kaiyen: pepper

kaiyen: pepper

the life and times of Allan Chen

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Wedding photography is serious business

Let me qualify this post by saying that I am not bashing those that are trying to get started in wedding photography, I realize that many are “sucked in” by friends and family and get in over their heads, and that I know that wedding photography is hard.  

But, I was one of those “getting started” photographers not too long ago, and I think I went about it in a very serious manner.  I did not do anything until I had my lighting and techniques down, and took every opportunity to learn more and more so that the next wedding would be that much better.  But I didn’t let up on any of the first ones, either.  

Recently, I helped a coworker who got married back in June. She knows that I do wedding photography and asked if I could help with some of the photos.  I usually would not go editing someone else’s shots but she said that she and her husband were so upset by them that they have not given any to their parents and really wanted to give a frame or two of images.  

When I did even some rudimentary work on them in Adobe Lightroom, she started crying.  Just color correction and some exposure, but she was crying.  I’m just trying to give you an idea of the situation.

Now, you have to be, in my opinion, a good photographer with a good sense of timing and quick composition to be a good wedding photographer.  But you also need to know equipment and lighting.  The usual maxim in photography is that equipment does not matter.  Well, with wedding photography, it kind of does.  You must have backup cameras, a full spread of lenses, and you need to know how to use flash and artificial lights.  Perhaps not a full blown set of off-camera flashes, but you need to know how to use your stuff, period.

Well, some of these photos were taken at ISO 1600, which is not an ideal setting since you get a lot more noise.  It also wasn’t really appropriate since they were situations where artificial lighting seemed like it would have been okay (ie – not during the actual ceremony, etc).  Also, even at ISO 1600 the shutter speed wasn’t fast enough – there are blurred formal photos.  Of all photos, set-up formal ones should not be blurry.

And, as far as I can tell, almost no flash was used.  Flash is so critical unless you’re shooting with the very latest set of full-frame digitals which can get away with ridiculous ISO settings.  

I really mean no disrespect to this photographer – I don’t even know his or her name.  But the bride cried, in front of me, in my office here at my day job.  A wedding is an important day, an emotional day, and one which, as a photographer, you need to be ready for and must have nerves of steel.

December 19, 2008 Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts, photography 1 Read more >

Technology is everywhere, and nowhere

I just came out of a meeting where the various deans at the School of Law met with directors of some of our major centers (Global Law, High Tech, and Social Justice) to talk about how the centers and the school might work better together.   It was a lively discussion, with contributions from just about everyone.

I did not say a word.

Why?  Well…because, when it comes to technology, it is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.  Just about anything that anyone wants to do – connect with alumni, improve the learning experience, etc – can use technology.  And when I say technology, my job is to make sure that we’re doing technology the “right way.”  Not just throwing it out there, not just spend ing money on something that we think will work.  But putting a solution together that adds the most value.  That is compelling.  I define “technology” very broadly, from whiteboards to computers to smart boards to walls to…you get the idea.  Instructional technology, servers, e-mail, collaboration tools.  Technology, and my department’s area of jurisdiction, if you will, is very broad.

So, unless I am raising my hand for every sentence, I keep my mouth shut the whole time.  

Weird experience.  

ps – if I had felt technology was ignored or undervalued by any of the people in the room, that’s a different story.  But I think my colleagues all have a good understanding of what my department does, and where I do and do not fit in.  Just to be clear.

December 18, 2008 Can't be Contained, Work-related 0 Read more >

(Camera) Format Wars

One of the most popular and perhaps famous camera formats out there is 6×17. This is medium format film, which is 6cm tall that is shot in a really wide camera and a big lens, producing a 17cm wide image. Nor surprisingly, it’s very panoramic in appearance. Many famous photographers have used cameras that shoot specifically in this format. Thomas Mangelsen, whose photos adorn our walls at our apartment, is the first that comes to mind.

Most of these cameras come in at a minimum of $1500. And that’s for a chinese company (Fotoman) – the “name brands” are thousands more.

I wonder if there is something about shooting a camera that is a particular format that makes one compose differently.  Would I compose a specific way, looking through a viewfinder on a 6×17 camera than if I were looking through one with a much bigger frame and trying to imagine cropping?

Recently, I found a homemade 6×17 camera that looks very intriguing.

credit the guy who made this - image basically taken off ebay

In case you read this after the ebay link goes away, essentially it’s a 6×6 camera (common format) that has been cut in half and expanded, an enlarger bellows (the expanding part which allows the lens to move back and forth for focusing) and a large format lens.  It’s a real frankenstein’s monster of a camera, to say the least. And as of right now it’s a “steal” at $400 compared to those other ones, and the examples the seller gives indicates this camera can do some nice stuff.

Now comes the dilemma.

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December 15, 2008 Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts, photography, , , 0 Read more >

Review: Death Valley Nocturnes Workshop, November 2008

In November 2008, a little over a month ago, I attended a workshop held by The Nocturnes, a group of photographers that specialize essentially in night-time photography.  They generally go without any or very little truck by moonlightartificial light such as street lights, cars, etc, though a Nocturne will use flashlights and other tools to add to an image in some cases.  There are lots of examples of ultra-long exposure shots (4 hours is the longest I’ve seen, 1 hour is the longest I’ve done).  They have a flickr group as well, and a pretty useful discussion forum.  Nocturnes tend to be pretty intense – many shoot only this type of photography, and they have developed calculators for correcting for these long exposures, etc.  Many shoot enough to just know how long to expose for, just based on experience.

The workshop I attended was from November 8-10, when the moon was getting to full (76% when we arrived, 92% when we finished).  We were at the Furnace Creek Ranch, one of only two real places to stay in Death Valley, the whole time, they though we worked several locations, including the Furnace Creek Inn, Zabriskie Point, Badwater Basin, andthe abandoned town of Rhyolite just over the border in Nevada in addition to the ranch itself. The workshop was led by Tim Baskerville, a Nocturne veteran (one of the first) and a great guy.

Overall, I give this workshop an experience a very positive score.  It was a small group – 6 of us – and we shared some good tips and comraderie.  Not as much as I would hope among all 6, but, in addition to the one good friend and one acquaintance I already knew, I can think of at least one other person with whom I spoke and interacted quite a bit.  So that’s not bad.  And I did get a lot out of it.  Working with the light, understanding how working in just moonlight vs. a mixed lighting situation vs. daylight was very different, and I became more comfortable with the uncertainty of this type of photography.  But also the wonders of the results.

The full flickr set of my photos is online.  I will admit that I messed up a lot of the color exposures, though the black and white turned out better.

Read on for more comments

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December 15, 2008 General reviews, photography, , , 1 Read more >

One never has enough resources, but that doesn’t hurt any less

I know that every manager faces the issue of not enough resources.  I can’t think of anyone I know that has enough or too much, certainly.  There’s always one project that one wishes can be done, but can’t due to budget, resources, etc.

But that doesn’t make it hurt any less.  We operate basically with one person-per-area, which means almost no redundancy.  It’s a small staff so once we try to build staff redundancy everyone is doing 3 jobs.  I’ve done what I can to reduce the issues – we’ve taken all of our servers virtual, we’ve been pushing the use of students to get more and more everyday work done, etc.  But some things require full timers, and when all hell breaks loose, like it did yesterday (and bleeding into today), that means someone stays for 40 straight hours getting servers back up and running.

I know this.  I know we could use more resources.  I know that there are not any additional resources to be had.  But that doesn’t mean I can sit here and not be immensely bothered by it.

December 10, 2008 Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts, Work-related 0 Read more >

the birds




the birds

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

A couple of interesting things in this photo. First, the birds…it was like The Birds, the movie. These crows kept landing on the tree, flying off the tree, circling the tree, squawking all the time. It was actually kind of disconcerting.

The second thing…this is a digital infrared photo. Infrared photography takes in near-infrared light (it doesn’t see through things like x-rays or anything – it’s just past red). Unlike visible-spectrum film where things that are brighter show up as brighter in the final result, infrared responds to things that reflect specifically IR more efficiently. Chlorophyll – that which makes leaves and grass green – is especially reflective, and much IR photography is done in the spring.

This was taken yesterday, in very December. The leaves are actually all kinds of colors – red, yellow, brown. None of them green. The leaves are dying, and falling with each wind gust. Yet here you can see that all of the leaves come out the same “color” in IR.

I was quite surprised by this, actually.

This is a false color image – IR doesn’t have color (since color is just a mental mapping and interpretation of various wavelengths, and since our eyes can’t pick up IR wavelengths, we have no interpretation of them). But the camera and processing method creates these false colors which have an interesting and hopefully aesthetically-pleasing effect.

December 8, 2008 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Painter’s tape and windshields

Walking in, I spotted a car where the windshield was framed with painter’s tape.

I presume that the windshield was recently replaced, and they wanted to put some tape down all along the perimeter to make sure that the glue or whatever method of holding it in place “set.”  However, it seems to me that painter’s tape is not exactly the best of adhesive materials…I know it comes off easily but…it comes off easily.

December 8, 2008 On the Way to and from Work 0 Read more >

One blog to rule them all

And by “them” I mean me and the few lucky people that read this regularly :-).

The tagline for this blog, my general, is “Why have 10 blogs on specific topics when you can have just 1 with all kinds of random topics?”  Well, I do still have one separate blog – my photoblog.  I have this separate because sometimes I get a bit technical in those posts, and because I thought some people would take just that feed, of just my photos.

However, with the WordPress 2.5.x>2.6.x upgrade fiasco that ran across the board, where I lost all of my posts on all of my blogs (I run a few others as content management systems for sites), I figure I should just merge the two.  So all of my wonderful photo posts will be here, too :-).

Get ready, world!

December 8, 2008 General News, , 0 Read more >

along the trail




along the trail

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

This was taken towards the first third of what was probably a 4 mile hike in Alamaden-Quicksilver Park in San Jose, from the McAbee Road trail head.

The camera, a Yashica Mat 124, has been giving me flare problems. Even with a hood, if there is sun coming into the camera at all, it will flare you get these ugly little circles on the sides that look like light just leaked in and decreased contrast, etc. They are impossible to get rid of, since they just kind of bleed in.

So on a lark, I glued some felt into the camera.

There is a printing technique when doing darkroom work where one files away bits of the negative carrier to produce “sloppy borders.” The edges are not nice and crisp. You have probably seen this at some point with photographic prints.

Well, while I did crop most of it out on this photo, you’ll notice on the left edge a bit of the felt blocking the light, but in an uneven way, creating essentially a sloppy border.

I think I will take advantage of this from now on. I’m actually quite happy with it.

And considering I was guessing with exposure on expired film of a type that is not usually amenable to wrong exposures…I’m pretty happy with this.

December 8, 2008 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Maybe we should run our servers on Tivo Series 1 boxes

So after 7 years of nearly continuous uptime, with not a single soft reset that entire time, the primary hard drive in my original, series 1 Tivo is beginning to fail.  It’s possible the add-on drive, which is a mere 6.5 years old, is dying, too.  

The drive in our TivoHD lasted 13 months (with, of course, a 12 month warranty and no sympathy).  

7 years.  That’s ridiculous.

December 5, 2008 Can't be Contained 0 Read more >