Sunday, December 30, 2007

2008 and Beyond



For some strange reason, things tend to occur in cycles. 2007 will always be remembered by me as a not-so-great year with my grandpa passing away and some major health issues with someone in my family - heck I even went to the ER recently (don't worry, I'm fine). There were some other personal issues as well but I made it through with a better perspective on things and appreciation for life. 2008 will be a great year, I can just feel it.

Looking ahead, here's what's in store for January:

- Lynn and Donovan's wedding where I will be the photographer dude. (Pic above)
- Traveling to Texas, Florida, New York, Michigan and Pennsylvania. (brrr)

Here are some photography new years resolutions:

- Shoot a wedding (soon)
- Upgrade my camera, get a 70-200 lens, and a couple of pocket wizards (poor wallet)
- Use my Polaroid camera (I'm saving this for a special couple)
- Take pictures with my Canon film SLR (yay for film)
- Shoot a scenic place, blow up the picture and hang it on my wall (any suggestions?)
- Take a photo trip with photo friends
- Shoot with friends and a real model (Anyone want to trash their wedding dress?)
- Finally make a picture book for Sienna

That's about it. Thanks for checking in and supporting this little blog. I've managed to keep this going for a whole year with over 100 posts and I hope to post many more exciting pictures and slideshows. I think I'll start doing a few photography product reviews when I get some new stuff and finally show my bag and what I shoot with - maybe - I like to focus on pictures first :) Happy 2008 everybody!!!!

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Updated: Even More Boats








Check out this dusk shot on top with a cool painting filter that makes it look like it's done in oil. I'm trying some new stuff to add a little variety to my pictures and this blog. I haven't tried it with any people pictures but apparently people pay big bucks at the mall for this type of stuff when it comes to portraits. Click on the picture for the full resolution image that you can take to Target or Costco and print out perfectly in 4x6".

Lynn and Donovan are getting married in a couple weeks soon so my wedding debut is coming up! I'm heading over to the reception hall tomorrow to nail down the camera settings and test out some fancy flash setups.


Update: I added another Christmas lights pic and another boats shot.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Balboa Boat Parade





No, I did this on purpose.



These are pictures from the Christmas Boat Parade at Balboa peninsula Island. Suprisingly, the houses were more decked out than the boats. Some went a little TOO far with the decorations. One of them even had a big snowman made out of real snow - rich people are pretty outrageous sometimes. The last picture was taken by putting the camera on manual focus to get those light spheres. Cool huh?

I found this helpful VIDEO on taking pictures of holiday lights, even with small cameras. My advice is just to do a trial-and-error and don't just trust the LCD screen without zooming in. Because it's such a small screen, things appear sharp even when they're slightly out of focus. I personally prefer higher ISO and faster lenses to cumbersome tripods. You can clean up the noise easily and modern DSLR cameras look great even at high ISOs. Have fun.

Update: Some INCREDIBLE award-winning nature photos HERE. (A must see)

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Carien, Holland and Facebook





Carien is from Holland and here for school this quarter. We went out last week and took a few pictures. Notice the awesome lighting on her hair? Forget reflectors and fancy photography equipment, all you need is nature and a good angle. She doesn't normally like pictures of herself but I knew she liked this one (I do too). You wanna know how? It ended up on Facebook almost immediately!

Instead of fighting Facebook and preventing my pictures from being on there, I've decided to embrace it. I've started a new group called "Awesome profile picture" where I invite people who use a photo I took of them as their profile pic. So far there are 5 members including me. Check it out HERE and feel free to friend me up!

Also, I just noticed this is my 100th post of 2007! Thank you everyone for supporting this blog. Lurkers, how bout leaving a comment to celebrate!

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Old and Busted


Cool effect huh? It's a sepia/blue split-tone.

I've been pretty swamped lately so this blog has been a little neglected but I should be posting more pictures of actual people soon. In the meantime, check out this cool rustic wagon wheel picture I took at Craig's house from last time. I try to get some shots of cool things when I'm out taking pictures.

How to take a good picture? I really don't know but here are things that catch my eye besides good looking people:

- Good Lighting: soft natural lighting, like golden sunset time or just cool shadows and shapes.
- Vivid colors: When I see some bright vibrant color, that always gets my attention. Like buildings painting a certain color (see Jazmine's photo shoot in the archives) or flower beds etc.
- Busted up crap: Like this wagon wheel, rusty beat up stuff etc.
- Cool patterns: A row of arches or shapes and patterns are always cool to place someone in front of.

Those are just some things that catch my attention. The great thing is there are no rules. Personally I don't like to shoot too many cliche shots like sunsets. Anyway, more soon hopefully.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Cool or Boring?



Sometimes a little bit of good lighting and simplicity makes things interesting, to me at least. These are just plain white chairs but the window lighting is great. I'll leave it up to the true artists to interpret this in a metaphoric way, but me, I just think it's a cool photo. The trick of course is to get up close and fill the entire frame with the picture. This was taken with a 50mm prime lens.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Why Prime Lenses Rule



This pic was taken at Lelany's house but I will use it to explain why prime lenses are my favorite type of lenses. For those of you who don't know, there are two types of lenses: primes and zooms. Zoom lenses are the most common, where you simply twist the lens to zoom in and out. Prime lenses have a fixed focal length, so to zoom in and out you simply step closer or further back. Now why use this?

1. Very sharp since there are fewer moving parts.
2. Relatively cheap, you can buy a 50mm 1.8 lens for around $100.
3. Bigger apertures (lower F-number) means nice blurs.
4. Relatively smaller size.

The shot above was shot with my favorite 50mm prime lens. I shoot about 95% of all my portraits with a prime lens. You're not going to "look" professional and some people like to show off their big professional lenses, but the problem is no one cares how you look, just your pictures.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Some of Rita's Pictures at Atlanta


A cool shot of a sawfish shark.


Rita and I with the Coke bear.


This picture just cracks me up.






Here's me donating $1 to a beggar...oh wait...

These are some pictures Rita took at the Georgia Aquarium and World of Coke in Atlanta a couple weeks ago with her Nikon D40. See the full set on her Flickr photostream. Good times.