To recap:  

June 2019 -- my wife had sustained what appeared to be a minor concussion while mountain biking near our home.  It has since been deemed a traumatic brain injury (TBI) by medical professionals.  She's practically back to 100% now, but from June 2019 through roughly May 2020 or so, she was recovering.  In that time, she quit her day job and started a business in what she probably should have been doing all along; being an artist and making pots.  You can check out some of her work at her new website: www.trulysarahceramics.com.  

Me, I've tapered off on people photography for a bit and have been focusing on product photography.  My day job had gotten hectic enough where I just could not muster the proper mental energy to shoot in the same way.  That was disappointing to me.  I want to get back into photographing families and doing portraits again, but they're just not in the cards at the moment.  

Been a little while since I've made a blog post!  I wanted to discuss something near and dear to my heart as related to digital photography: HDR.  People either love it or hate it.  I assert that those who hate it (and I include myself in this camp) do so because the photos that come out can't be called realistic.  There's a certain art-like quality to HDR photos that for better or for worse, is very easily achievable.  My personal take on HDR?  If it's done poorly, it looks horrible.  However, there's certainly a case for utilizing HDR technology such that you turn the limitations of your camera sensor given scene that does indeed have very high dynamic range its due.  I was previously in the HDR camp that was very much against it.  time and again, photos were published to sites like Flickr and other gallery sites where images would have the halo effect, the tinged blue that reminded me of a Van Gogh painting... the overemphasized colors in a landscape scene... at the time, my impression of HDR was less than stellar.  

As people learned more about HDR, again, myself included, I found that I started to use HDR in my day-to-day nature photography and landscape workflow.  In situations where you meter for the scene at hand, and where the sensor just can't meter everything properly, HDR is a great tool to achieve that proper metering.  I've included a sample of what I've done with HDR below.  The Before shot is 1-exposure out of camera.  You'll notice that out of camera, the shot looks OK, composition aside.  The shadows are sort of there, but they could be darker.  The highlights are also sort of there, but also could be improved.  The HDR version shows very contrasty highlights and darks.  I've also added a slight gradient filter to the sky to improve the darkness, but as far as editing goes, that was the only difference between the Before non-HDR photo and the After HDR photo.  

Questions? Send me mail!

Til next time.

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Valentine's Day 2015Left: Haystack Rock -- Top Right: Me, Daphnie, Nico -- Bottom Right: Sarah with Nico

To Meghan and Bobby - I wish you two the best ~ happy new year and may you have many happy memories together!  Here's a sneak peek from the wedding day.

Meghan + BobbyFirst kiss as a married couple

In photography, sure, you can take a series of photos and it'll tell a story, but often, you only have one frame to tell a compelling story.  The "better" the photo is, the stronger the story is.  In my mind, the stronger the story is, the more compelling the photograph and it makes you wonder a little longer, look around a little longer, and start to notice details you wouldn't otherwise notice.

Cropping is one of those tools that I believe help tell a more compelling story.  In my mind, stronger stories are told through photos when you're able to eliminate all the unnecessary details from a given photo and just leave the essence of the story you're trying to tell.  Cropping definitely helps with that goal.  I've provided an example below from my own body of work to show what I mean.

Below, we have the original image as I shot it out of camera.  It's been fine-tuned for color correction and exposure because out of camera, I felt it needed to be warmer and a little brighter.  Overall, it's not a bad image in my opinion.  However, there's really a lot going on.  It's pretty clear that the two boys in the image are the subject of the photo but because there's so much more going on in the photo (namely, the additional family in the background, the patches upon patches of pumpkins), the impact of the boys' embrace is lost in the photo.

Pre-cropPhoto is too busy here

In Photo #2, the only thing I modified was how the photo was cropped.  I changed absolutely nothing else.  In Photo #2, it's now very apparent that the main subject I wanted to capture was the boys hugging which for me, evoked the emotion that they're enjoying each others' company at a pumpkin patch.  Cropping helps to remove the non-essential elements out of the frame.  I was luke-warm to Photo #1 until I cropped it to make photo #2.  

Post-cropPhoto isolates subjects

1. It's not how the scene actually looked. Often, we might see some picturesque landscape and decide that we want to take a photo of it.  How many times have you come home from either vacation or some event, reviewed your photos, and thought that the photos you took didn't look at all like what you experienced? I know I have.  A lot.  Sometimes, it's because of the limitation of the film or the digital camera's sensor that you're using that prevents you from capturing the actual scene as your naked eye saw it.  A common example? Try taking a picture of a sunset with a dSLR camera and an iPhone.  I'm not knocking phone cameras at all, but there's definitely a difference.  Post processing allows a little leeway in correcting mistakes made during the photo's capture.  I didn't say a lot of leeway, but some.  Despite the ease and low-cost of shooting digital these days, I still allow myself time to slow down, compose the shot I want, and check settings before I press the shutter button.  If that fails, post-processing makes what started out as a good image better.  I strongly believe it cannot and should not make a subpar image good.

2. It's not the final vision of the image that I had in mind.  #2 is actually a more important point for me as to why I do post processing.  As a photographer, I often find that before I press the shutter button, I ask myself why I'm taking the photo in the first place.  What about the scene compels me to even lift the camera to my face? What visual story am I trying to tell by taking this photo?  In the scene below, I wanted the pillars to have their own story and I wanted the stars/sky to have their own story.  Out of camera, I felt that the pillars were a little too close in color to the sky.  I also felt that the sky was not dark enough to showcase the stars.  So I tweaked the photo a bit to better fit my vision in the after version.  

Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them below!

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GabriellePortland Japanese Gardens GabriellePortland Japanese Gardens GabriellePortland Japanese Gardens

Despite that, some things don't change.  I still love photographing city skyline at night.  Replace the quiet of the woods with the quiet of being atop an urban environment and watching it from afar.  Both are quiet and extremely peaceful.  

Bay Area SkylineView from Berkeley Hills

That said...

My wife and I are off on a week-long cruise to Alaska.  Not too far of a jaunt for us as we're driving to Seattle in the morning and boarding there.  I'll come back with photos to share!

Take care.

If you've ever heard this or something like this from a photographer you've hired, I'd consider going with someone else.  That individual may create the best-looking photos in the world, but with an attitude like that, I'd be hesitant to hire that person in the event that something fails.  Let's not kid ourselves - photographers aren't necessarily specialists in technology; I create photos because I enjoy making them.  I tell stories because I enjoy telling them.  Whether it's for me or for others who decide to hire me, why should I care about making backups?  

Because things go wrong.

A little while ago, a large fire broke out in my neck of the woods - about 10 miles from where I lived.  It was consuming quite a bit of forest land and took a little over 400 firefighters over the course of about a week to contain and subdue this fire.  Thankfully, given the amount of destruction done to the surrounding forest, and due to the hard work of the firefighters working around the clock, no homes were lost in the process.  I think about what would happen if I lost my home in a fire.  What kinds of things/physical objects would I have the hardest time replacing?  You hear it time and time again from people who have lost their homes in natural disasters: physical items that represent memories and events that have occurred in the past.   

You would hear, "I wish I could get the family photos back" or "I wish I could have saved (pet's name's) ashes" (I'm serious, one of the first things I would grab would be the urn containing my cat's ashes, but maybe that's just me).  The similarity here is for the most part, people would save the objects that have the most sentimental value to them, and mementos of family members and other loved ones are definitely that.  

In this day and age where items of sentimental value can be captured by a phone no larger than the size of your back pocket, what happens if that phone dies?  What happens if the computer you've backed up the data from your phone to, also dies?  What's the chance of that happening?  I'd say it's not a matter of if it happens or not, but when it happens.  This isn't doom and gloom stuff here.  It's a very real possibility.  

I was a computer tinkerer well before I had discovered photography as a hobby and subsequently a passion.  I was on the bleeding edge - I was the very first person I knew who owned a digital still camera.  It wasn't anything special compared to the digital cameras of today - in fact you could almost think of it as the throwaway camera of the digital era.  Despite what it could or couldn't do, I was able to make memories with it.  since then, Iv'e upgraded cameras several times, and each time, I've successfully captured memories in my life I'd like to look back on and remember.  Then one day, in a tinkering session, I accidentally wiped the data from the hard drive that contained all those photos.  I didn't have a backup of them, and lost them all.  I was devastated.  Half a decade of my life in photos, gone.  I couldn't afford a hard drive recovery service at the time (which are still insanely expensive) but looking back now, I wished I had backed them up to an external hard drive, the cheapest backup option at the time.  

These days, backing up your most prized data like digital photos should be a no-brainer.  External hard drives are really inexpensive.  That should be the bare minimum to do for backups.  For myself and my clients, I take it one step further.  I do offsite, online backups, or cloud storage backups would be another term for it.  The benefits of cloud storage are plentiful, and there are some cons as well, but for me, the pros definitely outweigh the cons.  I've provided a list below.  Just something to think about for now.  In my next blog post, I'll cover the various cloud services I've used and give my opinion on which I feel is the best one.

Storehouse allows you to grab media (videos and still photos) from cloud services like Flickr, Instagram, and Dropbox and add them into a blog-like interface.  I was just giving a speech on strong visual storytelling to my Toastmasters club the day right before Storehouse came on the iOS scene - I'm taking it as a sign that I had to try the app out.  I'm very happy I did.  Once you add media to your Story, Storehouse allows you to crop photos and arrange their layout on your iPad's screen through the drag n' drop interface.  This photo too big?  That one not big enough?  Want them side-by-side?  Just drag, drop, adjust.  Really easy.

• Adding text can be a little frustrating at times.  You can add text called "Headers" and you can add text called "Normal".  Obviously Normal text is meant to be used for the body.  When adding text, it's difficult to determine where the resulting text box will end up.  Sometimes, it will appear before the previous line of text and sometimes it will end up after the previous line of text.  After your new text is added, it's really easy to just move the entire block of text to where you want it (literally drag n' drop) but you have to get over the initial frustration/confusion of why the text you added isn't showing up where you'd expect it.

• Adding video clips to your Story can be a bit annoying, especially if your video has audio (and what video generally doesn't).  While you're in edit mode, both video and audio continually play in an endless loops while the video is visible on screen.  Both pause/stop when the video is off your iPad screen.  I ended up adding the video at the very end when I was done with everything else to stop the looping.

Those two gripes aside, I would still highly recommend trying out Storehouse if you're a content creator and have access to an iPad.  Interested? Click the big logo in the middle!  I don't receive any financial gain by you clicking the link (I promise!).  Just trying to do a public service to the ever-growing community of visual storytellers!  Have a great day and keep sharing those stories!

http://

If you're interested in reading the Story I put together, you can check it out here!

Late and the very last blog post of 2013, but one I've been waiting to finish and publish!  In trying to write more regularly, I've decided to follow in the footsteps of some of my actively blogging friends and blog at least once a week in 2014.  We'll see if that happens!  2014's going to be filled with several goals, one of which is to further my experience in the arts through taking part in slam poetry.  To that end, if anyone is interested in going to watch slam competitions, let me know!  I love everything about spoken word and welcome others on the ride!

Thanksgiving often marks a weekend of travel for someone in somebody's family.  In my side of the family (versus my wife's) we frequently travel to the San Francisco Bay Area for one of the TMH (two major holidays).  If my wife and I travel for Thanksgiving, then that usually means we spend Xmas at home in the Pacific Northwest.  If we travel for Christmas, then it's all turkey, all the time at home.  Generally, I dislike traveling during either of these two holidays.  The airport's busy, the train station is expensive to travel overnight, and driving by car is not advisable during this time of year because of the strong likelihood of getting stuck in the snow while driving through southern Oregon/northern California.  We ended up flying on Thanksgiving day and returning home the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend. So much cheaper.  Here's a couple of photos from our brief jaunt down to Monterey the Friday after Thanksgiving.  Sea lions are pretty neato.

Sea lions sunbathingMonterey, California Sea Lion Trying to Board Fishing BoatI think I can, I think I can...    Beachcombing Fisherman's WharfMonterey, California Jellyfish at Low TideLive jellyfish found at low tide in tidepool area

Cluster of Monarch ButterfliesPacific Grove, California

Another year almost complete and another one to look forward to.  I've had an amazing year.  I'm happy with the level of business I've achieved with my photography and my regular day job has been going well.  I was able to take a major trip with my dad to China which for me is probably one of those once in a lifetime experiences I will not soon forget (mostly because I kept a travel journal and wrote everything down).  All my pet peeves, fears, hopes about going to China - contained between the electronic pages of an iPad and synced with the cloud.  It's been an amazing year.  Thank you to everyone in my life for staying with me on this ride.  I am deeply grateful for all of you.  November usually has that effect on me; this is the time of the year where if I slow down and think about it, I realize I live a pretty good life.  I'm in relatively good health as are my loved ones and this overwhelming feeling of gratefulness comes over me.  

People make a big deal about making new years' resolutions and I'm among them, but I usually make my resolutions around Thanksgiving time.  It's the time when I'm most reflective on my life and ask myself how I can be a better (read: happier) person moving forward into the new year.  A friend of mine shared this link the other day on Facebook about how to be miserable.  The article is obviously satire, but as I read it, I realized a lot of it was true at least for myself.  If I didn't do these things, I'd be happy all the time!  It served as a good reminder for me that life does not have to be about the rat race and more importantly, that I have the power to choose whether to take part in it or not.

Take care and happy Black Friday hunting if you are out amongst the throngs of people!

Random side note:  the Imagine Dragons video for their song Demons is good:

A funny incident that happened yesterday:  everyone around the table was basically full from eating the savory portion of dim sum and were ready for desserts.  I'm not much of a dessert fan, and so the only dimsum-time dessert I know of is the "dan tat", or egg custard.  Despite all of the years of dim sum I've had, I went out on a limb and decided to try something new, even for me.  We noticed an item I've never seen before, a three-layered, jello-like dessert that looked much like what you'd find in three layered jello: a layer of a yellow jello sandwiched in between two layers of a creamy-looking jello.  We decided to try it.

After trying it, we decided it was flavored like piña colada, and my co-worker Andrew wanted to bring one back for his wife, so I flagged a waitress down and attempted to ask what it was in Cantonese.

Translated from Cantonese:

Me: What is the stuff with the white layer, yellow layer, white layer?
Waitress #1: I don't know, let me find it (brings back the dessert I'm looking for)
Me: Thanks!  What's it called?
Waitress #1:  It's like a pudding, but it's not a pudding... I don't know, let me check!
Waitress #1 to #2: Hey, what's that dessert called?
Waitress #2 to #1:  I don't know - it's like a pudding!
Waitress #1 to #2: I know it's like a pudding, but it's not a pudding!
Waitress #2 to #1: Just tell them it's a mango pudding, they won't know the difference!
Waitress #1 to #2: This guy speaks Chinese, of course they'll know the difference!

I admit, I'd be slightly offended if this happened to me in a Western restaurant but being able to understand the language made this conversation very amusing.

Then last night, on a whim, I decided to make chana masala, an Indian dish with garbanzo beans and a ton of spices that I very much enjoy.  You can find recipes all over the Internet, but the recipe I used was this one.  Unfortunately, I didn't have and couldn't find on the drop of a dime, any cumin seeds, but it turned out pretty good!  

Chana MasalaEasier to make than I thought

I love my short commute!  

Daily CommuteWhite Salmon, WA to Hood River, OR

When I travel with my wife, we definitely take our time and it's our time to slow down and really, to relax and take things easy.  No stress.  It's all good.  We spent a couple of hours this past weekend looking at our options for living arrangements and plan on doing a mixture of car camping and living in one of the swanky lodges in the park.  Amazingly, almost all the lodge spots were already filled - and we're planning this trip at the end of June.  We did get the spots we wanted though, so go us!  We're ecstatic about it!  

I've been playing around with an idea using a polling service from surveymonkey.com.  I'm not revealing what that idea is yet, but I will say that it's photography-related and it's for the wintery holiday season.  If you will, take a sec to answer the poll below.  Call it a case study for something potentially bigger in a couple of weeks!

Be well!

Finished product!

And this is where it sits in our house

To see more of her work, check out her website!

Left: Nico wondering what Rivers is! Right: Rivers!

My wife and I also broke in our new 2014 Subaru Outback, Nelle.  We just picked Nelle up the night before from the dealership and took her on our 3.5-hour road trip this weekend.  Side note: anyone looking for a good deal on a Subaru anything, you should definitely give Dick Hannah Subaru in Vancouver, WA a try first.  We had an absolutely amazing experience with them and never once felt pressured to buy anything.  I'd started a separate blog post about Nelle, but didn't actually publish it yet -- stay tuned for that.

 Lots of photos to share, but here's a couple from the palace in the woods we stayed at.  That kidney shaped thing in the middle of the main photo was the hot tub we all hung out in several nights.  Otherwise, the main pool area is what the owners called an infinity pool (wasn't really heated which led to more fun antics).  

Like German beer?  Like the outdoors?  I'd highly recommend some time in Leavenworth, Washington's Oktoberfest which runs one more weekend.  Check it out!  Here are some of my favorite photos from the trip.

Red Roof LodgeOktoberfest Antics - Leavenworth, WA

Friends!

Abstract Oktoberfest-goerFavorite photo from the trip

The Last MorningSunday morning, the fog in the background settled over the town of Leavenworth which we could see from our place.

Thank you, Anna and Jeff (and of course Renee!) 

Here are some of my favorites from last weekend's shoot.

Decker/Stewart Family

And so, a new creation began tonight. The idea of proper egg/rice/meat/condiment ratio went out the door.  It turned out pretty good, but the next time I decide to use all my about-to-expire-ingredients, I should make multiple dishes instead of the medley that is tonight's fried rice!

Minced chicken/garlic/egg/green bell pepper/mushroom fried rice. Huh.It's actually pretty good!

Incidentally, if you live in the Columbia River Gorge, and you're looking to replace your floors, I'd give Swell City Carpet a look.  Their service is amazing, offer much more than just carpeting, and are very reasonably priced.

And another view of the living room 

So that was the truly before, on Friday evening.  As of Sunday July 7, the living room looked like this:

Note: Nico is staring at the place where the couch previously was -- he probably misses his couch.

Here he is with pleading eyes wondering when his couch will be back.

Monday, work began on removing the carpet, and the plywood subfloor from the living room area.  Hardiback was laid and screwed down before the tile was put in place.

Tuesday:  Tiles have been put into place!  

There was even a local Hood River dog watching and hanging out with us!

After the session, Cory and Alicia had my wife and I over for a BBQ (and not to shoot additional photos!) though I still ended up firing off a few shots.  Rivers was fed and felt better that evening.  He's one of the quietest babies I've ever had a chance to meet.  Congratulations, Alicia and Cory!  I can only hope that whenever I have a child, s/he will be just as easy as Rivers is!  

I spent the better part of this week getting vaccinations and finding out about travel clinics and insurance billing and health coverage.  A lot to take in within a very short period of time.  It's been exciting.  As far as destinations go, we've been kind of playing it by ear.  We have several destinations in mind and we'll probably do some light exploring and use each of those destinations as a base from which we travel.  Works for me because that's the way my wife and I love to travel.  

Questions abound as to what kind of gear I should be packing for a travel photography trip and so, I've bene reading up a lot on aspects of travel photography that I may not have considered.  

Anna and Jeff, thank you for a wonderful shoot and congratulations on your family expansion!  

Yesterday, we had our family get-together/potluck and our interview session.  My cousin Nick was instrumental in setting everything up and providing the proper interview equipment (like a boom mic) and a good time was had by all.  It went off the way I was hoping it would go -- I'd ask a question, and got a lot of family involvement as a result of my grandmother's answers.  I think the best feeling int he world was when I asked a question about the war, and the adults of my dad's generation learned a lot about their mom that they never knew.  Keeping all those tidbets of short stories/vignette's about this woman's life for future generations to have was my goal.  Taping's complete now -- just like foreign films, the end production will have subtitles over the course of the interview.  Video's still in progress, and Nick's going to be the one who puts it together, but it feels good to have finally kicked off a project that required a ot of planning/orchestrating.

Enter my friends Rich and Courtney.  Rich has recently picked up a new camera which I'm fairly envious of.  We took it out for a spin around our small town and got some good images out of it.  It was a lot of tun just shooting, and getting back into shooting for the sake of shooting and figuring out the buttons on the new camera, enjoying friendship and horsing around.  I have to keep in mind that at the end of the day, I photograph for people; whether that is for myself or for others, the people come first.

Tonight, I'm going to a hip-hop concert featuring Lupe Fiasco.  Two almost seemingly different avenues of adventure on two adjacent nights.  I can have my pie and my cake, but I don't really like cake that much, so I guess the analogy's broken.

The next best thing I could do was play ping pong, so I did.  

I also took the time to come up with some interesting imagery from my iPhone.  Made using the Diptic app for collaging, and a combination of Camera+ and Snapseed for the individual images.

First image for the new blog is one taken while my wife and I were on our cruise vacation through the southern Caribbean.  Pictured is a part of Belize City, Belize: