Chris George

Had a chance to do some food photography last week for Chris George, the executive chef at Roy's in Pasadena. This is my first attempt at lighting food. Used a very simple set-up...one softbox and one bounce card.

Fundamental Commercial Photography

That's the class I'm currently enrolled in. During this semester we've shot many different things using various lighting techniques but I've found throughout the semester that my assignments were always focused around a common theme... Can you figure out what it is from the images below? (I shot these for my final project on digital so that I can have a color copy of them. The actual assignment was shot on large format B&W film.)

If you guessed GLASS, then you are absolutely right...and very, very observant too! But I suppose I can see why some people would think otherwise...

Mammoth in late April

With El Nino weather this year, we were very fortunate to have snow storms well into April and even early May at Mammoth Mountain. Since we have yet to take advantage of the massive amounts of snow (over 10 feet base in late April!) in MM, we finally found some time to do a quick ski/boarding trip. BTW, it is so late in the season when we went that fishing season has already started! Didn't take too many photos but here are a few that I was able to get...

Serene June Lake at sunset on the first day of the fishing season... I was talking to one of the fishermen at the lake and he says that the layer of ice on top of the lake just melted that afternoon.

Heading south on Highway 395 right before Mammoth Lakes

The Tufas at Mono Lake

Mono Lake at sunrise...

More Tufas...

Being El Nino, there was plenty of rain during the winter months therefore resulting in a huge population of poppies and other wild flowers in the desert this year. This picture of Na and Kenji is from the California Poppy Reserve in Lancaster on the way home.

Our new Christmas presents!

I realize we're no where close to Christmas and that it's almost summer but I finally had a chance to take some pictures of our bicycles this past week. These bikes were our Christmas presents to each other and we absolutely love them! They are Electra bikes and we really like their styling, colors and just overall "cool" factor (well, at least cool to us!). Na has the Ticino 8d and I have the Amsterdam. We don't take them out as much as we like but we definitely try to take them out as often as possible. With warmer weather and summer around the corner, we're looking forward to riding them a lot more often.

Harmony Midori Lim

Congratulations to Yoko and Phil on the newest member to the family! Harmony is such a little cutie! With their laidback personalities, we're sure they'll be great parents to little Harmony.

So one of the first things I saw when I walked into Y&P's place was the green wall they had in the hallway and in Harmony's room. I love the color and decided to shoot the majority of the pictures using the green as the backdrop. We tried different props to put Harmony on including a leather chair, a stool and even a snare drum! Check out some of our favorites...

The Clarity of 4x5 Film

I love this shot! The assignment was to shoot glass objects as part of a class that I'm currently taking. This was taken using a large format camera on 4x5 black and white film. The clarity and detail of the printed image is amazing! The negative was scanned in order to produce this digital image. BTW, no post-processing at all...just removal of some specs of dust on the negative.

Portland, OR

Finally had a chance to sort through some pictures of our trip to Portland. We had a really good time in this beautiful and environmentally conscious city! And we were extremely lucky with the weather, too. Rain was expected in the middle of our trip but the storm came late and it started to rain right when we arrived at the airport for the trip home. We biked a lot, drank a lot and ate WAAAAAY too much! In other words, it was good times!

The picture below is one of my favorites from our trip. This was taken from Crown Point along the Columbia River Gorge. The view is spectacular from up there and again, we were quite lucky with the weather. The really cool thing is that we are in Oregon, but just on the other side of the Columbia River is Washington state.

Here are some shots I thought that really summarizes downtown Portland...

Na and I goofing off at the Portland Saturday Market...

The Nines Hotel! This place is sooooo cool...everything from the location to the decor. The lobby is on the 8th floor (above a Macy's!) with all natural lighting supplied by an open atrium while all floors above have a bird's eye view of the lobby and Urban Farmer (the restaurant) below.

We took a bike tour of Historic Downtown Portland and got really lucky b/c we were the only two people on the tour! It was like a private tour for just the two of us. We decided to keep the bikes for an additional 24 hours after the tour so we can cruise around town. Weird thing is...it cost more than twice as much to rent a bike than it does a car! Bike rental for 2 people for 24 hours...$60 total. Car rental for 24 hours...$24.70 total (including tax!).

Some of the many places that we ate at...(from top, left) - The Sugar Cube, Voodoo Doughnuts, Urban Farmer, Saucebox, Brunchbox, Andina, and Mother's...

And of course, some of the food that we stuffed our faces with along w/some action shots!!!

I had a staredown contest w/Portland's official doughnut from Voodoo...guess who won? (See answer below...)

Happy hour at Urban Farmer in the Nines lobby...

Multnomah Falls - easy drive from downtown Portland and just awesome views in every direction. Wished we had more time, although we did hike to the top of the falls.

We arrived early and were able to snap a few shots before a lot of people showed up. I think two minutes after we took this shot, people were all over the bridge in the middle of the picture.

Here's a video Na took of us riding along the Willamette River on Saturday morning. The sun was just coming up and the city was just waking up. We were on our way to breakfast and just enjoying our ride and the cool, crisp air of Portland, Oregon...