LA Photo Outing
September 26, 2009 / Tags: César, Chinatown, Kathy, Photo Outing
Steven (whom we met at Carol's wedding) invited us to a casual photo outing in LA. It was a good opportunity to get more familiar with the 5D, practice my photography, and meet new friends. Thanks Steven!
After shooting a wedding where speed is critical to get the shot, it was nice to be able to take my time and really think about the picture before I shoot. Or if it didn't come out the way I intended, try again. I took this photo about four or five times before I finally got it to look the way I had pictured it in my head.
I really like this one, but it was all luck. We passed these skateboarders as we were walking down the street. They were sitting down, not really skateboarding, so I looked up at the building and started to frame the shot. As I was doing it, I saw out of the corner of my eye that the skateboarders were getting back up, and that one was going to pass through my frame. So I finished framing, then waited a second or two, and when he passed, I snapped the picture.
Carol & Murim's Wedding
September 19, 2009 / Tags: Carol, Murim, Wedding Photography, Weddings
I finally finished going through the photos from the wedding Kathy and I shot last month. For our first wedding, we were pretty pleased with the results. Here are a few of my favorites.
Kathy took the one on the left, capturing the bride's expression as the groom was arriving. I took the one on the right of the groom at the church before the ceremony. The church had these colored walls with lights positioned close to the wall which made for pretty interesting lighting.
Wide shot of the ceremony.
This one was taken in the same spot as the picture of the groom above, but after the ceremony.
This picture of the bride and her bridesmaids was taken against a different colored wall at the church. We didn't really plan it, but I really liked how the yellow and purple turned out. Having the bridesmaids "admire" Carol was Steven's idea, and it made a much better picture than just having them stand in a row. (Thanks Steven!)
On Saturday, Kathy and I went to Mitsuwa for a late lunch. We saw a sign that said they were having a Hokkaido Food Festival. I had my camera with me, so I took some photos.
Their temporary cash registers (for the festival) were running on Eee PCs running Ubuntu! (They were attached to monitors.)
Unfortunately, we didn't discover the food festival until after we had eaten at the food court, but we bought a few croquettes anyway. They were so oishii (delicious) that we ended up going back to Mitsuwa the next day for lunch.
After Mitsuwa (the first day), Kathy wanted to try out this dessert place in Irvine she had read about, Mochilato. They specialize in mochi ice cream and shaved ice. Yet another reason to move back to Irvine...
New Camera, New Homepage
September 11, 2009 / Tags: 5D Mark II, Jon, Kathy, OCPAC, Photo Outing, The District
Unlike some people, I'm not much of a writer, at least when it comes to personal blogging. For some time now, I have wanted to change my homepage to more of a photo blog, but I never could find the time to write the software. I tried evaluating Wordpress and other open source projects, but nothing was exactly what I wanted (duh). I did find some inspiration though, and with the arrival of my 5D Mark II, I figured now was the time to make it the switch. So a sleepless week later, I present to you ::drumroll:: my new home page.
The main features are a cleaner layout with nicer inline display of images
and better large image display. Instead of going to a separate page, large image display is done using a lightbox. (Click on the image above to test it out.) I wrote all the lightbox code myself -- it's based on the lightbox code I wrote for Arcadia Music, except instead of fixed display sizes, it sends the size of your window to the server and the server determines the optimal size image to send back. Oh, and it's written in JQuery instead of Prototype. I still like Prototype better, but JQuery appears to run faster, and it downloads a lot faster than Prototype + script.aculo.us. The HTML is also super-clean because so much of the heavy lifting is done by the javascript. The new software also supports pretty permalinks and tags. RSS support is planned, as is an open source release.
I'll leave you with a few test shots from the new Mark II. Some of these were taken at the park near my condo, some were taken at The District, and rest were taken at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.
This one is my favorite from the group.
P.S. I'll try to find time to back-fill the galleries from my old homepage.