the.blog @scwleung

As much as I want to pepper this post with my usual [lack of] wit, I’m pretty tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night after the Wedding and Reception. Let’s just say that the wedding was delightful and wonderful, and the reception that followed was tasteful, funny, and all-round entertaining.

Congrats to Liz and Chris. My best wishes to both of you. I’m glad I got a few minutes with both of you at some point in the evening. I know you were both very busy, and I appreciate what both of you have done.

With the formalities out of the way, time to get to the meat of the post. Let’s talk about shooting pretty people!

My dear friend Jas is the co-founder of Savillian Custom Suits earlier this year. They’ve been targeting the Indian Wedding market with some success. Two weeks ago, she asked me if I can help her take photos of the Kismet Indian Wedding Show, specifically the Fashion Show portions of it. As I’ve alluded to before, this would have been the first fashion shoot I’ve done, and above all else, my first in-person exposure into the Indian Wedding culture. This was definitely an eye opener on both counts.

My only previous experience with Indian weddings is through the wild and crazy stories told by Samir. Of the little I recall from those conversations, the weddings are over the top, vaguely surreal and pretty much unbelievable [according to my standards, at least]. I still remember him telling me about a recent wedding he attended where the groom rode in on an elephant to the ceremony. I guess that’s just how they roll. Who am I to judge?

Needless to say, though, the wedding show neither disappointed, nor destroyed this stereotype for me.

When I first arrived at the Savillian booth at the show, the first thing I noticed was not the careful detail and professional displays, but rather, what I noticed was the horse in the stall across from them. Yes. A horse. A live one that blinked, kindly accepted carrots, and was generally pleased when its head was patted. Apparently, horse rides by the groom is a staple of their events, and this particular horse has seen his fair share of weddings in Southwestern Ontario. Furthermore, a horse is by far a much better substitute for an elephant here. That, and it’s near impossible to get a fully grown elephant penned up inside a convention centre.

However, I digress…let’s actually talk about this so-called photoshoot.

One of the things that struck me as I started the shoot is simply how little control I had over the situation. The runway was poorly lit both front and back. The back of the stage was too dim, whereas the front of the stage was too bright. As such, there was really only a 2.76 second window when the models walked down the catwalk where the lighting was actually reasonable. Simple, I thought to myself. I’ll just simply shoot within the window. What could possibly go wrong?

As it turns out, however, unlike plants or buildings, models are people and come with all associated properties of being people. Namely, they blink a lot. Of the numerous photos I managed to take within the 2.76 second windows I was given, a large majority of them featured models who had their eyes closed. What insincerity and total disregard for the photographic arts!

Seriously, if we found a way to artificially prevent blinking in models, we would have significantly improved the world of fashion and fashion photography. This would be the biggest thing since discovering the use of duct tape to form fit clothing. Once again, I digress. I must apologize.

There were a number of other things I learned throughout the photoshoot. For one, I learned how heavy my camera equipment actually is on my hands. With a flash, and my hefty variable zoom lens, I found that my arm was getting tired within 15 minutes of shooting. Of course, it definitely does not help that I was constantly changing the zoom – my wrists were killing me the next day.

Note to future self: Please bring and use the tripod that past self bought to make sure this problem gets mitigated. Past self paid good money for the tripod. Please use it.

Another significant learning was to decide up-front whether to be selective with what I shot, or spend the next few weeks tearing my irises in my vain attempt at selecting and touching up the gems afterward. While I got through all of Jas’ photos this past week, I still have over 1,400 photos of the other designers I still have to comb through…especially if I want to try selling them later.

Hmm…other thoughts…

Ah yes. Photographers and videographers are great folks. They really are friendly people, and totally top-notch folks. I need to hang out with them more.

Ah…one other thing. The Flash…they do nothing…

I guess a blog post about fashion photography wouldn’t be complete without a discussion and discourse about the pretty people who were modeling that day. All I really have to say is this. They were pretty people. And no, I probably won’t share these photos with you.

I guess this entire post begs one single question: Is Fashion Photography something I’d be interested in doing professionally? In all honesty, I can’t say right now. There are a lot of reasons I liked doing this photoshoot that might not be the case any other time…I was doing it for a friend…it was all very fresh and new to me…the people there were very friendly. Further still, I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to do this kind of stuff again. I mean, yes, there’s still Toronto Fashion Week, but that’s a whole different issue…and I certainly don’t feel I’m good enough to play in that field yet.

So the short of it is that the shoot was fun. The people were pretty. I got a whole lot out of it [and judging by the amount of post-processing I've done, I'm still getting a lot now.] If the opportunity comes up again, I wouldn’t say no. But for now, I’m just happy to take pictures of things that don’t move as much. They’re much easier to do

Train’s just pulling in to Union. Should get home soon and start laundry…

Another fun and busy week ahead. Who knows what will be in store for me though!

Later days…

Sam

Oh…woe is I.

Well, not really. My woes have long since passed and I have since continued on with my life. Afterall, there really is no time allotted in my life to dilly-dally with these trifles things.

Still, some of you remember my mild outburst on the venerable Visage Tome last week along the lines of “Screw You, Apple. Screw You.” I still stand by my [albeit] cryptic statement and I guess I should explain why.

About 2 and a half weeks ago, our lord and saviour Steve announced thr next coming in the evolution of mobile computing – namely iPhone OS 3.1. What a glorious day it was. The sun was shining, new iPods were announced and major changes were coming to the Apple world that would be the dawn of a new computing age. As an Apple loyalist, I patiently sat in line for my new firmware to be downloaded and installed. Little did I know that those would be my last days as a Machead.

The download and installation progressed as smoothly as Apple-y possible. Afterall, Apple hires highly trained monkeys for their UX team to ensure that any organism with opposable thumbs can operate any device or process designed. My real problem started later that night.

I use my iPhone as my pseudo-alarm clock, and I leave it plugged in to ensure a full charge. Afterall, why would you let any device go commando [so to speak] when you don’t have to? Lo and behold though, when I was rudely awakened [as if there were any other way to be awakened] the next morning, I was surprised to find that my phone was down to 25% charge. No worries, I thought, must be a faulty cable. It was dying anyway. I’ll just plug it into my laptop [a Macbook, by the way] and things will be fine. Problem solved, no?

Seeing as this blog post continues a bit longer, you can assume the problem was not solved. In fact, nary 4 hours into my work day, my iPhone died again. Another depletion of capacitance charge. Anger inflamed me. I decided to consult with the Oracle – Apple tech support.

After a calming talk with them and a reflash of the hardware, I was renewed and reinvigorated with hope. That lasted another 4 hours. I decided to consult with an even higher power; I made an appointment with The Genius Bar.

Several days [4 for those of you who can count] later, my appointment came. A half hour after I was slated to start, my name was called. Without going into details, my 5 minute appointment there lasted as follows:

Me: Hi, my iPhone’s battery life’s been shot since upgrading to firmware 3.1. I called your tech support line and I reflashed my firmware dedspite the huge inconvenience it caused me. The battery life is still shit. Can you help?

“Genius”: let me plug it into my oh-so-special Macbook with diagnostic software you can’t have and I’ll tell you how unworthy you are in the eyes of Steve.

…minutes pass…

“Genius”: Hmm, your battery is draining a bit faster than usual. Why don’t you take it back and let us know how it goes?

Me [internal]: Really? Didn’t I tell you it’s been shit for more than half a week? Would continuing to monitor the situation really improve performance? I think not.

Me: Thanks…

Me [internally]: …for nothing. Guess I’ll start using my G1.

And that’s what I’ve been doing since. With a larger battery pack [2300 mAh], the device runs all day with EDGE and Wifi, as well as GPS location services. I can listen to my music all day without any interruptions. The apps are still a bit flakey depending on how many background processes I run, but it’s tolerable. And I can still get my podcasts with Google Listen. The only thing I miss is my audiobooks [DRMed by Audible. Atlas Shrugged doesn't listen by itself you know...] Otherwise, it’s integrated itself very well into my workflow. I like it quite a bit and would encourage others to look into other, more powerful Android based devices.

For now, though, contentness and love, as I steamroll in Ottawa for dear Liz and Chris’ wedding.

Until next time,

sammee

If people asked me where I thought my photo-creating ways were going to take me, Indian wedding fashion shows would not be at the very bottom of my list. But it would be pretty close. Still, here I am at the International Centre at the Kismet Wedding Show [Google it. Too tired to drag a link here on my G1.]

I just finished my first totally unprofessional fashion show shoot, and boy is there a lot I still need to learn about it.

Lighting was by far the hardest thing to get a hold of. I need to definitely play with my camera’s temperature and white balance settings. Didn’t really realize how yellow those lights are.

Also, the stage layout was a lot more different than expected. The runway was about three feet high. And there really isn’t a lot of places to comfortably climb to get any reasonable height.

Ah well. I’ll get another shot at it in another hour.

The joys of photographing pretty people

Not sure I’ll be able to post any of these photos. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll be able to sell a few of these. Could be fun!

Later days,

Sam