially inspired by a Chase Jarvis video(as seen HERE), I had an image I wanted to capture of splashing water on my face and freezing water droplets as they splashed on me and on their way to the ground. Even though it was FREEZING this past Tuesday night, Myron, Jason, and I decided to just go for it. Here’s what we did:

Timing - We waited ‘til after the sunset for the shoot, but setup our lights prior. This way, we kept the ambient light to a bare minimum and freeze the action with our strobes.
Location – OUTSIDE. Which was why we waited ‘til after the sun set. Also, we wanted to keep the water outside.
Lighting – Myron picked up a HUGE Avenger (combi)stand which he attached a boom(it’s actually a reflector holder), superclamp, cold-shoe, and an SB-24(at 1/16^th power). We used this for a hairlight directly overhead. Two lightstands on either side(SB-24’s at 1/8^th power with a 35mm spread) of the subject(me) slightly behind pointed at the water(and for a little rim lighting). We also used our own DIY gobo’s attached to prevent flaring into the camera. And finally, to get just a hint of light in on my face we put a white diffuser panel in front.
Cameras settings - Tripod mounted 5DMk2 with 70-200mm at ISO800, f/9 or 10-ish, 1/250. D300 with 70-200mm. 5DMk2 with 17-40mm.

We started at 9pm and ended around 12:30am. I lost track of how many takes we did, it was fun tho. Ridiculously fun. Towards the end we experimented with putting on some red and blue gels to see what kind of look we’d get. But the batteries were giving out on us and we were getting tired, it was a school night after all. Here’s my favorite one. Pretty much straight out of camera with a little sharpening in Aperture:

(Photo taken by Myron) - See the full rez image HERE or its actually kinda cool lookin' on black HERE(Zoom in on the water droplets – I still squeal a little when I look at this).

I’ve never done anything like this before and this 3 hour exercise was fantastic. Can’t wait to see what else we can do with this technique. Lesson’s learned with a behind the scene images and video coming soon!

Special thanks to Myron Yeung and Jason Ku for bringing all this into reality.

Vegas!

2010-05-15T13:42:00.000-07:00

So this past weekend I was in Las Vegas with the family for my cousin Sandra's wedding. I brought all my gear to take some pics with OCF and everything... only to find out the venue wouldn't allow me to set up a light stand or anything. No flash even... Oh well, while we were checking in, I loooked up to see some cool, colorful umbrellas at the Palazzo. I feel like I've seen someone take this shot before, but my sister Judy was just sitting there waiting for Burgess to check us all in so I had about 5 minutes to put this together. Just one off-camera strobe sitting on top of my luggage camera left. =)

DIY Snoot!

2010-04-29T03:21:00.000-07:00

So... I got a little lazy and didn't do an OCF weekly portrait this week. Instead, for some reason my mind was preoccupied with snoots. I was browsing around and it looks like the honl speed snoot retails for 29.99. When I saw it, it was just a piece of fabric with velcro. I wanted to buy one, but just couldn't justify the cost.

SO... I went to the fabric store. I came back with foot of canvas. I wanted to get some sort of black fabric that was thick and could hold shape. I ended up with canvas, but they didn't have black. And instead of waiting or going to another store, I bought the darkest color they had which was a Navy Blue. Add to that some sew on velcro and I spend a total of:

1 Foot Navy Blue Canvas = $1.86

1 packaage of sew on velcro = $3.49

Tax (9.25%) = $.50

Total Spent = $5.85

After almost 2 hours of careful measuring, cutting, pinning, and sewing. This is what I ended up with. I was pretty happy with it. It fit nicely over the velcro speedstrap on any one of my strobes.

But does it work??? Only one way to find out!

GAH!!! I was afraid the light would be tinted. And as you can see, it's totally blue! Not at all what I wanted. But it wasn't unexpected. It was good to make one though and the next time should be much quicker than 2 hours to complete one. Gotta go find some black canvas.

Not bad for $5.85 worth of materials. I save almost $25 from making this instead of purchasing one. DIY FTW!

OCF Week 7 - How YOU doin'???

2010-04-21T04:26:00.000-07:00

So this week is a little different in that I did not use any strobes as light sources. I've always wanted to shoot by candle light so this week I thought I'd give it a shot.

A couple lessons learned off the top of my head. It's super hard to shoot wide open at F/1.4. This is one of maybe 3 or 4 images that were in focus. But since there wasn't much light and I didn't want to use too high of an ISO. Also, you can see the candles I used as a light source, but there were a couple other LED lights I used. Different temperature lights actually made it tough to figure out what WB to use. I wanted to see what would happen, and you can see the blue-ish light on my head and left shoulder. I'm thinking about picking up some CTO gels to compensate for the WB differences.

Week 6 - OCF - Ghetto Greenberg

2010-04-14T01:52:00.000-07:00

Was talking to my buddy Myron a while back about different lighting setups we wanted to try out and stuff. One of the types of images we wanted to try out was a setup made popular by photographer Jill Greenberg. She's done a portrait series on crying babies and another on animals. A couple examples of her work are:

and

But her studio setup can be pretty complicated. I think there are at least 7 light sources going on. So its much more complicated than my little strobes setup. But I decided to do what I could with what I had.

So here's my Jill Greenberg inspired self portrait:

What do you think? I was going to drip some water from my eyes and nose, but decided that would get too messy.

OCF Week 5 - Half Moon Bay - Outtakes

2010-04-13T16:28:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to share a couple of outtakes from last week's OCF self portrait before posting up this week's image. After taking last week's image, we took some more just to make the most of driving out to the coast:

I was actually debating between the image I posted last week and this one. I still like this one tho... Which do you like better?

And just some silliness:

Hot, hot, hot!

Need to drag the shutter a little more here to get more ambient.

Sun is YUMMY!

OCF Week 5 - Half Moon Bay

2010-04-06T20:19:00.000-07:00

I think this is the 5th OCF self portrait I've taken... I can't remember, it's been so long between portraits. Anyways, two in a row - pretty awesome.

So this time around, it was raining pretty hard and I was starting to think about different shots to try indoors. But the weather cleared out and there were some clouds in the sky so I thought I'd make the most of it by driving over to Half Moon Bay to try and catch the sunset and snap some pics. After arriving did I realize the clouds were long gone. But we found a beach and setup for some quick shots. The sun was so bright that I initially started popping my flash at full power. But as the sun went down, flash was turned down to 1/2 power and eventually to 1/4 power. So here I am watching the sun get swallowed by the ocean.:

Strobist, one bare flash only(SB-24) camera right at 1/2 power. I got some rim light from... well, from the sun.

Special thanks to Jason for holding my busted light stand

OCF - Outtakes

2010-04-06T13:59:00.000-07:00

So I had a whole mess of pictures from the last OCF session I had with Moi-Moi. Using multiple strobes, a 70-200mm, and a dog in a self-portrait is actually pretty difficult. Especially when trying to capture some barking/growling.

Strobes - I had the lighting set up and balanced the way I wanted, but my key light was firing at 1/2 power. After a couple shots, the recycle time took WAY longer than the rate I was taking pictures. I ended up with more pictures with my key light not firing than with it firing. Here's one I think would've been a great image had everything worked:

Long lens - Aside from the lighting, I realized how difficult it is to take a self portrait with a long lens. I was thinking about how this SF photographer (Dustin Diaz) frequently used a 200mm prime for his 365 self portrait project and now I appreciated his work that much more. I think this would been the best shot of the night.... had it been in the frame. Just missed, darn.

So, this was the original plan I had for this self-portrait session, but I didn't like it so much after I did it. For those of you who know me, I've developed a recent obsession for Rubik's Cubes.

Couple things I did not like about this. The shadows in the lower part of the frame distracted my eye. It's from a strobe I put down to light the background. But since I didn't have another light stand, it was just sitting on the sofa that was there, but it was catching the back of the sofa and throwing that shadow up there. I moved it, but couldn't get the same blown out background I kinda wanted. Also, I dunno, I just didn't like the way the cube looked. Maybe I need to snoot it or something. I think I might try that at some point.

So in the end, it came down to the one I chose and another one. I think I chose the other one because our expressions were more matched. But I still like them both:

Lessons learned - Balance lighting with strobes at lowest power you can keep them. I knew that before, but I wanted to test out the new SB-24 I just bought(used). That flash seems to be pretty solid, but I need to be carfeul if I ever crank it up to 1/2 power or more. Need to find a way to better mark a spot for me(or any subject) to stand. If you look at the last picture, you can see a little post it note I had on the wall. for where my center of focus was - Duh, need to have something that won't be in the frame...

Week-errrr, I mean Month 4...

2010-04-02T16:18:00.000-07:00

.

So I know this whole “Weekly” Off Camera Flash project really hasn’t been consistent at all. It’s more like whenever I make time to do it. Anyway, I used three strobes on this one. Why? Because I can(I just picked up a used SB-24 and wanted to make sure it worked). Originally, I just wanted to try some Rembrandt lighting, but it morphed a little. The original vision was to capture an image of me thinking with my Rubik’s Cube. But I grabbed my dog and made her sit with me while I tested the lighting and I just kept her with me for a Father-daughter portrait. =)

The setup – SB24 @ ½ power shot through umbrella at camera left. 430ex shot at 1/32 camera right for some rim lighting. 580exII shot at 1/16 into wall for some overall separation and depth.

Edit - Forgot to mention in the setup a white cardboard reflector just below camera, angled up for some fill light

Me and my girl just thinking about life, love, and the hard boiled eggs in the kitchen for her nightly treat

Who's there! We were barking at the door bell. I tried to time the shot to get us both barking, but couldn't get in sync. Another note, using the SB24 at 1/2 power doesn't recycle fast enough. I wonder how quickly two SB24's at 1/4 power each would recycle?

Minor Edit - The yellow beanie is a gift from my grandmother. Like it or not, I'm going to be taking more portraits with it. =)

Hopefully, more soon...

.

"Our Song"

2010-03-16T17:00:00.001-07:00

Salt Lake City

2010-02-11T22:49:00.000-08:00

I was blessed to have the opportunity to take a trip out to Salt Lake City, UT to do a little snowboarding with some cousin's from Australia. It was a fantastic time of catching up and plowing through some snow. Good times at Park City. So, this was our last full day and we decided to just chillax a little and explore a little. So we were driving around some random roads as the sun was setting and I had to pull over to take some pics with Off Camera Flash. After I took some pics of my cousin Jeffrey, we switched places and I had a chance to take some pics with the sunset behind us.

See the rest of the pics here

OCF Self Portrait - Week...?

2010-02-02T12:53:00.000-08:00

OK, I know I'm about 5-6 weeks behind on this project. When Christmas and New Years came, I've just been kinda out of it. Tons of excuses, but no more. I plan to be back on track and make up for the weeks I missed. Anyways, this picture serves two purposes. First its continuing this Off Camera Flash Project. Next, its my entry into a monthly "contest" I have with some other friends. The theme this month is "Night Light". A little background, my cousin Jeff bought this awesome lookin' bottle of Vodka called Crystal Head. When I saw it, an image popped in my head and that's what I tried to capture here. I kinda like this. Oh, and if you look at the exif data, the 4am timestamp is accurate. Needless to say, I was up late playing with this.

Strobist - Two LED lights on the vodka(one pointed up from below and one pointed towards the camera from behind the skull) and two strobes (One from below pointed at my hand and the other far above my right shoulder).

Cousin Jeff visiting from Australia

2010-01-29T23:42:00.000-08:00

So my cousin Jeffrey is visiting from Australia and it turned out to be a perfect photo opp. Here's Jeff chillin' at Cafe Bianco in SF. Then I decided to try using a couple of textures on it. Which one do you prefer?

The Original

Desaturated

Textured

OCF Self Portrait - Week 3

2009-12-22T01:35:00.000-08:00

It wasn't freezing out this week so I decided to try and take advantage of the warmer weather and try to find some Christmas lights outside for this weeks image. Well, turns out downtown San Mateo is pretty weak when it comes to holiday lights. But Jason and I found this tree that was pretty well lit. Two flashes here, key light on camera left and a little rim light directly behind. Next time, I'm making a note to make sure the pose doesn't make it look like I have a big belly. It's the lighting, I swear...

Scott Robert World Tour Los Angeles Revisited

2009-12-17T02:31:00.000-08:00

So, I know its been a while since I was actually at the workshop. But I've maxed out on my laptop's hdd capacity and going through some old stuff when I realized I didn't really look at any of the images I took during our last day in Los Angeles. So here's one that I liked. Below is Angela, she's one of photographers in the workshop and graciously posed for several of us that final day. You can see blog here.

Angela posing in front of the waterfall in flower garden of the Kyoto Grand Hotel in downtown LA.

Same photo, but with a filter effect applied. I just wanted to try it out and kinda like this one

Both side-by-side. Which one do you prefer???

Off Camera Flash Portraits Project

2009-12-14T03:19:00.000-08:00

In my endeavor to refine my portrait taking, posing, and lighting skills, I've decided to issue myself a project. A weekly project to take a self portrait with different off camera lighting schemes. The first is shown below. I was actually trying to recreate this(posted by D Park Photography), but was not successful. I'll try again...

Week 1

See all images from this project on my Flickr set HERE.

Break the Boredom

2009-12-09T21:18:00.000-08:00

So lately, I've been feeling pretty complacent with my photography. There just hasn't been anything I've shot that I was eager to get home and post process. Not since the workshop in LA anyways. And I'm eager to practice to try and get better. So I complained to Myron a bit and he and Sherrie were kind enough to offer to model for me. So I rolled over to the East Bay, grabbed some grub, and we just had a lazy little shoot. Some of the new couple and Sherrie's pup, Bean. One thing I know I need to work on is getting my photo subjects comfortable and evoking emotion out of them. Well, they happened to be watching SNL they had DVR'd and so I just had them keep watching TV while I snapped off a few shots. It worked to get them comfortable and just smiling naturally. Then when I realized it was getting late, I set up some strobes in a corner of Sherrie's super cool loft where she has a set of stairs. I LOVE that part or her loft. I don't think I did an adequate job of capturing it this time around. I'll try again later, but for now here's what I've got:

Fu Family!

2009-11-18T10:56:00.001-08:00

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I was down in SoCal this past week and got to catch up with an old friend, Jonathan. It also happened to coincide with the birth of his brand new baby girl, Ayumi. I don't get down to SoCal nearly as much as I should. Hopefully I can make it down there more in 2010.

Introducing Ayumi Fu!

Jonathan with Akemi

Ayumi spending some quality time with Grandpa

Karen and Akemi

Thanks for letting me crash with you guys!

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Chinatown

2009-11-10T00:13:00.000-08:00

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I have some mixed memories of Chinatown in San Francisco. Growing up, I honestly thought all San Francisco had to offer were these dingy streets filled with short angry old ladies, vegetables hanging out on the sidewalks, and meat hanging in windows. I've since realized that Chinatown is only a small part of San Francisco. Anyway, these are some old pictures I had taken when I was just walking around with my camera. Kinda random. But I never got around to posting this pics. Just some random street photography.

I bet this little girl thought I was some random tourist taking pictures.

I think this is my favorite of the set

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On your marks!!!

2009-11-03T01:47:00.000-08:00

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I used to swim in high school, but that was a long time ago - I won't say how long. I recently had an opportunity to go watch my younger cousin Aaron swim a race at a recent swim meet he had. He had a few events, the 100 Freestyle, 100 Butterfly, 100 Breast, and the 200 IM(Individual Medley). He reminds me a little of myself when I swan. I also swam IM and my best stroke was my backstroke. =)

Anyway, I was excited to get a chance to take some pictures of Aaron in action. So I pulled out the 70-200mm in my endeavor to capture some swimming. I think this is probably my favorite from that day - Aaron swimming the butterfly leg of the 200 IM - just as he's at the end of his stroke.

On a photography related note, the meet took place in the late afternoon while the sun still was still pretty harsh and there was a pretty harsh shadow halfway down the lane. I started shooting in Manual mode but everytime I crossed that stupid shadow, my settings were horribly off. So this is one of the few instances I've ever used Shutter Priority(Tv) and set the shutter at 1/1000 sec. This way I knew my shutter would be fast enough to freeze the action, and still compensate the other settings to maintain the shutter speed. Bad, variable lighting? Try using Shutter Priority.

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Nolan Ching!

2009-10-31T16:51:00.000-07:00

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It's been far too long. A couple of huge life events happened the last month. My baby brother got married and we had a new baby cousin born. Just one picture today, but with the two new additions to my family. Judy and Nolan!

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Flash... BOOM!

2009-09-12T11:11:00.001-07:00

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So I was laying in bed with my dog when all this flashing was going on outside. I got out of bed, looked outside and discovered an extremely rare lightning and thunder storm going on outside. So I decided to pull out my camera! Night photography from the comfort of my own living room, I could get used to that. The last time I went out at night, Myron came with me and I think he got sick, =(.

All these shots are pretty much straight out of camera. Just a little WB adjustment and some cropping(so I can use these for my next desktop background).

See the rest of the set on my flickr.

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Madeline and Roger Tea Ceremony

2009-09-08T04:32:00.000-07:00

So, I know its been a while since I've posted. But I just finished post processing a huge amount of pics from Roger and Madeline's Tea Ceremony. I plan to do a couple more, but just wanted to get something posted. The Tea Ceremony took place Saturday, August 8 at Madeline's house and it was a great time of celebration and FOOD! I loved the traditional vietnamese wedding dress, called an Ao Dai(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Áo_dài), its gorgeous in all its patterns and colors. And Madeline's was no exception. Roger's looked pretty cool too(even though he was sweating up a storm). Special Thanks to George for helping take the pictures while I attended to some groomsman duties that day.

Andrew making sure Roger is presentable

Andrew and Keith bringing in the whole roasted pig

I guess one objective of the tea ceremony is for the groom and family to formally ask for the bride-to-be's hand in marriage.

LOVE this picture. The girls are so playful and photogenic!

For the rest of the set go here.

On a side note, I feel like photography is starting to get a little dry. I'm thinking about figuring out some "assignment" to give myself to get my creative juices flowing. Maybe a 365 project??? We'll see.

Mad About Roger

2009-08-06T10:38:00.001-07:00

Roger's one of my oldest friends. I won't say how long we've known each other, but its a looooong time. Last monday I kinda crashed their Engagement Photo Session with Michelle Walker and just kinda tagged along. I got to help her carry some of her gear. You can see a couple of Michelle's photo's on her blog here. I didn't want to interrupt their session so I didn't pull out my camera until after she left. Here are some I took:

Roger and Madeline enjoying some hot chocolate.

The beautiful bride and the cheessy groom. =)

Pismo Beach at Night

2009-08-04T10:52:00.000-07:00

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I've been completely MIA from everything for the past month because work has been crazy. But now that I have back-up again, I have a little more time for other things. This past weekend, I was at Roger's bachelor party down in Pismo Beach. While the guys were sleeping/resting, I snuck away to grab some nightshots. For those camera geeks out there, these are also the first nightshots I took with my new fancy shmancy 5D. Here are a couple that I liked:

This was taken on the balcony of the beach house we stayed at. The lights you see on the left are the cars that are driving along the beach to get to/from the Oceano Sand Dunes.

This kind of makes me think of a lunar landing.

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More From the Lou...

2009-07-23T10:16:00.000-07:00

I've been sitting on these pics for a while. I'm trying to purge my backlog of photo's to post process and post. Here are a few from the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner the day before the wedding in St Louis:

Jason and Abi waiting for rehearsal to begin

The Enemie's Gate is Down

Rachel with Mom and Dad

Mom and Dad giving Rach some lovin'

See the rest of the set here.

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Cropping...

2009-07-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since I've posted. Just haven't had as much photo time as I'd like lately. A quick post now and hopefully another later today.

More often than I'd like I get though post processing a picture and realize I don't love the composition. Then I usually realize the composition could've been much better if I crop the image. Here's an example of what I mean, first the uncropped:

Now the cropped:

Which is better???

St Louis - The hours leading up to the wedding

2009-06-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

I've already fallen behind my initial commitment to post at least once per week, sigh...

Anyways, here are some pics from St. Louis again. These were taken on Patrick and Rachel's wedding day in the hours leading up to the big event and some taken after. I put my camera down during the ceremony/reception.

PJ going over his schedule for the day after he came back to the house from breakfast.

Mom and The Colonel swung by the house to pick up the keys to Pat's truck and to chat for a bit.

Cheesy shot of the rings

Chris and Max in the Blue Room waiting to begin

The Ring Bearer(Silas Chang) and pappa(Jason Chang)

Pat and The Colonel

Pat and Mr Vander Meulen

Lloyd, the Best Man. Going over his speech on his palm and getting ready to bust out his flask.

PJ and The Colonel up to no good... =)

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Burgudy Engagement Session Part III? - Coyote Point

2009-06-18T17:30:00.000-07:00

OK, I took these pics a while ago and meant to post earlier, but I just never got around to it. My friend Mark and I wanted to shoot together and decided to ask our favorite guinea pigs to be models(Burgess and Judy). We intended on going San Francisco, but the weather was atrocious and we ended up at Coyote Point. Mark pretty much ran the shoot and I was just running around taking random shots. It was still fun though. Mark had something I had always thought about, but never put together. He had a sheet of poses and locations he wanted to use and it actually really helped to speed up the shoot and made it much more efficient. Gotta remember to do that next time

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St Louis, Part II

2009-06-16T17:10:00.000-07:00

So here are some pics I processed on the way flights back from St Louis:

Bachelor Party Aftermath - The Best Man, Lloyd taking his morning coffee on the balcony as Pat takes care of some stuff for his new bathroom remodel.

Meeting Crissy and Shepard at Kaldi's for more coffee

A nearby dog giving Shep a little lovin'

Frozen Custard... I still have dreams about it, So Good!

Back at the hotel with Evangelyn

And Shepard!

Still more to come later!

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St. Louis down time

2009-06-14T21:48:00.000-07:00

So after Pat's wedding, we had a little down time before traveling home. So after running a few final groomsman duties, we grabbed a nice lunch at a super cool local cafe and spent the rest of the day at St Louis Zoo(which was free today). Just a couple pics to start us off. We saw a waterfall at near the front of the Zoo and thought it'd be a great place to take a couple of family portraits. Here are a couple of the other groomsmen and their families:

Jessica, Evangelyn, and Chris Chong

Jason, Silas, Camden, and Abigail Chang

Abigail Chang

More coming later!

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Meet me in St Louis, Louis...

2009-06-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

So, my old University roommate, Patrick O'Banion lives out in St. Louis and is getting married this weekend. It's been a great time of seeing old friends, laughing with their families, staying up too late, and general mischief. Just a couple pics I was able to PP.

Patrick and Rachel entertaining the hordes of guests after their wedding rehearsal dinner.

Meet Zachary Azar. Patrick's nephew. On a photography related note, this was shot with my new 50mm f/1.4 wide open at 1.4 and ISO 5000. I had to desturate a little(I've noticed high ISO's tend to oversaturate my pictures), reduce a little noise, and sharpened. See straight out of camera image here.

More pics to come soon...

Paddington

2009-06-09T17:37:00.000-07:00

Paddington is my Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. My baby boy. =)

Burgudy - Again...

2009-06-07T04:42:00.001-07:00

It's late and I should've gone to bed a couple hours ago. But just wanted to post this pic first. This was taken in a session with Mark out at Coyote Point. I haven't processed all my pics yet, but just wanted to put up a little "teaser". One of my favorites from that day.

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UC Berkeley Graduation - NUP is done!

2009-06-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

My baby cousin, Nup, just graduation from UC Berkeley this past semester. No, her real name isn't Nup. Her name is Sharon, Nup is just a nickname we've had for her ever since she was little(pun intended for those of you in the know). If there's anyone out there reading this who's hiring for an entry-level marketing/sales type position, hire my baby cousin. She's smarter than Burgess and me combined. =)

Where's Wal--er Nup? Finding Nup in a sea of graduates.

The venue conveniently had a secition specifically for people to take pictures and everyone rotated in and out as their graduates went up on stage. By this time, the sun was beating down on us pretty good.

Proud Family! Left to Right - Aunt Kit, Uncle Bun, Grandma, Nup, and Victor.

Victor and his girlfriend, Nai, anxiously waiting for Nup to walk out of the ceremony.

Shenanigans!

OK, totally unrelated to Graduation. But here's my future sister-in-law showcasing the super sexy 5D. Ya, that's right, a camera can be sexy! Photo courtesy of JT's soon-to-be-husband(Burgess).

Which kind of leads me to a couple of thoughts about new cameras. Some people have noticed my new camera(and lens) and seem impressed and automatically think I can take really fantastic pictures. A camera is a camera. Just having nice new camera alone doesn't make me a better photographer. A pro with a disposable camera will take pictures a hundred times better than pictures I can get out of the latest and greatest dSLR. I agonized over whether or not this was a wise purchase for me(just ask Myron). In the end, it was just something I wanted and something I had already budgeted for. I firmly believe that a photographer's best asset is his eye and his creativity. In both areas, I still have a lot to learn. But I do hope to somehow earn a living with photography, it something I love to do.
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Ashely Herman - Part Two

2009-06-06T16:33:00.000-07:00

I dunno why I like this picture so much. I think its a cross between the seeing the bond between Grandmother and Grand-daughter and looking like Grandma is trying to use the force to lift the bouncy house into the air with the Force. This pic always makes me smile inside.

Just as a side note to myself - Gotta be more careful when post processing around people. Ashley and Grandma look like they have a little halo around them.

Careless Hearts

2009-06-02T03:01:00.001-07:00

An old coworker of mine back from my days with Align Technology has a band that was playing in a huge music festival in San Jose called Left Coast Live. His name is Paul Kimball and his band is Careless Hearts. It was late at night(actually it was early in the morning), but Careless Hearts came out and totally rocked. People were packed into the bar where they were playing and dancing wherever they stood. Lots of fun energy to try and capture that night.

Shooting conditions were pretty rough. It was in a bar that was in a basement and I didn't have a flash with me so I had to resort to shooting at ISOs upwards of 4000 and 5000. This was really the first time I got to test out the High ISO performance the new 5D. Results are below - Pictures are shown in pairs, the straight-out-of-camera pics are shown first. Followed by the same pic with a little post processing.

This last pic isn't of the band, but of some of the people who were groovin' to Paul and the Careless Hearts. Lots of rockin' music and lots of fun! Check out Careless Hearts here.

To see all the pics from that night, go HERE to my flickr set. Also, if you're interested they'll be playing at the new Courthouse Square in Redwood City on July 10. I'm going to try to make it out to shoot them again. Everyone should come, it should be a fun time!
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Burgudy E-Session Part II - San Francisco

2009-05-26T23:08:00.000-07:00

Recently, Burgess and Judy were gracious enough to be models, yet again, for Myron and me to shoot. This time we went to San Francisco. The day before the weather was in the 70's without a cloud in the sky. The day we went to shoot, it was freezing cold and completely cloud covered. Less than ideal, but we decided to shoot anyways. Here are some of the shots. For the full set, go to my flickr page.

This last one, for some reason I really like it. Although the pose was incredibly uncomfortable for Judy. Thinking back, maybe just one arm around Burgess' neck would've been a better pose(and more comfortable).

High ISO. Good Enough???

2009-05-23T18:57:00.000-07:00

So, with the spiffy new camera came some questions as to how good really is the high ISO performance. Here are a couple samples. Decide for yourself:

Shot at ISO 4000. Straight out of camera.

Same shot, with some post processing.

ISO 3200. Straight out of camera.

Same shot, with some post processing.

Ashley Herman - Happy 1 Year Birthday!

2009-05-21T18:50:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, I used to know Sherri as Sherri Sakamoto. Years after goofing around in our high school Calculus class, she's now happily married with a beautiful baby girl, Ashley. I was fortunate enough to join them in a little picnic to celebrate Ashley's first birthday. It was a super hot day at Heather Park in Walnut Creek so we spent a lot of time huddled up in the shade. Babies everywhere!

Kylie Cheng trying to keep cool in her pretty dress with a cool bottle of water.

Hailey!

Long time friends with new daughters. Left to Right: Katryna with Kylie, Sherri with Ashley, and Jen with Hailey.

Ashley with Grandma!

Mrs Sakamoto, Ashley, Sherri, and Suh-Yun

Happy Birthday Ashley!!!

Roger's Birthday at Tomales Bay

2009-05-16T16:28:00.000-07:00

I've known Roger for over a dozen years. So I jumped at the chance to help him celebrate his birthday this year in Tomales Bay shucking and bbq-ing some oysters right out of the sea.

Nice and simple menu.

Oysters straight out of the water.

Madeline(Roger's fiance) getting ready to do some shuckin'!

The Birthday Boy starting the day off by making some Bloody Marys.

Brent and Madeline hard at work.

Grilled Oysters!

Jen, Vic, and Chloe enjoying some breezy sunshine.

Drew and Jeff shuckin' away!

Jeff drizzling lemon juice on freshly shucked oysters! Yum!

Grilled Jumbo Oyster. Special thanks to Drew and his homemade sauces.

Roger enjoying a grilled oyster.

Baby Jered enjoying the sun!

Matt enjoying some friendly company in the warm sun.

Drew and Flo chillin' after a filling meal.

Friends, food, and lots of fun. Special Thanks to Madeline for planning and making all this possible. Happy Birthday Roger!

View all pics here

Senior Portraits - Nup at Bezerkeley

2009-04-29T13:23:00.000-07:00

I know, I know... I'm totally jumping on the blogging bandwagon. But a ton of photographers out there have one and I follow a bunch of them, so it seems to be a good way for a photographer to put themselves out there, show their pictures, and market themselves(if done right). To me its scary tho, I've never been very good at maintaining blogs(photo related or otherwise) and I've got a bit of stage fright(meaning I'm still not all that comfortable sharing my pictures, especially of myself).

Anyways, for my first blog post, I thought it would be cool to showoff a little Senior Portrait photoshoot my friend Myron(of Babyfisheye fame) and I did for my baby cousin Nup, her family, her roomate(Melissa), and boyfriend(Chris). Nup's real name is Sharon, but when she was a baby, she was super small so the family called her "Nup". More or less a chinese phrase for saying "small". The name stuck for most of the family. Myron PostProcessed his pictures already, but I've been slacking and hope to have them up soon. See our combined pics here.

Sharon and Melissa

Nup and her parents(my Uncle and Aunt)

-bglee OUT