3 Neighbors, 3 Moms, 3 Babies

I'm going to try to convince Jessica to do a photo shoot. Chloe has incredible eyes,
and mom is really photogenic too!


Wait a minute...what's going on here? That's Sienna's hand...and look at that smile.

Introducing Karen and Mateus (bottom) and Jessica and Chloe (middle) to the blogosphere - My blog frequenters already know Susy and Sienna. They're all neighbor mommies. Mateus is the little guy - he was born premature but he's gained some weight and is now over 6 lbs (yay!). He's still a little delicate. I'll be taking a few pictures of him in a couple of days and will do a full shoot for his baptism and as he gets a little older.

These pics were just taken on the spur of the moment on a driveway and the moms look a little tired from their babies. Check back soon when moms and babies get dolled up.

Update: For those of you who wonder how often I update this blog, I have set up an email alert service that will email you when I have new posts or you can add it to your RSS reader. I do try to update it as often as I can as you can see by my recent almost daily updates.

On photography

Being the "I hear you take pictures" guy amongst my friends, I get asked a lot what kind of camera they should get or what kind of equipment I use etc. What I always tell them is pretty much, it really doesn't matter. Any modern DSLR will do the trick as long as the person shooting knows what he or she is doing in the right lighting - which takes practice and doing a little homework. If you've noticed in this blog, it's not about Canon versus Nikon because it takes away from the REAL stars and the heart and soul of this blog: the pictures and the people. However, being the geek that I am, it's inevitable that I will chat about the gear sometimes, especially if I get something new.

* Update: I've added the feedblitz email subscription so now you can get an email notifying you when I've updated the blog, which I'll try to do more frequently.

Cool Beach Pic

It has been scorching hot in Socal these past few days. Maybe this water pic will psychologically cool you down. I've got more pictures coming soon, when I introduce some new babies.

Laguna Beach Blowout:: Sienna

I warned you these were gonna be devastatingly cute. It's awesome when you actually capture "love" in a picture. Kris and Susy are just beaming - and Kris never smiles. Sometimes I get stuff out of my camera that even surprises me and in this case, it was the sky and water, which was perfect despite the earlier rain. In fact, the rain made it a lot more interesting. More pics to come soon.

Another cool picture

Click to enlarge

I caught this cool shot when I told Bryana to "run through the birds" (she didn't end up doing that). But I did catch the seagulls as they were flying away. Click for a nice high res 1280 desktop background-worthy shot.

I had another shoot with Sienna also at the beach last Sunday but I'm saving that for the next couple of days when I get swamped again and can't take pics for blog posting...so be forewarned, you are in for some devastating cute. For now, enyoy.

Laguna Beach Blowout: Bryana

Cool motion shot, I've been waiting for an opportunity to try this shot.


Bryana is ALMOST 5' tall.

Bryana stopped by yesterday for a shoot as a gift for her boyfriend (awesome gift IMO) in lovely Laguna Beach so we tried a few new things, new poses, new backgrounds etc. to keep things fresh. In my opinion, shooting in the sand next to the water at a beach is not really ideal although most people think it's the best. I think we got some awesome shots with great colors (it also helps that she's photogenic and loves to smile).

Evelyn & Randy @ Laguna Beach

Yesterday Randy and Evelyn stopped by Laguna Beach along with Ann and Phil and once again I was rueda numero cinco (haha it bugs R&E when I say that). Anyway, we took some quick pics walking down to the beach that surprisingly turned out nicely despite the sun having set. It only took us around 15 minutes to take all these pictures. I suggested if they want to take pics to wear solid colors but it was their idea to show up wearing matching bright red shirts! Just messin :D

Cool Picture

I'm staying in Laguna again this week, which means some nice picture opportunities. Sienna is stopping by this weekend for a shoot and I got some nice spots picked out. I spoted this flower right outside the door and the lighting was just right. Pretty cool colors and blur huh?

Lynn and Donovan has nailed down a date and locaion for their wedding - Jan. 5th, 2008 in Irvine. Yours truly will be taking the pictures. To celebrate, I've posted a few shots from our shoot in Laguna Beach a while back.

A subtle update to the blog - pictures now are in a bigger size, so no need to click to enlarge. The adspace has been removed on the left. This is ideal for resolutions 1024x768 and larger.

OC Fair Part 2

I fifth wheeled the OC Fair with my good friends Ann & Phil (above) and Evelyn & Randy. E&R are engaged btw. Anyway, I tried out some low light photos to try to get some cool blurred light backgrounds with the merry-go-round. I couldn't decide on the color or sepia/blue split tone for the last picture.

Cool Classic Car

I snagged a couple of pics of this cool classic car last night @ the OC County Fair. I think this is a V8 Ford 1940 DeLuxe Woodie - I'm not a car buff but that's the closest I can find by looking it up on the Internet. Speaking of cars, check out this VIDEO of the ultimate carwash - only around $10,000!

Getting your DSLR off auto

Most beginners who buy maybe a Canon Rebel __ or Nikon D__ DSLR have their cameras on Auto and never really stray from it. Or some people use the pre-set settings (those little pictures). Now those work fine, but to really unlock the features of your camera, you really need to venture to the other "letter modes" - For Nikons (since I have the pic): M (full manual), A (aperture priority), S (shutter priority), P (semi-full auto). I'm gonna give you a rundown of 2 of the modes I use the most: A, and S.

A: What is it? [controls how big the circle opens up on the lens]

When to use it? [When you want control the focus blur of your backgrounds or dark situations when you don't want to use flash]
* indoors without flash
* natural light portraits
* pictures of stuff where the background is blurred or fades to a blur.

S: What is it? [controls how fast the camera takes a picture, the faster the less light but less motion blur]

When to use it? [The slower the speed, the more light gets recorded but it becomes very sensitive to even the slightest movement, which is why you have blurry pictures]
* fast paced sport events
* teacup ride in Disneyland where you want to motion blur the background
* smooth water effect in rivers, waterfalls, etc.

Here's the great part: you choose the A (commonly known as F-stop) or S and the camera takes care of the rest. You just pick what your priority is depending on what the situation you're in calls for. The shutter speed is camera dependent, while the aperture is lens dependent - the lower the F, number better (and more expensive). More later with examples.

A Preview of Sienna

I love this look.


Being cool.

Here's a little preview of Sienna's upcoming photo book. The rest of the pics have not been shot yet and we'll go to the beach in a couple of weeks to finish them with mom and dad. The nice blur effects are thanks to my new lens with a big aperture (how big the circle opens) shot wide open. More later.

Since it's summertime and you can't take your lappy for a dip it in the pool or feed it a piece of cold watermelon, I just got this great laptop cooling stand made by Belkin. It has a fan underneath and curved design for better heat dissipation, especially important in this summertime hot weather. It actually works very well and the bottom of my laptop is fairly cool to the touch. It also angles it up nicely and keeps the heat away from your lap and other important body parts. It's USB powered, fairly quiet, and very light and portable. Best of all, it was only $25 at Newegg.

Also some updates to the blog: The tags list was getting too long so it's now the trendy cloud layout. Also, I've added a live webcam stream. I'll usually be on at nights.

Cool Pic of Downtown LA

This picture was taken from inside a car earlier this evening with my little Canon point and shoot camera. It's surprising how nice pictures come out with just a little pocket camera with the right lighting. It's all about timing and lighting. It came out quite nicely so I thought I'd share. Too bad for the power lines.

Me as a Simpsons Character!

I uploaded this image of me (a recent headshot for a book) to Simpsonize-Me and it produced this image. I didn't get to tweak it because it was crashing from the hits so I quickly screen captured it. It doesn't really look like me (Though I do have big eyes) so hopefully the site will stop crashing for me to adjust this guy to look more 'Asian' (although the Asian characters on the Simpsons are NOT good lookin! - Cookie Kwan anyone?) Is this cool or what?! Try it out for yourself and feel free to share the results with me!

On the photography front, I haven't shot anything lately but I did get a new lens that I'm excited to use, so I will have some new stuff shortly.



Update: Ok I swore I would keep this blog strictly photography and never "contaminate" it by putting random crap on here but I just couldn't resist. This video is from a prison in the Philippines. These are all actual inmates practicing for Michael Jackson's Thriller! I highly doubt the state prisons here in California are going to do anything similar anytime soon, although I do suggest Beat It to solve the Bloods vs. Crips rivalry.

Jeff is a Dad 2.0

My friend Jeff AKA Agent 619 in Chula Vista just had his 2nd baby boy! You can see pregnant Rosalie pics from Howard's wedding pictures.

Here are pictures of Joshua - Click HERE. Now I'm no baby expert, but Joshua has outstanding skin and looks a little too tranquil in pic #2 - basically, he's suspiciously way too good lookin for not even having left the hospital - not like the usual wrinkly, discolored, smoosh-faced babies.

Sandy & Howard's Wedding Pics

Here are the professional pictures from the wedding photographer Henry Wang. He was a really cool guy. To give you an example, a lot of professional photographers get insecure when guests bring fancy pants cameras to the wedding, such as AC, who brought his Canon 30d and fancy L-lens. Henry not only was really cool about taking a group shot with AC's camera, but offered to lend him a flash for the day. When he couldn't find an extra one, he took the one off his own camera and used it for the shot. How cool is that?

There are a TON of pictures - enyoy - Thank you come again! Click HERE.

The iPhone

My fellow gadget-loving geek Khiemy (See Friends link) stopped by today with a new toy, you might have heard of it - it's by Apple. Anyway, we hooked it up to my wifi and that thing is sweet. Email, web surfing, photo viewing, music, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Yes, I have gadget envy but I'd rather not part with $600 right now.

Mini review: The first thing that strikes you is the screen. It's so clear and sharp that it almost looks fake, like one of those back-lit pre-printed film pictures. Then you start playing with it and it's very intuitive, taking just seconds to navigate everything. Yes, the keyboard was driving me nuts but apparently it's something that you get used to and it gets better. I was impressed by the email features and outlook sync. It even does google calendar, which I use. My one big gripe was the screen gets dirty really quickly but you can wipe it. That and it hangs up a little when you're doing too much too fast - kinda like my old lappy. Anyway, enough gadget envy.

Happy 4th!

Cool Pics

I went pier fishing with the boys the other day in Santa Monica. Even though we didn't catch anything, this guy caught a sting ray. I felt bad for the little guy but the good news is he was let go. Here's a couple of cool shots off the reflection of my sunglasses.