2010 Asian Engagement Shoot aka 婚纱藝術攝影

I got tons of engagement shoot pictures from projects that Ivan and I have been working on. What do I do with these pictures? I style them. There are many ways to style pictures. For example, many westernized clients prefer the photojournalistic style. That is, they like it raw, unscripted, unedited, in the moment, and usually in black and white. Western style is no styling, very little post processing (我不是在開玩笑). However in Asian cultures (especially in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc), most clients prefer the surreal look. This is why Asian weddings always split up the photo sessions into two separate days-- 1) the engagement shoot aka 婚纱摄影 usually shot at least a month in advance, with professional makeup, hair styling, and 3-5 dress styles (白纱, 古裝/旗袍, 禮服) shot in a professional studio for an entire day and 2) regular on-the-day wedding shots. Look, you can't go to Taiwan or China and not do 婚纱摄影, because many Asian photographers consider the on-the-day pictures to be random, uncontrollable, sloppy work. 他們說老美拍照馬馬虎虎的 :) Personally, 我覺得老美太貴了!!! LOL哈哈哈 !!! 例如一本書他們要收3倍,說很好聽,但是印刷仍然在大陸!

Because LA clients in San Gabriel are almost all Asian, I toned these in the popular style that appeals to Asian customers. Color. Contrast. Surreal. Ultimately, art is subjective. The photojournalistic purists may call the Asian style "cheezy" or "trying too hard." But if this is the style that paying clients want, then that is the style that speaks to them! So call this style whatever you want to call it. If you're not buying, then one cares what you think :)

I got a bunch more pictures on my hard drive, but I'm too busy to process them at the moment. I'll probably see you guys next month. So stay tuned!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! This is the first post of 2010. It was a lot of fun.

Catching up: November and December

I have a huge backlog of things that I haven't had a chance to post here. Highlights: I had a chance to meet up with my buddies from junior high who came all the way down to the LA area and that's pretty cool.

I met up with Richard on the Thanksgiving break. I actually ate MEAT!!! Ribs, at Richard's place. I know this sounds weird, but it was such an amazing experience. Just a few week before I was still eating porridge and soft food. I've been sick pretty from severe ulcer almost 1/2 of the year and been on one medication after another and couldn't even eat regular food, like burgers, pizza, boba tea, etc. I've lost almost 10 pounds this year, and I was already a chopstick before I got ill. Well, late November I started getting better... and at Richard's place I ate ribs!!!!!!!! It's amazing how little things can make you happy. Anyways, they say a picture is worth a thousand words so without boring you, here are some pics:


I met up with Eric during the Christmas break. Baby Evan was only a few months old! It was so great sitting down with everyone, eat food that normal people eat, and chit chat and catch up. That means... I didn't really take as many pictures, but it's alright. Sometimes I prefer to relax and be a civilian than to be a photographer.

Humor: pet photography

From http://graphjam.com/2009/12/22/funny-graphs-pet-photography/

Color IQ: Color test your eyes

A lot of people ask me how to do color balancing. How much of it is subjective/objective? What's the best approach? Is there a system to it, or is it all about art?

This is a complex subject that I have an easy, fast, and systematic way of dealing with it. A professional photographer doesn't need to have a perfect sense of what white color should be. He/she simply needs to balance the color such that there is a good separation of non-white colors and white colors. In today's world, color balancing is done in several ways. One camp of school is to do it in-camera and shoot JPG and set the WB setting perfectly the first time. This leaves no room for error because a wrong color balance setting on the camera can mean un-recoverable color tones. The other camp of school is to shoot in RAW and post-process the RAW. Post processing is easy. If a picture has bits of perfect white/gray color, he/she can tell the program what that white/gray tone is, and thus set the entire picture into perfect tones. However, not all white and gray-looking surfaces are of balanced colors. Most likely, all surfaces have a hint of blue/yellow, or variation with hue in them. In addition, certain lighting conditions simply do not produce a balanced lighting (CFL, sodium light), in which case it's best to turn the photograph into black and white.

In many cases, one needs to use his/her eyes to make the final judgement. This requires 1) having good sets of eyes and 2) color balanced monitors (most Macs are pretty good). Without good eyes, a perfect monitor is useless. Likewise, the reverse is true.

To date, I only found one good site that tests your eye's ability to distinguish color. It is XRite http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77

Give it a try! It's pretty fun. This is what you see when you start:

This is what you want to end up with when you're done:

You get a score at the end.

Have fun!

Now about the subjective part. One can always tone a picture to look a certain way. After color balancing, it is easy to add a bit more yellow (to look more vintage, to give more warmth at night, etc), or a little bit of blue (to give a little bit of that cold look). What I do personally is to always color balance first, THEN tone the picture. Reverse the order and you'll get into a lot of weird results and inconsistency. In summary, do the followings in this order:

1) Get good monitors, and calibrate it using tools like Spyder 3, etc.

2) Verify that you have a decent sense of color by going to the XRite site

3) White balance your pictures

4) Tone if necessary