Here is a sweet faced Pup! She tagged along on a photo shoot with her parents, and I of course devoted a lot of attention to pup portraits. Fortunately she was very calm and didn't wiggle around much. Thus I could crisply focus on her eyes. See how fuzzy the rest of the photo is? There are examples of shallow depth of field. The blur is a result of lens (50mm f/1.4), not photoshop - I'm focusing at a very specific distance only. This is great for dramatizing features like eyes. Of course with dogs, the nose turns out to be very blurry, as it's so far from their eyes. With people, the nose is more so in focus than on a dog. Unless it's a profile pic of a dog of course; then the nose and eyes are on closer to being on the same plane.

The second pic shows an After and Before shot. I thought the colors could use more drama, so in Lightroom I bumped up the saturation, as well as the dark colors (the "blacks" of "darks" lever in Lightroom, or use levels in Photoshop). Then I went in and specifically further saturated the eyes, to really bring out that lovely amber eye color that looks so good on dogs. What a difference! The grass looks lusciously green, her fur velvety and eyes intense. Just a few quick mouse clicks and voila.

I spent three hours photographing babies and kids with the Easter Bunny yesterday, at an Easter Party. Hanging out with a costumed theme character was new to me, and it was nice to find out that they are just normal people, inside animal costumes. Easter Bunny was an actor specializing in Shakespeare performances, but upon learning that Easter Bunny pay rate far exceeds Shakespeare acting gig pay rates, snapped up this job.

Around kids, he didn't speak, but gestured effectively with his mittened hands and tilts of his enormous head. When it was just us, he talked animatedly about Shakespeare through his mesh eyes, and commented on how hot it was inside the costume, and how frustrating it was not to be able to tend to a facial itch. Many babies cried. I have several photos of the Easter Bunny holding wailing babies. Little girls, about age 6, seemed to be the most enamored. One even tried to engage him in games, yanked on his tail, and tried to boss us around. He would have none of it; he crossed his arms and looked in the other direction, and we exchanged looks of exasperation through the black mesh.

Interesting, how comfortable people are to be in contact with the Easter Bunny. Lots of friendly pats on the arm, leg, head, torso. If I were inside a costume, even one with a thick layer of padded fur, I think I'd still feel odd having a much reduced personal space. I guess one gets used to it.

How could I have been ignorant of Photoshop Actions before? I used Super Fun Happy action (by TotallyRad Actions.com) to produce this ethereal yet contrasty effect on the pic to the left.

Beautiful days are great. But bad for photos (like that to the right, below), when people want their pics taken outdoors in the sun. Direct sun makes harsh shadows under the eyebrow bone, and thus the shadow is particularly obscuring on those with deep set eyes. What to do??
Had I been better prepared, I could've used a spot of flash. But I was whisked away to photograph without much warning, while my external flash lay waiting in my tote bag stashed in the kitchen. I was left to post-processing, ie, Lightroom, to take care of things. There is a function called "Fill light" to do exactly this - fill in shadows with light, but it was not enough. I went in with a area-specific paintbrush with "Brightening" function, and lit up the shadowed areas. It worked!

Look at these! I have used various Photoshop Action Sets on the original photo, which is on the bottom row, middle. I downloaded the action sets from thepioneerwoman.com (for free!), a fantastic blog about photography, food, and life. Action sets do a sequence of things adjusting layer opacity, blur, levels... all automatically, to achieve all sorts of effects!
Here we have (left to right, top to bottom): Colorized, Bring On The Eyes and Edge Burn, Heartland, Seventies, Original and B&W. Heartland really does look like an old faded photo from the first depression.
Photoshop has built in actions, like Sketch and Brush Strokes. But these actions are rather gimmicky, and the results look very photoshoppy. Anyways, I'll no doubt be applying these to some of my work pics.

Who would've guessed that the South Bay mountains were are speckled with dozens of high end wineries, all with expansive views of valleys and forests? Their engagement party was at one of such wineries, just east of Los Gatos, up a windy windy road with.

I did my best to talk minimally, as I was still subject to sudden coughing attacks. Fortunately, while photographing I experience a sort of adrenaline rush, that temporarily over-rides unhealthy feelings. But I did tote around my travel mug of warm tea. Guests must have though I was a coffee addict.

It was part engagement portraits, part event coverage. Both were enjoyable, as the winery was so pretty plus it was sunny and warm - hard not to be in a good mood. This pic was originally a 3/4 length photo, but then I noticed her smile, and I wanted the photo focus to be on their faces. So I cropped really tightly. That is one reason why I take high resolution photos! Had it been a low-resolution photo, such cropping would result in a pixelated pic.

A few days ago, I went on a photo location research trip. Charlotte was all too happy to accompany, and hopped in the car to join me on an excursion to a section of the Presidio just west of where the Golden Gate Bridge attaches to SF. It's on Merchant road (which is off Lincoln, which goes under the 1, in case you're interested).

Wildflowers were heavily in bloom - but when I returned yesterday with clients - it seemed that the flowers must have been blown off their stems, because there was no where near as lovely a carpet of yellow flowers. Anyways, the pic below would be great if it weren't for that ugly stick coming out of the bottom left corner. I suppose it adds to the atmosphere.

Charlotte had climbed atop a concrete block, and was presented with a steep concrete incline. She stopped, unsure of how to proceed. Meanwhile, I sat at the base of the block, to capture her puzzled/ concerned expression. I digitally lightened her eyes, (the right eye was in shadow) and then added a bit more of her amber eye color to the irises. Brought the saturation of Blue shades up. For the bridge pic, I enhanced saturation of blue, red and yellow, and threw in a vignette; the dark shadow around the edge, to pull it all together.

I'm trying to recover from something flu-like. But I still dragged myself out and managed to fake healthiness for an hour, as I had this couple to photograph. They're visiting from out of town, so there's no postponing the shoot. It was also the windiest day ever. We found some sheltered nooks in which to photograph, so her bangs weren't flying all over the place. This was actually an old door to some abandoned barracks (? Not sure of the names of military buildings).

I've been experimenting with desaturating. That is, taking color away from photos. Complete desaturation winds up with a B&W photo. Partial desaturation results in an ages, or antiqued photo.

I like what desaturation did to this pic. It softens the feel of the whole photo, in contrast to the toughness brought by the leather jacket. This photo just called for desaturation - there's not a broad or bright color palette to begin with, but there are some great textures to play up (folds of the jacket, detailing of shirt) and his expression is a little enigmatic, as opposed to outwardly beamingly happy.

One cannot always rely on lens alone for a nicely blurred background. Here, standing among the branches of a flowering shrub, the busy-ness of the shrubbery distracts from the woman's face (below). The plant details are too close to the camera (similar distance from the camera as her face) to be blurred out by the lens. So, enter Photoshop, and Gaussian Blur. I found a tutorial via google, and learned how to blur the background to the degree I wanted, and then to select which areas should be in focus. Now the face, especially the eyes are sharply in focus (above), really drawing attention to the face despite the flowers all around.

San Francisco weather has been fantastic. Cool, breezy and sunny. I like it because it puts my clients in a good mood. No stress about whether or not we'll have to postpone due to rain, no worrying about keeping kids warm.

This playground pic was from two days ago. But I'm actually going to talk about today's experiences, unrelated to this photo. I did head shots for two different men today, and it's curious to me that men should feel so much more self conscious and ill-at-ease with the camera than women. Are men simply less often photographed (by friends, family etc) as they grow up, and as adults, and thus have less experience? Perhaps having one's pic taken suggests vanity, or being confident in one's looks - perhaps considered feminine attributes? It could be societal - take any gossip magazine and I'm pretty sure there are way more photos of women than men. (Most) men want to see photos of women. Women like to see photos of women (though for different reasons than men). It all adds up to women being more likely to be (and used to being) Looked At than men (Whether that's good or not is another conversation, and of course this can lead into all sorts of discussions about objectification and what not.)

I am amassing a collection of flying baby/ small children photos. It really works to get little humans to smile. She otherwise gave me very suspicious looks, as she peered down the lens of my camera. This gig was the kind of assignment I really enjoy. The family was visiting the Bay Area, and hired me to document their fun times in Golden Gate Park. Apparently they'd previously done the same in Hawaii, to much success.

We went to the Golden Gate Park Children's Playground, and wow did the kids' faces light up! The little boy declared that This was the Biggest Playground he's ever seen. The little girl finally started smiling non-stop. Skip the zoo, skip the Cal Academy - if you've got little kids to keep happy in SF, head over the the GGP Playground - it's free and it's a little kid's dream come true. Will post playground pics soon!

One hour out of San Francisco is a beautiful wilderness area. Actually, it's ranch land, but the ranchers are kind enough to share this chunk of lush, rolling hills with us ordinary city folk... and dogs! Off leash dogs! Very unusually generous. Most hikes in the Bay Area don't allow dogs at all. But dog owners aren't the only ones feeling sorry for ourselves; many hikes don't allow bikes or horses either.

This is Sunol Regional Wilderness, just south east of Pleasanton in East Bay. I'd first read about it when I typed "dog friendly bay area hikes" into google. Charlotte was absolutely delighted. She kept looking back at me as if to say: Can I really run where ever I want? Really? Here she is, running after ground squirrels. Heralding her arrival, ground squirrels called out warning squeaks to fellow ground squirrels: Predator in the Vicinity! And there was a sudden movement in spots all over the grassy meadows, as a mad dash was made for underground burrows.

While waiting in the Bride Waiting Area, I asked her to tell me how she'd met her husband-to-be. A very expressive woman, she told me the tale, complete with facial expressions and hand gestures, reliving the moments. Here, she was telling me the point at which she noted her fiance-to-be to be amazingly intriguing. I can imagine she leaned toward him while they were seated at the table, giving him this exact My You Are Intriguing look. Why is there a FINLAND poster in the background, you might ask? Well, we were in the Finnish Brotherhood Hall, that is why. She's Greek and Mexican, but her good friend and wedding organizer is Finnish.

I photographed for 7.5 hours straight. I developed a callus on the thumb of my camera holding hand within that time. I had the foresight to pack myself a sandwich and snacks. What do photographers do while everyone is eating dinner? Well, I snagged myself a near by table. I wasn't planning to eat, but the groom insisted I get something. I got myself a soup and coffee, but put it on my own tab. Coffee. I extremely rarely drink coffee, especially in the pm, but I really needed it. The night was young and I was already exhausted.

It's all about textures. And composition. I like to photograph mundane inanimate objects. These of course are details from a sail boat. There is lots of rope on board boats. It's a wonder it doesn't all get tangled up.

I have far more portrait experience than landscape. Given a sunset while on a boat in San Francisco Bay, it's hard to go wrong. Is that Alcatraz? I don't remember. I like that there are 2 lit windows in the dark silhouette. I did a lot of photoshop tweaking with the blue photo. With scenery, I can bring up the saturation, contrast and colors to high level to bring out the aesthetic qualities of the photos. If I did that to a people photo, the skin tones would look radioactive.

He proposed, less than a minute earlier. It was all planned - a private sail boat (pretending to be a group sailing, just so happened that the only other customer was a camera-happy Chinese American woman), open call for ipods to be played on board, sailing out to the calm waters near Sausalito... She said Yes.

The captain told me that his boat has had a 100% Yes rate thus far. I recommend his tour/ sail boat ride, should you ever be inclined to experience SF from the bay: http://sailsf.com/boatride.html

The difficulty of photographing a proposal is photographing before the proposal actually happens. I didn't want the girlfriend to think I had a weird hobby of photographing unknown couples while they're being cozy. Of course she probably figured out what was going on, but still. I positioned myself so that the captain was between myself and the couple, so I could face and talk to the captain and opportunistically lean out and nab a photo of the couple.

Once he proposed, it was much easier. I could stand in front of the couple and take photos, get them to sit/ stand in certain places. Photographing on boats is tricky; I already need two hands to hold and stabilize the camera. Also, it was cold! I should have known, to wear gloves, and a more wind-proof outfit. Eventually the captain gave me a windproof blanket, but try hanging on to a flapping blanket while hanging on to the boat and holding a camera steady. Well, I got some good photos anyways; I'm always up for new photographic challenges. Besides - talk about photography perks! A ride around the SF bay at sunset - I can hardly complain.

He emailed me last night: " I'm getting Married tomorrow morning (10:30am) at the City Hall. Our Photographer/Witness just flaked out on us." Just so happened I had a really short teaching job that ended at 9:30am today, so... off I went to the San Francisco City Hall. I'd often driven pass the grand, domed building on Van Ness, but never thought about what went on in its interiors. Turns out the indoors is quite impressive, with a marble staircase, decorated ceilings, sculptural lamp posts.

A batch of four couples were brought up to the fourth floor, and were asked to select a place for the ceremony. The MC recommended some good photography spots to me. While the MC married the 3 other couples, I took some candids. These were completely unposed poses. I also took some pics where they were pretending to be candid, and of course they didn't turn out as good. Maybe I'll post them for comparison's sake later.

And then in the afternoon I was off on a private charter boat with the captain, and a man who was to propose to his then girlfriend... but more on that tomorrow.

I first learned the word Diptych while in art school. I was asked to critique a fellow grad student's work, which consisted of 2 square wood panels, about 16"x 16" and 2" deep, was layered in skin-toned wax and embedded with horse hair, the tufts of which had been cut at different lengths. "It's a diptych" the artist added, meaning to be helpful.

While I never further forayed into Diptychs while in art school, I have found myself experimenting with them in the presentation of my photos. At first, because my website is best designed to feature landscape oriented pictures - I felt like there was a lot of space on either side of my portrait oriented pics. So I started putting 2 images together, like this above.

A diptych, in an artistic sense, is a fancy name for an artwork consisting of 2 pieces. They work together. That's it. So when I put photos together, I try to choose ones that show different aspects of a person. I could do Smiling and Crying. Here we have Close Up and Far Away. The images could contrast, or they could match. The photos are placed so that they function compositionally as one. For instance, had I placed the tiptoe photo on the left of the face photo, the tiptoe photo would point the viewer's eye out of the frame of the pic, instead of towards the face, making for an entirely different composition.

My t-shirt design was published, and mass produced! It premiered at SaveNature.org's annual fundraiser, Bowl-The-Planet. The entire Serra Bowl was rented out, and supporters came out to bowl, win prizes, and bid on silent auction items. I donated 2 photo portrait sessions, and both those sold.

I love it when a group of people self-assembles into a good composition for a photo. Even better when some of those people are wearing my t-shirt. I use shutter priority at around 0.4" with my wide angle lens 17-40mm, f/4 with flash/diffuser for night time social events. The f/4 ensures that even though everyone's faces is not on the same vertical plane, they are still all in focus. My portrait lens with f/2.8 or f/1.4 have a narrow range of focus and are bad for these situations.

I had photography duty, but not before bowler registration duty. I was extremely confused - forms for people to fill out, wrist bands to slap on, credit cards to process, pre-registered people to look up, lane assignments, receiving donations/ pledges, papers to file ... argh! A computer automated system would have been helpful, but this was all by hand, pen and paper. Next time I'm registering for something, I will be very patient with those behind the registration table.

She is a skin care specialist for a spa, and wanted to be photographed in a tranquil, natural setting. I thought a bamboo forest might provide that zen feeling. The coral colored top was great for bringing warmth to the picture. At first she was perplexed as to why I was taking so many photos of her in the same pose. It's because with each pose, there is a slight change in the tilt of the head, the cheese of the smile, the open-ness of the eyes, the behavior of the hair. For headshots, all these things are very noticeable (unlike a series of family candids; facial features are not so much the subject of attention), and so the ideal situation is for the client to have as many pics to choose from as possible.

Babies left and right! I employed a new focusing technique this time - the same that I used for capturing ballet in action shots. On full auto mode, I half press the shutter (I think on point and shoots too) and the camera makes its best guess as to what I want to focus on. In my new method, I tell the camera to Only Ever focus in the middle - that way I can make sure the focus is exactly on say the eye, instead of on say, the best guess which may be the cheek. I use AF mode for this, for those of you with DSLRs. Another step towards getting those crisp single eyebrow-hair defining photos I've been aspiring to. The 50mm prime lens helps immensely too.