The feelings had crept up under my skin. I barely noticed them sneaking in, and it’s only in hindsight that I can trace them back. In truth, I didn’t know that anything had changed in me until that very moment when I drove up that final stretch of I-280. As I rounded the bend in…
Earlier this month, I taught the final workshop of our four-part series. It was a live portrait shoot with two wonderful models, Henry M. Chu and Shannon. We were rained in and spent most of the session in a loading dock, but with all the awesome participants, I think it turned out just fine. First,…
The fog was thick. Water droplets lingered precariously, suspended in mid air. We squinted at the Golden Gate Bridge, attempting to spot its ghostly contours even as we crossed under its towers. And yet, by the time we reached our destination, the gorgeous redwood forests at Muir Woods, we still found two whole parking lots…
This weekend, the fabric swatches will manifest as tablecloths and linens, the myriad glass containers will be gathered into perfect little vignettes, the splashes of coral will be replaced with gorgeous blooms. All of these mockups and ideas will be transformed into a wonderful styled shoot. It’s a true collaborative event involving several several amazing…
If you can shoot in a big square box, you can shoot anywhere. I told them from the beginning, the theme of today is going to be resourcefulness. We were rained in. It was our final workshop in the 4-part series, and we were supposed to do a live shoot with models and the whole…
Sometimes, it rains. Literally, metaphorically, sometimes we have to adapt and change our plans. With some things going on in Silvia’s life and forecasts of rain for the week, we seriously considered cancelling the engagement shoot. But I am so very glad we didn’t. It became a reprieve from the rest of the world, a…
Just wanted to share a couple images from our last workshop here in Mission Bay, San Francisco. This one was all about culling and editing, and we started with an exercise in narrowing down images to tell the story of a day– what I do as a wedding photographer for every single wedding I blog!…
I can tell you all about how generous and kind Elliot is. I live with him, though we both travel frequently and he works so much that we joke about taking turns living at our place. I can also tell you about how sincere and engaging Sun is, despite having met her only twice. It’s…
Yesterday: One stop after the airport, a family boarded the BART train. One mother with three girls, the youngest of whom sat grinning in her stroller. “Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco. Uno dos tres, cuatro, cinco!” The mother counted the little girl’s fingers and toes, much to her delight. The two older girls looked out…
It’s so easy to fall in love with these two. They seem like such beautiful old souls, like they’ve already been together a lifetime. They fall into step and interact with a simple ease. Soulmates. We met at Magali and Sam’s building in downtown San Francisco, and we kicked off their session on their awesome…
I am halfway through teaching my workshop series for beginner photographers. Part 1 was titled Photography Foundations, and it was all about the technical side of photography– aperture, shutter, exposure, and all the goodies. Part 2 was this past month (January) and we covered all sorts of goodies about composition (rule of thirds, balancing voids)…
I meant to feature this a long time ago but kept saving it for another day. As some of you may know, in my “other” life, I am creative director and managing editor of TaiwaneseAmerican.org, which supports the Taiwanese American community. Back in August, we did some shoots for TaiwaneseAmerican.org‘s t-shirt line. We had our friends volunteer…