Guess My Project

Three 10 feet PVC pipes, four elbow connectors, four straight connectors, a tube cutting tool, eight clamps, and an IKEA bedsheet.

What am I making?

Hint: I am going to need sandbags too.

Softening Harsh Afternoon Sun

Oftentimes I find a great spot to take a photo, but the natural light falling on the location is too harsh. I usually do not have the luxury of waiting for the sun to move to a better spot in the sky. I can splash some artificial light with an off-camera flash, but it often looks...artificial. So if I have a friend around willing to help me, I pop out the old diffuser. Can you tell which photo was taken with the diffuser?

Hint: Look for the photo with the hot spots and sharp shadows under the nose.

For fun, here is my friend Hyun's technique for holding a reflector. Not bad for a first timer!

Always Pull Over

I saw this amazing field of yellow flowers in the middle of winter in Yountville, California a couple years ago. I could have kept driving, but thankfully I pulled over. This is something I rarely see, so I am glad I spent the extra time to snap some photos.

Windshield Diffuser

I like to travel as light as possible when it comes to photography gear, especially if I am on vacation. That means no umbrella + light stand, no reflector, etc.

So what do I do when I need some softer light? I look around!

Our Nissan Cube has a relative large windshield, so I hooked up the old SB-24 to a PocketWizard and shot away.

Would an umbrella have produced a softer and richer light? Sure. Would it and its light stand have toppled in the fierce San Francisco winds? You bet.

Happy shooting!

What Is This? Brian.

I presented a blurry image taken with my phone in my previous post. It looked kinda artsy to me, but it was a total accident. About a month ago, my buddy Brian and I had a double date at a Korean tofu soup restaurant (SGD Tofu House in Santa Clara, CA...so good!). I was already at the table munching on banchan when I saw him get out of his car. It struck me that he wore a blazer. He never wears a blazer! I felt compelled to take a photo. The only camera I had was my phone. As he walked towards me, I started snapping as fast as the phone would let me. I quickly realized that I was not holding my DSLR. Duh.

Despite taking very bad photos, there were some positives that came out of this:

• It kicked off a round of gentle jabs at his new GQ look.
• It provided me with two blog posts.
• It reminded me that I should bring my DSLR out more often, because photo moments can occur at any time and place.

Here are the other photos:

Now go out there and shoot!

What Is This?

I recently took this photo with my iPhone. For some strange reason I expected the phone to react nearly as quickly as my DLSR. But no matter how far camera phones advance, I believe they will never approach the performance of a dedicated camera.

If you absolutely cannot wait, click on the image and see the answer (it is not really that interesting) :-)

Flying Animals!

I had an image in my mind for quite some time: my wife Ahreum surrounded by stuffed animals. I know, it is definitely weird, but what can I say?

I used a very simple lighting scheme. I aimed the key light through an umbrella to bathe Ahreum and the animals in even light. I aimed the background light at the wall and blasted it white. My goal was to avoid creating too many shadows in order to make post-processing easier. This had some drawbacks as I will discuss later. I shot Ahreum and each stuffed animal separately. Here are some behind the scenes photos:

My original sketch. Always start with at least one sketch!

Lighting setup for Ahreum. She stood in front of the rear/left light stand (replace the table with Ahreum).

Lighting setup for the stuffed animals. I lowered both lights and placed the animals on top of the table.

The image did not turn out exactly the way I wanted. I think it looks too flat. This is no surprise since I wanted to drench everything in light in order to avoid having to deal with too many shadows. The effort was really fun though and was an excuse for me to fire up Photoshop for the first time in a long time!

The Slump

2012 has been a year of huge changes for me: I got married and I moved from Oakland to Sunnyvale. I grew a year older and hopefully a little bit wiser. Sadly however, my photography stagnated. I found myself going through the motions and no longer trying to innovate or improve. What happened?

It would be great if I could say "life happened", but that would be disingenuous. Life is about making choices, about priorities, and this year I did not make photography a priority. For me, the recipe for innovating and improving is to stay engaged: read what other people are doing, experiment, and reflect. This year, I rarely checked in on Strobist and my other favorite photography sites. This year, I did not make a single post to this blog (except this one) nor call up my buddy Brian and do a crazy late night shoot. Consequently, this year, I did not have much to reflect on.

I want 2013 to be different. I must make reading my favorite photography websites an everyday ritual. I must take more photos, be it on my phone, my DSLR, or anything with a lens. I must re-engage with my photography buddies, only good things happen when I collaborate with them.

One year from now, I will see how much my photography has changed, but I already see one thing I can improve: fixing all the broken Flickr images on this blog! More on that later.

I hope 2012 was a great year for you and 2013 will be even better!

Just A Bench

I love riding trains and subways. There are always neat shapes all around the stations. I took this picture at a BART station in Oakland over the weekend. The diagonal "bar" is actually the forward edge of a well-worn wooden bench. The top left corner is the ground. It's fun to experiment with composition, because with a simple camera phone there aren't many parameters to play with.

Customized Stamps, Part 2

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was turning my nephew into stamps with the help of photo.stamps.com. A week or so later, I got them and I think they turned out great! I gave them to my sister for her birthday and she turned to me and asked in a serious tone, "Do I have to use them?" I think she likes the gift! Awesome.

Another Fun Random Shot

I snapped this pic with my phone while walking to the train station. I'm really digging the Retro Camera app for my Android phone!

Droid X Camera Not So Bad?

Last Saturday I complained about the camera on my Droid X phone. But maybe it's not the camera itself, but the standard Droid X camera app that is the reason behind my crappy photos. (I tend to blame myself before my gear, but in the Droid X's case, I think it deserves more of the blame).

While waiting for the train in Santa Clara yesterday, I was bored, so I perused my forgotten list of Android apps and "rediscovered" Retro Camera. I chose the Polaroid camera setting and shot the underpass adjacent to the station. I was surprised at the high quality of the image and loved the added effects! Stay tuned for more Retro shots from my phone!

Sendy+Bryan's Engagement: Guitar Light Stand?

As the sun started to fall in Half Moon Bay during Sendy and Bryan's engagement session, Brian and I busted out the flash + monopod. By closing down the aperture, I could capture the beautiful sky and ocean without blowing out the photo. But if I did that, then their faces would go dark, so to compensate, Brian pointed the flash at them. He attached the flash to the monopod, because it allowed him to easily light from above or below without needing to use a ladder or grow longer arms! I used a remote system to tell the flash to fire whenever I snapped a picture.

As we walked down to the beach, I mainly kept my eyes on the rocks, so that I could find sure footing. For an instant I glanced up and saw Brian holding the flash + monopod and Bryan's guitar and in that moment, I thought that he had attached the flash to the guitar directly! It looked like a guitar light stand! The notion cracked me up, so I had to snap a picture of it!

Sendy+Bryan's Engagement: Behind The Scenes - Reflector

What's a simple way to throw a little extra ambient light on your subjects? Use a big reflector! That's my buddy and fellow photographer Brian fighting the wind and casting some lovely golden light on Sendy and Bryan's faces.

The concept might be simple, but it can be deceptively difficult to pull off. First off, we were in Half Moon Bay where the wind is world famous! Brian's a strong guy, but even he had to struggle to keep the reflector from flying loose.

Then there's the challenge of reflecting enough light to illuminate their faces without blinding them.

Because Brian did a great job, I didn't have to set up my off-camera flashes (which would have blown down) which simplified things greatly for me. Thanks Brian!

For more photos from the shoot, check out my other blog!

Customized Stamps, Part 1

I was watching Chase Jarvis's Holiday Mailer video when I heard him mention something about customized postage stamps. Customized postage stamps? (Gollum voice) What's that precious?!!!

Turns out he was talking about photo.stamps.com. What a great concept! I wanted to test it out with one of my favorite photos of my nephew. Since his mom's birthday was coming up, I thought why not turn this experiment into a gift? The price is pretty steep, about $18 before shipping and taxes for 20 first class stamps. But seeing my nephew on a stamp is pretty darn priceless!

I will write a follow up post when they arrive.

Get Down and Dirty

I recently took my sister and her little boy to the Oakland Zoo. Every time the zoo train rolled by, Jakey would announce "choo choo!" So of course we HAD to let him ride the train. I had no interest in the train experience, I just wanted to capture my sister and Jakey's excitement. So I had them sit as far back in the train as possible while I sat in the row just ahead of them. Once the train started moving, I got down on the floor and started shooting. Happily there was no one in my row, so I was able to shoot with complete freedom. When the train came back to the station, I got the weirdest looks from people, but I didn't care because I got some really cool shots of the little bugger riding his first train!

Stop Whining and Start Shooting

I really don't like the camera on my Droid X phone. 8 mega pixels you say? Bah! My old iPhone had far less, but took far better pictures. I don't know if it's the lens, or the software, or what, but the Droid X just doesn't take great pictures.

So the other day I was at the Amtrak station in Emeryville waiting for the train to San Jose. I saw some interesting patterns in the area near the rear entrance, so I pulled out my Droid X to snap some pics. I press and hold the camera button/shutter release to activate the camera. Wait, wait, wait, okay cool, camera is on. I compose the shot then look for an onscreen virtual shutter release, but can't find one. I recompose then press the shutter release. Nothing happens. Oops, gotta HOLD the shutter release button again. Wait, wait, wait... I give up, mutter curses under my breath as I start to put the camera away. SNAP! The phone finally takes a shot. More cursing. Then I glance down at the screen, hey, that's an interesting shot I think. I take a closer look and though the focus is off, the shot is actually a lot neater than what I had planned to shoot. Moral of the story? Just shoot. Yeah your camera might suck, but just keep shooting, it might surprise you once in awhile.

P.S. I still want the iPhone 4 for Verizon :-)

Tethered Shooting

I recently upgraded to Lightroom 3. The noise reduction has greatly improved, but I wasn't too impressed with the overall package, especially since LR3 seemed more sluggish than its predecessor. But then my buddy Brian told me matter-of-factly that LR3 supported tethered shooting. "No freaking way!" I responded, except I didn't say "freaking". So I fired up Lightroom and lo and behold, under the File menu was an option for Tethered Capture!

All this time I thought I had to buy additional expensive software and cables to achieve this, when all I needed was LR3 and the USB cable that came with my camera. If Lightroom doesn't recognize your camera, first make sure that it's compatible with LR3, if it is, then go into your camera's menu and switch it away from USB mass storage mode.

I'm looking forward to trying it out for real, but I better be careful about not pulling my laptop onto the ground as I move my camera around!

Email-To-Blog Test

One of the many excuses I have for not blogging as often as I'd like is that I'm not always in front of my computer. So to get rid of one more lame excuse, I'm testing out Blogger's post-by-email feature. Some questions I have: With apparently no control of the HTML how will my post look? How do i display things like numbered lists? How will the images be laid out? Can I add links? How long does it take to update my blog? These are just a few of the questions swimming in my head. Only one way to learn and that is to just do it! Picture of my charging area in my hotel room (see previous post). Editor's note: Looks like I'll need to set up some general styling rules to take care of the huge text above (after I make these changes, everything will look normal). The blog updated instantaneously! It appears that photos appear at the top of the post.

Hotel Base Camp Tips

Last weekend I had the pleasure of shooting Joni and Matt's lovely wedding in Hanford, California. I'm going to have a lot more to say about that after I've delivered the photos to them. Until then, I want to take a moment to talk about how you can keep your equipment and data safe in your hotel room. Let me first say, the hotel staff was very nice and professional, and all the guests seemed to be decent people, but it's always better to be safe than sorry. The most important thing is to not look like a photographer. Travel stealthily and you reduce the chance of being the target of thieves. Don't be flashy: keep your gear in plain looking bags, so you can fly under the radar. My most valuable gear (cameras, lenses, flashes, laptop, etc.) stayed with me at all times. My less valuable (and less temperature-sensitive) equipment stayed in the trunk of my car. This gear consisted of light stands, sand bags, and other pieces of grip that was not absolutely vital to the shoot. Carting them from the car into the room everyday would have drawn too much attention. Always hang the "Do not disturb" sign on your door. This makes it seem like you're inside even when you're not. This also prevents housekeeping from coming into your room to do the daily cleaning. I'm not saying that housekeeping is untrustworthy, but usually they keep the door ajar while they clean your room. This creates an opportunity for potential thieves to come inside. Side benefit: since I knew that I wasn't going to have someone clean my room everyday, it forced me to think more green and use my towels more sparingly :-) Keep the lights on when you're away. This goes against my green philosophy, but if anyone passes by the door or windows, you want them to think that you're inside. If you're on or near the ground floor, keep the windows closed, so that no one outside can see your equipment. If you're shooting on multiple days, make sure that your image files are in at least two locations. For me, I always had a copy on my laptop and another one on my external drive. When I went out to the shoots, I kept the external drive with me and left the laptop in the hotel room (hidden inside my little backpack, which was placed inside a dresser drawer). If you can afford it (which I cannot right now), buy enough flash cards for the entire assignment. In this way, you can be confident that if both hard drives crash, you still have the cards. Lastly, I apologize for the quality of the photos above. I don't like blaming my failures on gear, but this time it's unavoidable: my new Droid X sucks sucks sucks! Don't let the 720p camera fool you (like it did me), the lens itself is horrible! I miss my first generation iPhone :-(