Found a Silver Lining

I read Suzanne Collins’ book series “The Hunger Games” and really really loved it.  When the movie was announced it was instantly on my must-watch list.  While a movie rarely lives up to the books, I was quite happy with it, and I am looking forward to the next two.  In particular I was awe-struck by Jennifer Lawrence’s performance (and eyes if I’m being totally honest).

I’ve had favorite actors for a while, like Leonardo DiCaprio, George Clooney, Anthony Hopkins, and Cuba Gooding Jr. and such.  Not only are they phenomenal actors, but they always find great scripts/directors!  I try to make a point of seeing their movies whenever possible, but I hadn’t found a top tier actress that I really loved.  Jennifer Lawrence intrigued me as Katniss, so I was quite excited to see the Oscar nominated “Silver Linings Playbook” without really knowing exactly what the movie was about.  I wasn’t disappointed, it was great and Jennifer Lawrence was great!

The movie stars Bradley Cooper as Pat, a former substitute History teacher when he leaves a mental hospital where he’s been sentenced for just under a year for nearly beating a man to death when he caught the man in the shower doing inappropriate things with his recently separated (but not divorced) wife, Nikki, who’s an English teacher.  While in the hospital he adopts the motto “excelsior”to see the silver linings in all situations and try to stay positive with the ultimate goal of being a better person so his wife would accept him back.  He starts trying to become the man he thinks his wife wanted by running to lose weight, reading and understand the books she teaches in her curriculum (like Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms”).  It becomes increasingly apparent that Pat hasn’t fully gained control over his anger in a few scenes, and his life instantly gets more complicated when he is set up by his best friend’s wife’s sister, Tiffany (played by Jennifer Lawrence), who is a young widow suffering from depression after losing her police officer husband.

The story is usually directed in a very Hemingway “iceberg” fashion where the context is revealed by the dialogue and only when the movie is half through is the whole plot revealed which I found to be very effective.  There were a few disappointing moments where plot elements were “dumbed down” to ensure audience understanding (like the discussion of “parlay,” but these instances were rare.  The movie reminded me of one of my other favorite movies, “Little Miss Sunshine”for all the good reasons.

She’s the inaugural actress to my favorites list, and I shall make it a point to seek her work out!  It’s just too bad she couldn’t get nominated for best Actress at the Oscars twice!  Speaking of Oscars, wouldn’t it be GREAT if movie theaters reserved a month to re-feature all of the best picture nominations and give laymen like me a chance to see them all? 🙂

Go watch Silver Linings Playbook if you still can! 9.5/10

TV Fall 2012 — The Bad

Generally when I start a tv show, I tend to stick with it like those who attend movies and sticks it out to the end for better or worse, but this year there were shows I just had to check out of.

Drama:
5. Arrow – live action comics could be so good on TV, or so cheesy.
4. Beauty and the Beast – a fairy tale inspired cop show? next.
3. Dallas – watch for what not to do when reduxing a series.
2. Political Animals – when the philandering ex-president is ugly… suspension of disbelief done.
1. Revolution – scifi clichés gone horribly wrong.

Comedy:
5. 2 Broke Girls – sadly the show’s devolved into a weekly repeat.
4. Guys with Kids – this used to be disney channel fodder, now it’s network?
3. Partners – gays gone cliché.
2. The Neighbors – a neighborhood of aliens, a human family moves in. enough said.
1. Happily Divorced – Fran Drescher and that laugh are back? why?!

TV Fall 2012 – The Good

I watch way too much television for my own good, and like any couch potato with a blog, I feel self-important in posting my thoughts on the season.  This year, instead of doing a day-by-day analysis, I’ll make lists, starting with the good.

I think most viewers would agree, 2012 was not a great season for new shows, so my list will include shows that have continued from previous seasons through fall 2012.

Drama:
10. 666 Park Avenue – i’m not usually a fan of suspense/horror, but i’m still watching.
9. Emily Owens MD – panned by critics and subsequently cancelled, but it wasn’t bad!
8. Last Resort – started with a bang and went in too many directions. cancelled.
7. Leverage – is this the end? the show was certainly waning.
6. Parenthood – still an amazing, vastly underrated show.
5. Elementary – the best of the new shows.
4. The Mentalist – a more mature Elementary.
3. Once Upon a Time – the best show from last year slides a few notches.
2. Person of Interest – one of two dramas i’m supremely excited to watch each week!
1. Scandal – season two is A-MAH-ZING!!

Comedy:
10. Ben and Kate – a cute but raw new sitcom.
9. Up All Night – the talented cast keeps the show interesting.
8. Glee – a show that’s running low on relavent issues and new ways to make regionals.
7. Raising Hope – there’s definitely less tension between jimmy and sabrina and it shows.
6. The New Normal – the best of a weak crop of new sitcoms.
5. 30 Rock – same amazing cast, same good writing, enjoy it while it lasts.
4. Happy Endings – clever, witty humor that’s always good for a laugh.
3. New Girl – quirky in that good way.
2. Modern Family – always really, really good!
1. How I Met Your Mother – hits all the right notes. i laugh, cry, and love this show more!

To clear up some confusion, I have several shows I’ve yet to catch up on.  Chicago Fire, Revenge, and Homeland to name a few.  I have not yet watched several big shows too, including The Walking Dead, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Downton Abbey, The Good Wife, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, etc. I also like Nashville and Hawaii Five-O, but alas, 10 is 10.  The comedies were quite the other issue.  I had to include Glee despite myself.  And there you have it, my “good” list from fall 2012.

The New Place

First of all, happy holidays!  Any guesses as to what my sister made (above) to gift to one of her friends?

One new piece of news regarding this blog rolling into the new year is this: there may be even fewer posts here than I had intentioned.  The reason is I’ve decided to create a website that I hope will serve as my photography portfolio that will also host a blog which will take over all of the photography-themed posts I previously shared here.  I will continue to share non-photography-related life, love and other things here, but as you can see, I’ve been the definition of an irregular blogger.

Please check out my website and tell me what you think.  Good? Bad? Ugly? or other.

 

Susie 2

Melanie Yamada, my friend and make-up artist asked me recently if I was interested in teaming up and doing a photo shoot with Susie Danielson, who we worked with earlier in the year with Shon Uekawa.  Susie has been busy with work and wanted to break up the monotony with a business attire shoot for fun.  I messaged Shon to see if he was available to get the whole team back together again, and I enlisted the assistance of Jared Takazawa as well.  We met in downtown on Fort Street mall where Melanie and Susie were already hard at work on make-up.  There were several other photographer/VAL/model/make-up artist teams in town doing shoots too when we got there.  We started in the Bank of Hawaii building area.  I like starting with simple head shots like the one above, so I looked for flattering natural light and a non-descript backdrop and got to work.  In post processing, I tried some techniques from the Lee Varis “skin” workshop featured on creativelive.

The bank building also has a covered hallway that I thought would make a great backdrop, but as we started setting up, bank security let us know that cameras are not permitted.  Susie recalled another covered hall a block away so we made our way to the Harbor Court building and Melanie noticed this beautiful, tall door.

After several poses, I thought we could use it as a story-telling element, showing her leaving an apartment and heading to work.

After the door, we set up the shot I wanted to try in the bank hallway.  I was hoping the lights would all be on, but they weren’t.  I was inspired by the Kevin Kubota “Lightweight  Location Lighting” workshop on creativelive where he used a speedlite w/tungsten gel technique to cool the cement backdrop.  I asked Susie walk in a brisk business way but slowly, and she nailed it!

When we looked around the Harbor Court building for some additional inspiration, we found a nice little bench that reminded me of another principal I picked up from the Kevin Kubota workshop, create depth by having something in the foreground, and background.  As soon as we set up the look, security from the Harbor Court building decided to inform us that photography was not welcome there either.  We walked back the way we came to where a bench that was being used by other photographers earlier had freed up.  To have that business touch, I asked Susie if she could look at her phone.  Melanie had the idea of adding a coffee cup to the scene.  I thought about moving the leaf, but I thought it added something to the photo so I left it in the scene.  In order to create a photo with depth, I decided to try my first formal attempt at the Brenizer method.  I had Jared set up the light, placed my longest (100mm) lens on the camera, opened the aperture to f/2, and took 4 shots in quick succession: head, torso, shoes, bag, then stiched them together in photoshop, content-aware-filled the edges, and cropped the image accordingly and this is how it turned out.  I took the same 4-shots several times to make sure I got the shot I wanted, and in the middle of this series, my camera “Error 70’d” on me.  It first did this on a sunrise shoot two-weeks before, but it miraculously seemed to fix itself.  And then it happened on this photo shoot and hasn’t worked since.  Jared was kind enough to lend me his precious camera for the remainder of the day.

Photo by: Shon Uekawa

We searched the area for further business photo inspiration and we found some stairs we thought could have some potential as a “coming up from the subway commute” scene, but I couldn’t find the “right” angle.  Shon did though, and created this beautiful composition.

We continued up Fort street mall looking for inspiration, and we found a set of escalators across the Longs.  With Jared’s amazing camera, I pumped the ISO to 12800 in this dark situation and after a few escalator laps by Susie, I got this.  We tried a few with a flash, but we didn’t wanna draw too much attention from the staff in the lobby of this building.

This was a candid shot testing ISO 12800 on Jared’s camera.  Wow!

Shon had to leave us, the sun had set, and even clouds with their precipitation told us it was time to call it a day, but Melanie had one more good idea, and I was determined to give it a try.  She recalled ads with people shot from dramatic, low angles.  When the rain stopped, I fired a few frames, and we called it a day!  With school and work, I haven’t had a lot of time to put together photo shoots, so thanks to Susie, Melanie, Jared and Shon for another fun one!

Day 1 in San Francisco

We booked the red-eye from HNL to SFO and arrived in time for sunrise.  We navigated up to the San Francisco Airport air-train to the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station.

We took the BART to the Powell Street stop to drop our bags off at the hotel.

As per the norm, our room wouldn’t be available till much later in the day, so there were things to do before we could check in.

We decided to take a walk in the brisk San Francisco morning.  On the way we passed several notable retailers along the way, including an establishment of my current employer…

…and one from my former.

Eventually we made our way to the end of Market Street to the Ferry Building where we attended the farmer’s market.

The farmer’s market had a not-so-strict no dogs allowed policy, but several owners tethered their dogs along the walkway anyway.

Dogs weren’t the only ones enjoying the San Francisco morning…

There were birds too.

These included my favorite San Francisco seagulls.

The market also hosted RoliRoti, THE best sandwich I have ever tasted in my ENTIRE life.  The porchetta roll is the only thing on Earth I could love with cilantro in it.

The Ferry Building walkway had a great view of the Bay bridge that connects San Francisco to Treasure Island and Oakland

We enjoyed our sandwiches with some live music and made our way back to the shopping district to pick up city passes to the public transportation systems.

The vast number of tall buildings really made it feel like a city to me.

With city passes in hand, we took the bus to J-Town and walked through the East and West areas.

One place of interest within the mall was this model of Osaka castle.

J-Town is also home to a $1.50 store.  Yep, it isn’t just a hyaku-en in San Francisco.  Nonetheless it had quite the selection including this hat my mom purchased.

We found this lovely restaurant just as we were all ready to collapse, and ordered lunch.

My sister ordered takoyaki and… I forget what the other stuff was, exactly.

I, of course, take every opportunity I can to eat sushi, and this was no exception.

One of my favorite photos from the trip was this umbrella-painted wall I took with my iPhone in J-Town.

After a much-needed nap at the hotel, we took a bus into Chinatown for dinner and an evening tour.  The building at the very back of the photo is the Ferry building.

The buildings in Chinatown, even in the darker alleyways, are quite colorful and filled with an interesting history.

Our tour guide was wonderful, and I highly recommend visitors to the city to take a tour with him.

Our tour bus driver made one last detour for us before returning us back to the hotel.  We drove halfway across the bay bridge to the Treasure Island lookout point for an opportunity to take in a night cityscape.

San Francisco Vacation Itinerary in B/W

In celebration of mom and dad’s latest anniversary, the family embarked on a vacation in San Francisco, California!  This was my first formal visit to the city, and I look forward to the day I may return.  As is always the process with our family vacations, we squeezed as much as we could in the little time we were given, and were exhausted by trip’s end.  I plan to share more detailed descriptions of our adventures in near-future posts, complete with color photo renderings, but I’d like to provide a quick pictorial synopsis as I gather my thoughts and sort through and process my San Francisco Lightroom catalog.

Day 1 (morning): A dog patiently awaiting her owner’s return from the Ferry Building farmer’s market.

Day 1 (morning): A passing shot of the J-Town monument as we look for lunch and pass time till the hotel room is ready for our arrival.

Day 1 (evening): As we make our way through the Chinatown walking tour we come across one of two fortune cookie factories down one of many less-traveled alley ways.

Day 1 (evening): The Chinatown walking tour included dinner and an accompanying bus tour that took us midway across the bay bridge to Treasure Island for a scenic San Francisco city-scape.

Day 2 (noon): I posed the family for a quick group portrait as we walked through the infamous Alcatraz prison facilities.

Day 2 (afternoon): I was determined to get a flying seagull despite my gear deficiencies [manual focus lenses and unreliable 5D Mark II focus point confirmation], and this seagull was a determined subject having flown to and fro over the ferry for me at least 12 times!

Day 2 (afternoon): I split with my family for the remainder of day 2 to meet up with long, lost friend Kevin Chung to reminisce, and to photograph the bay’s most iconic landmark.  Kev ran into some traffic on the way into the city, so I walked around the pier and found another seagull friend posing for a portrait.

Day 2 (afternoon): Kev kindly transported and accompanied me to several scenic points from which to photograph the 1.2 mile, international orange suspension structure.  The cover image to this post was taken from the Sausalito side.

Day 2 (afternoon): Kev also took me to San Francisco’s Painted Ladies, and the Palace of Fine Arts as well.

Day 3 (morning): One of my favorite experiences on this trip was exploring the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s beautiful Golden Gate Park.  I wish we could’ve spent the entire day there, but alas, there was so much more to do.

Day 3 (noon): We took a stroll through the Japanese Tea Garden as well since it was in close proximity to the Academy within the Golden Gate Park.

Day 3 (evening): I attended my first major league baseball game, and subsequently cursed the Giants with their worst performance of the season :P.  The stadium is awesome, the fans were great, and the bratwurst hotdog was Ama(h)zing!!  Go Giants!

Day 4 (all day): The family and I went on a half-day Sonoma wine tour.  We stopped at the mass-market-producing Jacuzzi Family Vineyards property and the boutique Roche Family Winery for private wine, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar tastings as well as stopping by the Sonoma Cheese factory for some cheese, gelato, and chocolate tastings. Mmm…

And that concludes the B/W San Francisco vacation itinerary preview experiment.

Assistant

Earlier last week, I was asked if I might be available to assist a sunset engagement photo shoot, and at the time I had to turn down the opportunity due to the day job.  Fortunately for me, Sunday in the fishbowl could handle a few hours without me, so I was able to crash Shon‘s shoot after all.  It was a long drive on the South side and a short hike after parking off the roadway but the location was beautiful and secluded.  Had I seen the conditions beforehand, I too would have worn grippy, water-walking boots, but instead, I had pair of yoga-mat slippers :P.

Shon had already procured a real assistant for the shoot, so I tried to take a few behind the scene stuff like this one above, landscapes, filling in for a shot or two as Shon prepped the next look and taking an occasional second-shooter shot…

… like this.  Keeping a level horizon line handheld live-view just above the water surface is much harder than I expected, and the one thing i forgot to bring on this expedition was a tripod.

And then the sun set, and I tried squeezing in a few long exposures before running to catch up with the group.  I had an “OMG I LOST MY PHONE!!!” scare, but thankfully it was hidden in one of my bag pockets.  I don’t often take landscapes, but now that I have the 25mm in my bag, I’m ready when one’s available.  Thanks, Shon, for allowing me to tag along.  It was a beautiful afternoon!

 

 

 

Jaylen

My summer portrait series continues with model Jaylen MM#2359283 and trusty make-up guru, Melanie.  I failed to develop a unified concept for this fashion shoot, but I was focused on adding tighter compositions and detail shots to the repertoire.  My photography mentor of sorts also suggested I restudy natural light, learn how to work in suboptimal conditions, and create dimension with it.  So with that said, here are the results.

My natural inclination when working with natural light is to find a clean background or in this case, an interesting, non-distracting, evenly lit space that either exactly matches or starkly contrasts the subject, put the model in it, pose them, sometimes in the middle, often off to one side, and take a photograph like this one above with the entire body in the frame.

Other photographers that I admire have no issues getting in close, cropping off heads and limbs and bodies and tops of heads, and still manage to make very interesting photos that I like.  I made it a point to make myself try a few of these this time.

Jaylen brought two outfits, the first is this shear, color-blocked, pastel shirt blouse by nastygal.com.  I felt a little more comfortable cropping the legs off for a photo featuring a garment, but it’s still something i struggle with internally…

…So I will always come back to full body shots (no pun intended).  The water was a nice shade of blue and I liked the subliminal “Young” word in the background so we crossed the street to pier 14 for my vision of a “fashion” shot.  I envision hard shadows that help to define high cheek bone structure, and in this instance, a runway walk still.  I didn’t know if the yellow walkway would bounce enough light back to emphasize the muscle tone of Jaylen’s leg, and it didn’t in most of the other attempts, but it worked in this one.

It was bright, sunny, and quite hot and humid, so before continuing much further after the look change, we stopped for a refreshing cup of iced tea from Not Just Desserts.  I was so thirsty I didn’t even think about one of their desserts.  Melanie made a few changes to the make-up and we began the next set.  The sun had moved high overhead at this point creating unflattering shadows, and it would be hard to not block shadows with a black dress in contrasty light, so i decided to keep us in the shade of this blue building for the remainder of the time.  I’m a big fan of negative space, and I recently acquired a wide angle lens for just this kinda shot (and for landscapes).  I asked Jaylen to be silly and act like a fly on a windshield.

She brought some jewelry to accessorize the dress, and I had been meaning to try one of these under-eye crops as a part of my focus on detail training and I rather like how it turned out.  I am curious to know how others feel about these less-conventional crops.

Continuing along the details theme, I did a footwear crop as well, and it just so happened Jaylen had really cool sea-greenish colored nails (polish from American Apparel) that really pop.  pictured behind the feet is my trusty 3-step stool that I carry around to change angles, or sit on, or have the model sit on.  The matte silver matched the silver slippers nicely, I thought.

As the sun got higher overhead and the shadow crept closer to the building, I thought it be cool to use it as another horizontal line going across the photo to add an extra level of depth and texture so I asked Jaylen to sit on the curb for me.  It’s also my sneaky way of staying relatively close and still getting the full body in frame.

Jaylen bought this dress because she loved it’s versatility.  She felt it was light enough (weight-wise) to go out with in the day and long and rich enough to go out at night with, so I asked her to be cute, then shy and flirty, then elegant (above).  Of course I did this one as a full body shot, but I forced myself to get in a little closer.  I do like both of them, so I’m glad I did both.

Jaylen was a real joy to work with, and I wish her a great senior year at Boston University, and I’ll conclude this post with another selective crop!

Gabrielle

I’ve been hit by the photo-series storytelling bug, so yesterday I set up a little shoot with the beautiful Gabrielle from model mayhem, and Melanie, my friend and very talented make-up artist.  We decided to keep it simple with a light-hearted twist on Red.

I decided to try a side-profile establishing shot to show our protagonist journeying into the woods.  It was a touch chilly at the Wa’ahila Ridge State Recreation Area but the weather was mostly cooperative.  I attempted to light-grenade the scene with the big light shooting through an umbrella, but even on low, it was really pushing way too much  light to blend seamlessly into the ambient, so I went all-natural on this one to my chagrin.

As the story goes, upon entering the woods, red gets distracted by the beautiful flora and ventures further off the beaten path.  I ended up using a speedlite in the Cheetah Qbox 24 for the lit portraits like this one.

Suddenly she hears something in the distance and is on the alert.  I’m not ordinarily a foreground blur fan, but Melanie suggested we try it as a suspenseful perspective element, and I thought it worked, here.

Slowly, she gets up so as not to draw unwanted attention.

Yep, I said slowly, and carefully begins to make her way back to the path.

She hears the threatning sound close by now and decides to make a run for it.  This was my attempt at panning with a manual focus lens.  Needless to say, this scene had a lot of takes, and I’m honestly surprised something acceptable came of it.  For the camera nerds, this was a 1/50s shutter pan.  I wasn’t good enough to get a hit with anything slower.

Her anxiety dissolves when she discovers the source of the sounds is Mickey, Melanie’s adorable Shiba Inu.  She was on her best behavior today and a real treat to work with.

The end.