Eye of Ra

Saturday, November 15, 2008

8/10.. Not bad

As I walked through the city hall today, I found 8 out of the 10 photos I have submitted for the photo banner contest are being displayed as the top 100 "finalists".
After browsing through the rest of the competition, I'm the person with most entries being selected. That's a good sign I hope =), it's quite a sight to see all the photos lined up with my names under there HA!

The winners (8-10 photos will be selected) of the contest will have their artwork displayed in banner form on the streets of the city for a year! I think I have a almost 1/10 of the chance of being selected as probability goes =)

Here are the photos that made it

Serenity

From Beautiful Richmond

Yearning

From Beautiful Richmond

Peace and Nature

From Beautiful Richmond

Dance of Shadows

From Beautiful Richmond

Limitless Revolution

From Beautiful Richmond

Rails to Light

From Beautiful Richmond

Cold Dusk

From Beautiful Richmond

Solitude

From Beautiful Richmond

Friday, November 14, 2008

My first accredited role

So here I was, sitting in the center of front of the row seating, mounted my 40D on the tripod and lenses on my seat ready to be changed. I felt excited and slightly uneasy as hundreds of intriguing eyes staring at my back. Closing my eyes, I sat there waiting for the opening of the dance performance...

That is how I started my first accredited role as photographer. It is always intriguing how things turn out the way you least expected. The director of the academy originally thought I was just a student learning the way of photography and asked me to buy the ticket in order to get in. Due to some misunderstanding, I ended deciding not to go. But things sure turns around 1 day before the event, I became accredited and was appointed in the front most seat.

Lead instructor Yang Yang

From Cindy Yang Dance Academy - The Soul of Dance 2008

I suppose because of my interests in shape and lines within my composition, I felt rather at ease in capturing an event such as this. With manual setting, ISO 1600, I blasted away and end up with full 16gb of photos.

The photos was processed and delivered on Saturday two days ago.. the lead instructor and two of the main dancers were there to see the photos. They loved them! Seeing one of the girl jumping around and keep wanting the photos made me felt great about what I produced.

Moon on Water

From Cindy Yang Dance Academy - The Soul of Dance 2008

There is a beautiful place

From Cindy Yang Dance Academy - The Soul of Dance 2008

Harmony

From Cindy Yang Dance Academy - The Soul of Dance 2008

Dance of Peacock

From Cindy Yang Dance Academy - The Soul of Dance 2008

A Li Lan

From Cindy Yang Dance Academy - The Soul of Dance 2008

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Thoughts on post processing

I still remember the days when I just picked up DSLR, when I rely mainly on Picasa to do "post processing" of my photos. That I was so amazed by its functions and thought "damn that's cheating!" As time progresses, when I became more heavily involved with photography, I started shooting photo in RAW format and began using Digital Photo Professional (DPP) from Canon as main tool of PP. Eventually my friend Tony, who started photography later then I did, started to persuade me to use Adobe Lightroom when he saw some video about it. Oh boy, I sure put up a fight against shifting over, took my about 2 months to even start using it.

Now... I'm a loyal fan and bought a new laptop just for it... lol

I suppose the debate on the practice of post processing the photos will never end. For me though, I believe in PP, not in ways that it can utterly change the photo, but the ability of it to "Simplify" and "Amplify" the existing elements within your composition. I'm writing this as after-thought after some pro-photographers shared their way of "PP" and couldn't agree more with their methods.

Admittedly though, I would go from time to time playing wild with PP, it helps on my creativity and knows what the software is capable of as well.

Original

From Originals

From October Richmond

Extensive post processing was done to eliminate unwanted elements on this shot, the shapes of the vines and the color of autumn were what I wanted to show in this photo.

Original

From Originals

From Morning Macro

Saturation, WB shifting and Vignetting were done to amplify the contrast of lines and color on this shot

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Hunter & Hunted

So I have photoed a coyote during the translation group. I was thrilled throughout the process and really had fun. I felt like a winner when I walked back to the house and realized my robe were soaked because of morning dew.

Now, thinking back of what I did, a guy in black robe(the master of the temple require us to wear a robe the same ones you will see in alot of my temple photos), crouching behind the fences and tip-toeing across the field to get the shot... I was doing all that in front of the whole translation group (10 people and over half are girls)! Even though I've long since learned to ignore people's odd looking stares when I lower to the ground or jump to a higher ground to get the shot I wanted.. These are people who I know personally and they know little of what a photographer would do to get the shot.

Can't help but wondering what their thought were when watching me taking the photo. I suppose it turns out I was the one hunted by people's eyes hehe ;-)

From Meeting with Coyote

Monday, October 20, 2008

Reflection of a week-long assignment

Haha.. I think I'm turning this blog into a religious blog soon :P

From LYMT 觀音法會

Outside of the Mainhall, where ceremony taken place

From LYMT 觀音法會

釋迦牟尼佛 (Shakyamuni Buddha, founder of Buddhism, or 世尊) in the center, 摩訶迦葉尊者 (Mahakayapa) and 阿難尊者(ananda) standing beside the 世尊 (world honored one).

For the past week since Tuesday, I had been working on an assignment for the temple to document one of its annual event, 觀音法會, a 7 day retreat dedicated to Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva (Contemplator of Worldly Sound). Although the ceremony that are being held everyday is the same, the content of offering to Bodhisattva changes everyday. So for this assignment I spent 6 days (I started on second day) on one location (main hall of the temple) shooting repeated events and subjects that are being offered at mostly same time everyday.

From LYMT 觀音法會

Day 2 供花 (Offering of Flowers)

From LYMT 觀音法會

Day 3 供燈 (Offering of Lanterns)

From LYMT 觀音法會

Day 4 供果 (Offering of Fruits)

From LYMT 觀音法會

Day 5 供食,衣,塗 (Offering of clothing, food, fragrance)

From LYMT 觀音法會

Day 6 供珠寶 (Offering of Jewelries)

From LYMT 觀音法會

Day 7 供法寶 (Offering of Sutras)

I suppose some people may find this boring job, but to the contrary, I really believed that this has made me a better photographer. Last week a friend had told me a story which details a photography student seeking advices from a master photographer. What the master told the student to perform a photo shoot in an area repeatingly until the student came up with one or two photos that is top quality. The story rings so true in the situation I faced :). To keep me interested and present best work possible to the temple, I made sure that I would use different lens combination, different angle, different approach to shoot the event everyday.

Obviously, I eventually came to a combination that worked best in the situation. Nevertheless, I gained much experience and I hope the temple liked my work for them as well. Overall, I have made progress in both photography and deeper understanding of what LYMT do. I'm glad~

From LYMT 觀音法會

Empty hall

From LYMT 觀音法會

One of musical instrument used by masters in the temple to guide the recitation

From LYMT 觀音法會

The "under" perspective

From LYMT 觀音法會

Reflection

Thursday, October 2, 2008

My First Wedding

HA! I hope I don't start wrong with that title.

This is a follow up with the William and Irene's engagement, this time I was honored to be their wedding photographer of the day. The session started from 8am in the morning and till 10pm, was really a work out. Nevertheless, I have learned and gained much from this experience and better understood where I stand in terms of Wedding photography. I started from the preparation session of the bride and groom, as the couple are both Buddhist in nature, they wish a much simpler wedding and have everything happened in between their houses. The dinner was hosted in a local vegetarian restaurant by Buddhism decree. My biggest challenge was to make the best out of the house environment, the background and bokeh were often distracting and uninteresting. Despite that, the couple really liked the photos I have produced and hopefully I will be referred in the future ^^. On the side note, the slideshow during the dinner that included the engagement photos were received very well by the crowd as well.